Understanding Girls' Problem Behavior E-Book

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: Hot Topics in Developmental Research - A Series of Three Edited Volumes
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 488

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

Understanding Girls' Problem Behavior presents an overview of recent studies by leading researchers into key aspects of the development of problem behavior in girls. * Integrates interdisciplinary research into girls' problem behaviors (e.g. aggression, antisocial behavior, rule breaking) * Unique in seeking to understand girls' problem behaviors in their own right * Follows the maturing girl from adolescence to adulthood, concluding at the point where she herself becomes a parent and forms new relationships * Gives attention to the critical contexts of problem behavior development--society and neighborhood, as well as family and peer contexts

Leseprobe

Contents

About the Editors

List of Contributors

Acknowledgements

Introduction: Girls’ Problem Behavior: From the What to the WhyGeertjan Overbeek and Anna-Karin Andershed

PART 1: MATURITY AND HEALTH

1 A Contextual Amplification Hypothesis: Pubertal Timing and Girls’ Emotional and Behavioral ProblemsXiaojia Ge, Misaki N. Natsuaki, Run Jin, and Michael C. Biehl

2 Fits and Misfits: How Adolescents’ Representations of Maturity Relate To Their AdjustmentLauree C. Tilton-Weaver, Fumiko Kakihara, Sheila K. Marshall, and Nancy L. Galambos

3 Physical Health in Adolescent Girls with Antisocial BehaviorKathleen Pajer, Andrea Lourie, and Lisa Leininger

PART 2: CO-OCCURRING PROBLEMS

4 Using Girls’ Voices and Words to Study Their ProblemsJoanne Belknap, Emily Gaarder, Kristi Holsinger, Cathy McDaniels Wilson, and Bonnie Cady

5 Developmental Comorbidity of Depression and Conduct Problems in GirlsKate Keenan, Xin Feng, Dara Babinski, Alison Hipwell, Amanda Hinze, Rolf Loeber, and Magda Stouthamer-Loeber

PART 3: GIRLS’ PROBLEM BEHAVIOR AND RELATIONSHIPS

6 Deviancy Training in a Sample of High-Risk Adolescent Girls in The NetherlandsAnnika K. E. de Haan, Geertjan Overbeek, Karin S. Nijhof, and Rutger C. M. E. Engels

7 Girls’ Aggressive Behavior Problems: A Focus on RelationshipsDebra Pepler, Jennifer Connolly, Wendy Craig, and Depeng Jiang

8 Attachment and Aggression: From Paradox to Principles of Intervention to Reduce Risk of Violence in TeensMarlene M. Moretti and Ingrid Obsuth

9 The Transfer of Developmental and Health Risk from Women with Histories of Aggressive Behavior to Their Children: Recent Results from the Concordia Longitudinal ProjectLisa A. Serbin, Dale M. Stack, Michele Hubert, Alex E. Schwartzman, and Jane Ledingham

Index

Understanding Girls’ Problem Behavior

HOT TOPICS IN DEVELOPMENTAL RESEARCH

Published

Friends, Lovers and Groups: Key Relationships in AdolescenceEdited by Rutger C. M. E. Engels, Margaret Kerr and Håkan Stattin

What Can Parents Do?: New Insights into the Role of Parents in Adolescent Problem BehaviorEdited by Margaret Kerr, Håkan Stattin and Rutger C. M. E. Engels

This edition first published 2011© 2011 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

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The right of Margaret Kerr, Håkan Stattin, Rutger C. M. E. Engels, Geertjan Overbeek and Anna-Karin Andershed to be identified as the authors of the editorial material in this work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Understanding girls’ problem behavior : how girls’ delinquency develops in the context of maturity and health, co-occurring problems, and relationships / edited by Margaret Kerr . . . [et al.].

p. ; cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-470-66632-6 (cloth)

1. Behavior disorders in children. 2. Behavior disorders in adolescence. 3. Problem children–Mental health. 4. Problem youth–Mental health. 5. Girls–Mental health. 6. Teenage girls–Mental health. 7. Juvenile delinquency–Etiology.

