Puberty in girls starting younger and younger
- The end of childhood
- Jun 1
- 1 min read
May 31, 2025, The i Paper: ‘My daughter got her period at nine’: why girls are starting puberty younger
When Charlotte* was reading a bedtime story to her then eight-year-old daughter Olivia* she smelt a faint whiff of body odour. “Olivia had been to a party that day and we had skipped her evening bath, but it wasn’t a hot day and it felt slightly jarring because she was so young and the smell was distinctly grown up.” Soon after, Charlotte noticed the start of breast buds. “
She had always been tall for her age, despite the fact my husband and I are average height, but the breast buds worried me so I took her along to the GP. They also noticed some fine hair under her arms and referred her for a blood test and an X-ray of her hand to check her bone age, which came back two years older than she was, and they diagnosed precocious puberty.”
Charlotte’s experience is far from unique. A study of American girls published in May found that the number starting their periods before the age of 11 has doubled since the 1950s. The researchers from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in the US found that while the average age of women starting their periods in the 1950s was 12.5 years old, by the 21st century this had dropped to 11 years and nine months, particularly among racial minorities and lower-income households.
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