Middle school leader Elaine Griffin interviews adolescent development expert Dr. Cara Natterson, who shares tips on talking to today’s kids about their bodies and their selves.
By Elaine Griffin
“The puberty of the past bears little resemblance to what kids live through today.”
This stark declaration appears on page one of This Is So Awkward: Modern Puberty Explained, a terrific new book by Dr. Cara Natterson and Vanessa Kroll Bennett. I interviewed Natterson to learn how parents and educators can support children through the complicated landscape of modern puberty.
I began by asking Natterson why she felt compelled to write This Is So Awkward.
“I’ve spent my whole career in pediatrics, and I’ve also written a lot of books for kids,” she said. “I’ve found that it’s the adults who don’t feel they can engage kids in conversations. Writing a book to help adults talk about puberty felt like a slam dunk.”
Some parents cringe at the thought of having The Talk with their children, but even those who are comfortable with candid conversations need to learn how puberty and sex have evolved in recent years, Natterson believes.
The timing of puberty, the nature of relationships, and the smartphone have changed the experience of puberty in profound ways. “The ground beneath our collective feet has shifted dramatically, making it more, not less, important to have factual, candid conversations with kids,” we learn in This Is So Awkward‘s chapter on sex.
For those of us who experienced puberty before 1990, it likely began around age 11 and concluded three or four years later. Puberty now starts about two years earlier and lasts nearly a decade. A decade. (That’s not a typo.)
The 1990s Are So Yesterday
While the physical changes that define puberty remain the same, the social context in which puberty unfolds is largely unrecognizable to most parents. Those who grew up on ’90s rom-coms were influenced by social norms regarding sex and dating that are entirely different from those of today.
Think about it.
In “You’ve Got Mail,” a quintessential ’90s rom-com, Kathleen Kelly (Meg Ryan) is searching for her one true love and finds him by engaging in witty repartee over email. Her exchanges with the dashing Joe Fox (Tom Hanks) are written in full sentences with impeccable grammar. At one point, Joe offers to send Kathleen a bouquet of newly sharpened pencils. This movie could not be written today for many reasons, the least of which is that the pencil has fallen out of favor.
Here are the bigger reasons. The notion of Kathleen and Joe scrolling left or right on Tinder or engaging in sexting is unfathomable, not just because this movie took place in a pre-smartphone world, but also because these practices would have been antithetical to this earlier age’s notions of romance.
Cue to Today
Natterson and co-author Vanessa Kroll Bennett write extensively about youth culture. They explain that young people are immersed in a hook-up culture that encourages multiple partners. More and more, they are finding themselves in a “situationship” (yes, that’s a real term), which is essentially a non-committal relationship.
One can connect this seismic shift to the introduction of the smartphone, which has not only refashioned views on sex, but also created new body image ideals and a new style of communication among its users.
Talking the Talks – Plural
Because of this sea change, Natterson and Bennett provide updated advice on how to talk to kids about their bodies, emotions, and relationships. Natterson believes that parents should have numerous, short conversations with their children rather than long, significant ones.
Why?
“Because they are going to leave the room otherwise,” she laughs. “If it’s a monologue, they are done! By and large, we all do better with shorter talks.”
The talks parents initiate with younger kids should progress in sophistication as kids grow and mature. Even if children are unreceptive to some, they go a long way towards building trust around sensitive topics. Given that puberty is now starting around nine years old, talks about how bodies change are increasingly important to have with younger kids.
Handling Early Onset Puberty
I asked Natterson to explain why puberty now begins before middle school. She reviewed what she referred to as “three gigantic buckets.”
“One reason is stress – academic stress, athletic stress. The stress hormone cortisol contributes to puberty. Second, there are antibiotics that are given to animals, so antibiotics are in the food chain. Antibiotics cause inflammation in the gut, which is associated with early puberty. Third, there are endocrine disrupting chemicals in many products, about 1,000 of them.”