I. Kerr, Margaret, 1953–

[DNLM: 1. Juvenile Delinquency. 2. Adolescent Behavior. 3. Adolescent

Development. 4. Aggression. 5. Conduct Disorder. WS 463]

RJ506.B44U55 2011

618.92′89075–dc22

2010035927

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

We dedicate this book to the memory of Xiaojia Ge, a devoted scholar in the area of girls’ problem behavior and a valued colleague and mentor

About the Editors

Anna-Karin Andershed is Assistant Professor of Psychology at Örebro University, Sweden. She earned her PhD at Örebro University. Her research focuses on the development and life-span consequences of antisocial behavior, especially among girls and women. She is currently involved in the development of an assessment instrument for youth with or at risk for antisocial behavior, and a universal/indicated intervention for preschool children.

Rutger C. M. E. Engels is Professor in Developmental Psychopathology at the Radboud University Nijmegen. He is director of the dept. of Developmental Psychopathology, and director of the KNAW-acknowledged (in 2006) Behavioural Science Institute. He received his MA in Social Psychology in 1993 at the University of Groningen and his PhD in 1998 at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Maastricht. In 1998 he became post-doc at the Dept. of Child and Adolescent Studies at Utrecht University, and in 2000 he was appointed as assistant professor. In 2001, he was appointed as full professor at the Radboud University Nijmegen. His research focuses on the interplay between individual characteristics (e.g., personality, outcome expectancies, genes), environmental cues and actual social interactions on the initiation, maintenance and determination of addictive behaviors, such as smoking, alcohol use, overeating, and drug use. His work is characterized by a multi-disciplinary approach with research designs are employed to test our theoretical models ranging from epidemiological survey studies, lab experiments, systematic observational studies in naturalistic settings to genetic research.

Margaret Kerr is Professor of Psychology at Örebro University, Sweden, and Co-director of the Center for Developmental Research. She earned her PhD at Cornell University, USA, and then completed a post-doctoral research fellowship with Richard Tremblay at the University of Montreal, Canada. She has been an associate editor of the Journal of Research on Adolescence. Her research focuses on internal and external adjustment in adolescence and their roles in the life course. Her current research interests include adolescents’ choices of developmental contexts, parent-child relationships, and peer networks and their roles in the development of internalizing and externalizing problems.

Geertjan Overbeek is Associate Professor of Developmental Psychopathology at Utrecht University, The Netherlands. He earned his PhD at Utrecht University (2003), after which he worked as post-doc and Assistant Professor at the Behavioural Science Institute of the Radboud University Nijmegen for five years. His research focuses on the development of parent-child interactions and adolescents’ social-emotional development, with a special interest in the development of internalizing and externalizing forms of problem behavior.

Håkan Stattin is Professor of Psychology at Uppsala and Örebro Universities, Sweden. He earned his PhD at Stockholm University. He co-directs the Center for Developmental Research at Örebro University and has served as President of the European Association for Research on Adolescence and associate editor for the British Journal of Developmental Psychology. He is probably best known for his research in three areas: delinquency development, pubertal maturation in adolescent girls, and parental monitoring. His works include an authored book (with David Magnusson in 1990), Pubertal Maturation in Female Development. In addition to his continued basic research in these areas, he is conducting prevention trials to reduce alcohol drinking and delinquency among adolescents.

List of Contributors

Anna-Karin Andershed, School of Law, Psychology and Social Work, Örebro University, Örebro, Sweden

Dara Babinski, Center for Children and Families, University of Buffalo, Buffalo, NY, USA

Joanne Belknap, Sociology Department, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA

Michael C. Biehl, Department of Psychology, University of California, Davis, CA, USA

Bonnie Cady, Central Region, Colorado Division of Youth Corrections, Denver, CO, USA,

Jennifer Connolly, LaMarsh Centre for Research on Violence and Conflict Resolution, York University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Wendy Craig, Department of Psychology, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada

Rutger C. M. E. Engels, Behavioural Science Institute, Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands

Xin Feng, College of Education and Human Ecology, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA

Nancy L. Galambos, Department of Psychology, University of Alberta Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

Emily Gaarder, Department of Sociology/Anthropology, University of Minnesota-Duluth, Duluth, MN, USA

Xiaojia Ge, Institute of Child Development, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, Minneapolis, MN, USA

Annika K.E. de Haan, Langeveld Institute, Centre for Cognitive and Motor Disabilities Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

Amanda Hinze, Department of Psychiatry, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

Alison Hipwell, Department of Psychiatry, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

Kristi Holsinger, Sociology/Criminal Justice-Criminology, University of Missouri-Kansas City, MO, USA

Michele Hubert, Centre for Research in Human Development, Department of Psychology, Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Depeng Jiang, Department of Community Health Science, Faculty of Medicine, University of Manitoba, Canada

Run Jin, Department of Psychology and Child Development, California State University, Stanislaus, CA, USA

Fumiko Kakihara, Center for Developmental Research, Örebro University, Örebro, Sweden

Kate Keenan, Department of Psychiatry Behavioral Neuroscience, University of Chicago, IL, USA

Jane Ledingham, School of Psychology, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

Lisa Leininger, The Ohio State University College of Medicine, Department of Pediatrics, Research Institute at Nationwide Children’s Hospital, Columbus, OH, USA

Rolf Loeber, Department of Psychiatry, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

Andrea Lourie, Research Institute at Nationwide Children’s Hospital, Columbus, OH, USA

Sheila K. Marshall, Jack Bell Bldg. School of Social Work, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Marlene M. Moretti, Department of Psychology, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada

Misaki N. Natsuaki, Department of Psychology, University of California, Riverside, CA, USA

Karin S. Nijhof, Behavioural Science Institute, Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands

Ingrid Obsuth, Department of Psychology, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada

Geertjan Overbeek, Department of Developmental Psychology, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

Kathleen Pajer, The Ohio State University College of Medicine, Department of Pediatrics, Research Institute at Nationwide Children’s Hospital, Columbus, OH, USA

Debra Pepler, LaMarsh Centre for Research on Violence and Conflict Resolution, York University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Alex E. Schwartzman, Centre for Research in Human Development, Department of Psychology, Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Lisa A. Serbin, Centre for Research in Human Development, Department of Psychology, Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Dale M. Stack, Centre for Research in Human Development, Department of Psychology, Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Magda Stouthamer-Loeber, Department of Psychiatry, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

Lauree C. Tilton-Weaver, Center for Developmental Research, Örebro University, Örebro, Sweden

Cathy McDaniels Wilson, Department of Psychology, Xavier University-Cincinnati, OH, USA

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to The Swedish Foundation for International Cooperation in Research and Higher Education for supporting the collaborative project between the editors that resulted in the Hot Topics book series.

Introduction

Girls’ Problem Behavior: From the What to the Why

Geertjan Overbeek

Utrecht University, The Netherlands

Anna-Karin Andershed

Örebro University, Sweden

Girls’ problem behavior, or at least their delinquency, is less rare than commonly thought. Even though girls’ issues and girls’ problems are of great concern for societies as well as researchers, and despite a growing interest in unravelling the processes and mechanisms behind girls’ problem behavior, the knowledge base in this area is still meager. There are exceptions, of course, and what these exceptions indicate is that the causes, expressions, development, and trajectories for many of the problems experienced by young people may differ as a function of gender (Bell, Foster, and Mash, 2005). To date, though, there are only a few longitudinal studies that have provided insight into the potentially different adjustment processes experienced by boys and girls. In addition, studies with a focused female perspective are few, in contrast to the bulk of research and literature directed toward understanding the development of boys. The overarching purpose of this volume is to yield an improved understanding of some of the key aspects of girls’ problem behaviors. Drawing on studies of the maturing girl and following her through adolescence, into adulthood, and up to the point where she, herself, becomes a parent, we want to illustrate the process of initiating, establishing, and potentially overcoming problem behavior, and the processes that contribute to this development.