Natterson explained that such chemicals may signal the brain to trigger early puberty. Because endocrine disrupting chemicals are found in so many things we consume or apply, it can feel “overwhelming or even insurmountable,” but Natterson said there’s a lot we can do to safeguard our own health and that of children. She suggests that we “modulate stress, get more sleep, and prioritize nutrition.” She advises getting off devices as much as possible and opting out of notifications.
Because of early puberty, Natterson and Bennett caution adults to treat kids not by their appearance but by their chronological age. “Just because they look mature – and even if they sometimes act mature – their executive functioning skills haven’t ripened, nor has their ability to make smart, consequential, long-term choices,” they write.
I asked Natterson if it was possible for adults to help kids make smarter decisions given the nature of their brains. “Yes, they absolutely can,” she assured me. “We can encourage kids to take a deep breath, step out of the room, or call someone to do a check and balance before doing something risky.”
Social Media Harms Kids. Period.
Given that kids’ brains are wired for more impulsive decision making, managing smartphones and social media can be especially challenging for them. As a middle school leader, I’ve known really good kids who have sent nudes, posted an insensitive meme, or sent a cruel text only to regret it moments – not days – later.
Natterson expressed her concerns about social media’s impact on body image.
“In medical school, we were taught that dysregulated eating was a girls’ issue,” she said. “But that’s not true at all. It’s a 50/50 split. The risk for everyone is high. Sure, body image ideals have been around for centuries, but with screens we are now inundated with them.”
In their book, Natterson and Bennett discuss the investigation of Instagram in 2021, which exposed that its designers were acutely aware of its harmful impact on young users. The negative publicity earned Instagram a new moniker: Thinstagram.
We are living in a society that is simultaneously obsessed with weight loss and suffering from a chronic obesity epidemic. Parents often worry about the weight of their children during puberty. Natterson advised putting weight into perspective. “Some kids grow before they gain weight. Some kids gain before they grow. Just know that adding your judgment about their weight contributes another layer to the message the world has already given them about their weight. It’s best to let it go.”
The Growing Influence of Porn, Even Among Kids
In addition to contending with social media’s message to be thin, kids are up against the messages of online pornography. If you think that pornography isn’t impacting young kids, consider a startling statistic Natterson shared with me: Common Sense Media reports that 15% of kids have seen porn by age 12.
The online porn industry is quickly fashioning a new body ideal, especially when it comes to hair. While the growth of body hair is a normal process that accompanies puberty, pornography showcases a different social norm – actors who have no hair below the neck.
This means that young viewers, already uncomfortable with new body hair, may feel that this hair is abnormal or unattractive. Natterson and Bennett encourage parents to begin the conversations about pornography early. “No matter how awkward, uncomfortable, or utterly mortifying this topic may be, it’s become non-negotiable.” In the book, they provide openers to these conversations with a sensitivity to a child’s age.
“When building formative ideas about sex, we don’t want porn to be their textbook,” Natterson cautioned. We want to convey that healthy relationships are respectful, consensual, and safe.”
At the conclusion of our conversation, Natterson spoke with excitement about a new website: lessawkward.com. It contains a lot of resources for parents. It even has an AI bot trained to answer parents’ questions based on the content Natterson and Bennett fed it.
Finding the Joy: Toward Better Relationships
By talking openly with kids about friendship, intimacy, and love, parents can influence their children’s perspectives and decisions. Parents can transmit their values, too. Yes: Reading “This Is So Awkward” often made me feel awkward. And yes: There were times when it just made me want to cry. But there were also times when the authors’ sense of humor and playful tone made me laugh out loud.
We can decry how awful the world has become. Or we can seize our opportunities as parents and educators to offer alternative visions of how we might be together with each other in the world, in ways that promote healthy relationships and kindness. We can help our next generation learn to love what’s best and most healthy about their bodies and themselves.
Elaine Griffin is a former English teacher and current middle school leader in Wisconsin. Her essays have appeared in Education Next, Independent School Magazine, NAIS’s Independent Ideas Blog, and Intrepid Ed News. Her professional interests include parent education, curricular reform, and social-emotional learning.
Image of girl with phone by Cyn Yoder from Pixabay