GOING FROM THE WHAT TO THE WHY

Despite the increasing prevalence and severity of girls’ problem behavior over the past decades, a review of female juvenile delinquency (Hoyt and Scherer, 1998) concluded that delinquent girls are “misunderstood by the juvenile justice system” and “neglected by social science” (p. 81). Specifically, research on the development of girls’ problem behavior was virtually non-existent until the 1970s and 1980s, and some argue that the few studies that did focus on girls were characterized by trying to ‘fit’ girls and women into theoretical models originally designed to explain the development of male problem behavior (i.e., the “add women and stir” approach, Daly and Chesney-Lind, 1988). This is perhaps not so strange, given that the gender gap in serious antisocial behavior is well documented. Boys do suffer more often than girls from this type of psychopathology, and the problem behaviors boys engage in are often more physically harmful to themselves and others than problem behaviors expressed by girls (see Crick and Zahn-Waxler, 2003). Further, childhood risk factors are much poorer predictors of adult criminality for girls than they are for boys, and concurrent associations between risk and protective factors and delinquency are generally weaker for girls than for boys (e.g., Fagan et al., 2007). Hence, boys’ and men’s adjustment problems are more visible to us – both as researchers and as members of society – and with the theoretical models at hand they are easier to understand and explain. And if these models have worked so well for boys, why not try them out on girls as well?

Clearly, there are findings that support the notion that the mechanisms and processes behind problem behaviors are the same for boys and girls. For example, the same risk and causal factors seem to predict similar trajectories of problem behavior regardless of gender (Moffitt et al., 2001; Lahey et al., 2006; Van Hulle et al., 2007). However, there may be specific gender differences in risk factors that are understudied, and therefore remain to be uncovered. Thus, instead of focusing on differences in the specific types of problem behavior across the sexes –which has been the major research focus until now (Moffitt et al., 2001; Fagan et al., 2007; Van Hulle et al., 2007) – the main topic on our research agenda should be the examination of different etiologies of problem behavior for the sexes, which may come about as a result of differences in magnitude of and exposure to actual and perceived risks.

Even though females’ problem behavior may be less common and serious than males’, this does not mean that they are insignificant for the girls themselves or for society. This volume presents data showing that conduct disorder, which is strongly linked to delinquency, is the second most common psychiatric disorder among girls in the USA, UK, and New Zealand. In addition, girls accounted for a sizeable 24% of arrests for aggravated assault, 35% of forgery arrests, and 40% of embezzlement charges for American delinquents in 2003 (Pajer, Lourie, and Leininger, Chapter 4, this volume). Important to note, also, is that over the past decades girls seem to have ‘moved on’ from relatively minor misconducts such as shoplifting, social forms of aggression (i.e., actively isolating and gossiping about others), and vandalism to more serious crimes such as assault and robbery. Between 1980 and 2003, arrest rates for assaults by girls in the US increased explosively, by more than 250% (Pajer, Lourie, and Leininger, Chapter 4, this volume). Over the past 23 years in the United States, arrest rates for female juveniles for simple and aggravated assaults have increased, while these same rates for juvenile males decreased. In Canada a similar trend is apparent; between 1996 and 2002 a slight decrease occurred in the rate of violent crime committed by boys but a modest increase surfaced for girls, reflecting more frequent engagement in common assault (Moretti and Osbuth, Chapter 9, this volume). Hence, the fact that girls and women are not engaged in serious antisocial behavior to the same extent as boys and men does not mean that their antisocial behavior should be disregarded. Rather, it seems as if we have to revise some of our preconceptions about female maladjustment.

In addition to these increasing prevalence rates, it is important to note that more than for boys, for girls the development of externalizing behavior seems to be characterized by relatively high levels of functional impairment and comorbidity with other – mostly internalizing – psychopathologies. This is important, because adolescents who suffer from comorbid conditions (e.g., being diagnosed with clinical-level depression and conduct disorder) are at increased risk for a diversity of poor outcomes on domains such as work, friendships and romantic relationships, etc. The increased risk for poor outcomes may be particularly true for girls, as previous studies on suicidal ideation and behavior showed that this behavior was significantly more prevalent in conduct disordered adolescent girls than boys (Keenan, Chapter 6, this volume). For instance, one study showed that highly aggressive girls age 14–15 years have three times the observed rate of attempted suicide that boys have (Cairns, Petersen, and Neckerman, 1988). This means that even though the consequences and correlates of girls’ antisocial behavior probably are somewhat different than those of boys’, they can be equally detrimental for the individuals themselves and the people around them.

In the 10 years since Hoyt and Scherer drew their conclusion that female delinquency was understudied, there has been a growing consensus that in order to develop a complete understanding of girls’ problem behavior, it is necessary to uncover the processes and mechanisms that are unique for the development of misconduct in girls. In more empirical terms, one could say that we need to start treating gender as more than a control variable (Fagan et al., 2007). Knowledge in this area is advancing rapidly now, and because research is presently being conducted from many different theoretical and disciplinary angles, we consider it a ‘hot topic’ in developmental research. The time is ripe to summarize these advancements. In this volume, we do so by presenting a variety of intriguing studies that go from the what to the why, examining in detail the antecedents, correlates, and consequences of female misconduct.

This volume, we hope, reflects the fact that recent advancements in understanding girls’ problem behavior have come about because of three interrelated features of research that has been conducted. First, most studies presented in this volume are aimed at understanding girls’ problem behaviors in their own right, without necessarily or exclusively applying theoretical models created for understanding boys’ problems. Nevertheless, some other studies presented in this volume increase our knowledge primarily by broadening our empirical scope. They provide first-ever data on (the explanatory mechanisms underlying) problem behavior in samples of girls. Second, a crucial feature is that the studies in this volume come from different scientific disciplines and sub-disciplines, from medicine, criminology, and clinical psychology to developmental psychology. This allows for an integration of data on physiological processes with perspectives on comorbidity, social contexts (i.e., relationships with parents and peers), and interpersonal reinforcement processes.

These latter issues, of social contexts and interpersonal processes, refer to a third feature of many of the studies presented in this volume – their attention to contexts of problem behavior development in girls. The term “contexts”, here, is used in the broadest possible sense. It refers to macro-level societal and neighborhood influences as well as the micro-level, moment-to-moment interactions within family and peer environments. Why the strong emphasis on social contexts in the development of girls’ problem behavior? A growing number of studies suggest that girls’ problem behaviors, more than boys’, are connected with negative and sometimes even traumatic social experiences and relationship dynamics in childhood and adolescence. Relationships can act both as a precipitating factor, and as a ‘maintaining arena’ in which problem behaviors find an outlet. This is evident, for instance, in research on conduct problems. Girls’ delinquency is mostly adolescent-onset and social in origin (Lahey, Moffitt, and Caspi, 2003), and girls often use their relationships to express aggression and as a means to aggress against others (e.g., Pepler and Craig, 2005; Xie, Cairns, and Cairns, 2005). Hence, we consider the context as crucial to achieving a full understanding of processes and mechanisms behind girls’ and women’s negative adjustment.

THIS VOLUME

In this volume, we highlight new views in research on girls’ problem behavior. The book is divided into three parts. Part 1 focuses on maturity and health, comprising three chapters that deal with female pubertal timing, subjective representations of maturity and HPA axis functioning in relation to problem behavior. Chapter 2 by Ge et al. examines a ‘contextual amplification hypothesis’, which holds that an early onset of puberty in girls increases the risk for developing problem behavior, and that this risk is higher for girls who live in adverse psychosocial contexts (or, in contrast, relatively low for girls who experience a supportive and enriching environment). Chapter 3, by Tilton-Weaver et al., focuses on girls’ subjective representations of maturity, more specifically, examining the extent to which discrepancies in adolescents’ subjective and desired age (i.e., experiencing a maturity gap or “overfit”) links to antisocial behavior, deviant peer associations, and problems in the parent–child relationship. Finally, Chapter 4, by Pajer et al., addresses the understudied question whether (subclinical) conduct disorder in girls is associated with physical discomfort and problems and health risk behaviors in a sample of 278 girls aged 15–16 years.

Part 2 focuses on the etiology leading up to girls’ problem behavior and the co-occurrence of girls’ problem behavior with internalizing and other psychopathologies. Chapter 5, by Belknap et al., takes a qualitative “pathways” approach to studying the etiology of externalizing behavior in incarcerated adolescent and young adult females. Based on data from focus groups and individual interviews across four studies, the authors emphasize the importance of physically or sexually abusive situations in childhood that lead up to help-seeking behaviors that are themselves criminalized (e.g., running away, self-medication by use of illicit drugs, prostitution, etc.) which, in turn, increase the risk of arrest and incarceration. Next, Chapter 6, by Keenan et al., focuses on the extent to which girls’ problem behavior co-occurs with depressive mood or places females at risk (i.e., makes them vulnerable) for the development of depression, based on data from a high risk sample of 232 9-year-old girls and their mothers, who participated in the Pittsburgh Youth Study. Also, this chapter deals with the important question whether this comorbid condition is associated with extra functional impairment in girls.

Part 3 focuses on the relational characteristics and developments associated with girls’ problem behavior. It highlights explanatory mechanisms over very short (e.g., development of misconduct or deviant talk in 5-minute time intervals, on a micro-level) or short time intervals (i.e., development of bullying over half-year or one-year), as well as over decades of personal and even intergenerational development. This section contains four chapters. Chapter 7, by De Haan et al., examines whether deviancy training – a reinforcement mechanism in interpersonal contact that has been previously established in boys – stimulates the development of talk about rule-breaking in dyads of incarcerated and non-incarcerated females. Chapter 8, by Pepler et al., examines the development of bullying in adolescent females in relation to the development of parent–daughter conflicts and to the development of physical and emotional health problems. Chapter 9, by Moretti and Obsuth, examines the effectiveness of a parent-training program that teaches relationship principles. Based on a pre-post design with a control group, they present findings on the effectiveness of “Connect”, an attachment-based intervention for parents and caregivers with teens who engage in aggressive, antisocial, and delinquent behavior. Finally, Chapter 10, by Serbin et al., focuses on the pathways linking women’s histories of childhood behavior problems with their own children’s subsequent health and development. This intergenerational transmission mechanism is explored based on data from more than 4000 children from lower SES urban neighborhoods, who were followed up since 1976, over a 30-year time period. The study focuses on parents’ mental and physical health, patterns of spousal and child-directed violence, and socio-economic and environmental risk indicators.

GIRLS' PROBLEM BEHAVIOR: A HOT TOPIC

To conclude this introductory chapter, this volume is the third in a book series on Hot Topics in Developmental Research. The first hot topic was peer relations in adolescence – dealing with issues such as behavioral genetic research on peer relationships, mechanisms of peer influence, romantic relationships, and peers in different contexts. The second hot topic focused on the question “What can parents do?” – integrating new insights into the role of parents in adolescent problem behavior. This third volume now summarizes and integrates the most recent empirical and theoretical advances in research on girls’ problem behavior. We have gathered the leading scholars in this field – scholars who are pushing the boundaries of knowledge of girls’ problem behavior forward. We believe that the chapters presented here tell a compelling story, because they showcase a variety of different assumptions and hypotheses about the nature of and explanatory mechanisms underlying girls’ problem behavior using a variety of sophisticated research strategies. We hope that these differences, and the different types of results and outcomes to which they lead, are ‘hot’ enough to provoke a scholarly discussion – and in such a way, form the basis for future, enlightening studies on girls’ problem behavior.

REFERENCES

Bell, D. J., Foster, S. L., and Mash, E. J. (2005). Handbook of Behavioral and Emotional Problems in Girls. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers.

Cairns, R. B., Peterson, G., and Neckerman, H. J. (1988). Suicidal behavior in aggressive adolescents. Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology, 17, 298–309.

Crick, N. R., and Zahn-Waxler, C. (2003). The development of psychopathology in females and males: Current progress and future challenges. Development and Psychopathology, 15, 719–742.

Daly, K. and Chesney-Lind, M. (1988). Feminism and criminology. Justice Quarterly, 5, 497–538.

Fagan, A. A., Van Horn, M. L., Hawkins, J. D., et al. (2007). Gender similarities and differences in the association between risk and protective factors and self-reported serious delinquency. Prevention Science, 8, 115–124.

Hoyt, S. and Scherer, D.G. (1998). Female juvenile delinquency: Misunderstood by the juvenile justice system, neglected by social science. Law and Human Behaviour, 22, 81–107.

Lahey, B. B., Moffitt, T. E., and Caspi, A. (2003). Causes of Conduct Disorder and Juvenile Delinquency. New York: Guilford Press.

Lahey, B. B., Van Hulle, C. A., Waldman, I. D., et al. (2006). Testing descriptive hypotheses regarding sex differences in the development of conduct problems and delinquency. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 34, 737–755.

Magnusson, D. and Cairns, R. B. (1996). Developmental Science: Toward a unified framework. In R. B. Cairns, G. H. Elder, and E. J. Costello (eds) Developmental Science (pp. 7–30). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Moffitt, T. E., Caspi, A., Rutter, M., et al. (2001). Sex Differences in Antisocial Behavior. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Pepler, D. J., and Craig, W. M. (2005). Aggressive girls on troubled trajectories: A developmental perspective. In D. J. Pepler, K. C. Madsen, C. Webster, et al. (eds) The Development and Treatment of Girlhood Aggression (pp. 3–28). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

Van Hulle, C. A., Rodgers, J. L., D’Onofrio, B. M., et al. (2007). Sex differences in the causes of self-reported adolescent delinquency. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 116, 236–248.

Xie, H., Cairns, B. D., and Cairns, R. B. (2005). The development of aggressive behaviors among girls: Measurement issues, social functions, and differential trajectories. In D. J. Pepler, K. C. Madsen, C. Webster, et al. (eds) The Development and Treatment of Girlhood Aggression (pp. 105–136). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

PART I

Maturity and Health

CHAPTER 1

A Contextual Amplification Hypothesis: Pubertal Timing and Girls’ Emotional and Behavioral Problems

Xiaojia Ge

University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, USA

Misaki N. Natsuaki

University of California, Riverside, USA

Run Jin

California State University, Stanislaus, USA

Michael C. Biehl

University of California, Davis, USA

Preparation of this manuscript was in part supported by the National Institute of Mental Health through funding for the Institute for Social and Behavioral Research (MH48165). Additional funding for the research center and for this project was provided by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, and the College of Education and Human Development at University of Minnesota, Twin Cities and the College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences at UC Davis (CA-D*-HCD-6092-H). Correspondence concerning this chapter should be addressed to Misaki N. Natsuaki, Department of Psychology, University of California, Riverside, California, CA.

It is now common knowledge that a rise in problem behaviors occurs in early adolescence (Moffitt, 1993; Ge et al., 1994; Hankin et al., 1998; Wichstrom, 2001; Ge, Natsuaki, and Conger, 2006c). Trajectories of maladaptive behaviors take an upward swing during the period of pubertal transition. Despite a once-dominant view of externalizing or antisocial behaviors as boys’ problems, the increase in maladaptive behaviors can also be seen among girls (Moffitt, 1993). Moreover, girls manifest a greater increase in internalizing symptoms than do boys in early adolescence (Ge et al., 1994; Hankin et al., 1998; Wichstrom, 2001; Ge, Natsuaki, and Conger, 2006c).

The synchrony of the rise of problem behaviors and emotions and the onset of puberty does not seem to be a mere coincidence. Early adolescence, after all, is especially stressful and tumultuous, as it is characterized by rapid physical maturation and a widening array of psychosocial stressors (Cicchetti and Rogosch, 2002). Differential timing of pubertal maturation across adolescents has been noticed for its influence on adolescents’ behavioral and emotional development. A rapidly accumulating body of literature has shown that early pubertal maturation constitutes a significant risk factor for a variety of girls’ emotional and behavioral problems (e.g., Brooks-Gunn and Warren, 1989; Stattin and Magnusson, 1990; Caspi and Moffitt, 1991; Caspi et al., 1993; Ge et al., 1994, 2001c, 2003, 2006a; Ge, Conger, and Elder, 1996, 2001a, 2001b; Graber et al., 1997, 2004; Wichstrom, 2001; Cota-Robles, Neiss, and Rowe, 2002).

Although the findings have been more robust for girls than for boys (Huddleston and Ge, 2003), not every study has found a significant association between early puberty and girls’ behavioral and emotional problems. When such an association is observed, the magnitude of the main effect of pubertal timing is, nonetheless, rather modest. These observed inconsistencies in the effects of pubertal timing, we believe, could be systematically sorted out by carefully examining the psychosocial contexts in which pubertal maturation occurs. In this chapter, we propose that the effect of pubertal timing is significantly contingent upon psychosocial contexts. We expect the effects of pubertal timing to be conditional on psychosocial contexts because the meanings and implications of puberty are defined accordingly to these contexts.

Our view of the interactive nature in puberty-context links has its theoretical origin in person-environment interaction perspectives that regard the development of behavior as a result of continuous transactions between biological processes and individuals’ social and psychological contexts (Magnusson and Cairns, 1996; Magnusson and Stattin, 1998). According to these perspectives, biological changes should not be examined in isolation; but rather, they should be viewed conjointly with psychosocial contexts within which the developing individual is embedded (Magnusson, 1999; Bergman, Magnusson, and El-Khouri, 2003). Such person-environment interaction models are increasingly adopted for understanding the role that these multifaceted and complex biopsychosocial processes play in behavioral development.

In keeping with this interaction perspective (Susman and Rogol, 2003), we propose that, first, timing of physical maturation has significant implications for multiple dimensions of girls’ adjustment during adolescence and beyond. Second, the ontogeny of girls’ problem behaviors and emotions is a result of complex interactions between biological changes and psychosocial contexts within which the biological changes take place. It is with this backdrop that we maintain that biological change such as pubertal transition should interact with psychosocial contexts, including familial, peer, school, and neighborhood contexts, so as to place early-maturing girls at risk for elevated emotional and behavioral problems.

A few reminders for the readers are in place. First, the focus of this report is the effect of pubertal timing (i.e., early, on-time, or late timing at which an individual undergoes puberty), rather than pubertal maturation (i.e., the degree of physical maturation during puberty) per se. Second, although puberty is a transitional event that occurs for girls as well as boys, this chapter focuses on girls. The link between pubertal maturation and problem behaviors has been demonstrated more robustly for girls than for boys. The association between boys’ pubertal timing and their problem behaviors has received mixed results, possibly due to the difficulty in measuring their pubertal maturation as boys do not have any benchmark of puberty as clear as girls’ menarche. For more detailed discussion about boys at puberty, we refer readers to the chapter by Huddleston and Ge (2003). Third, it is also important to note that the definition of psychosocial contexts can be sometimes vague. In this chapter, we specifically refer to the contexts with which developing adolescents are directly and routinely in contact with, such as family environment, schools, neighborhoods, same/different sex peers, and stressful life experiences.

PUBERTAL TIMING AND PSYCHOSOCIAL CONTEXTS: THREE USEFUL HYPOTHESES

To help consolidate the existing findings, we propose a conceptual model to capture three substantive hypotheses relevant to the investigation of the interplay of puberty and psychosocial contexts in the development of girls’ problem behavior. Figure 1.1 presents an integrative model that summarizes three hypotheses delineating the links among pubertal timing, psychosocial contexts, and problem behavior among girls.

Figure 1.1 The integrative model linking pubertal timing, contexts, and developmental outcomes.

The puberty-initiated mediation hypothesis (Paths a and b) suggests that girls’ early maturation influences their social environments, which in turn, compromises their healthy development. The contextual amplification hypothesis (Paths c and d) – the emphasis of our research group and this chapter asserts that there is an interaction between pubertal maturation and psychosocial context, such that early maturation exerts the strongest effect when girls live in adverse contexts. That is, psychosocial contexts are expected to trigger, activate, accentuate, and/or magnify the adverse effect of girls’ early maturation. Therefore, according to this hypothesis, adaptation is particularly difficult for children who negotiate an early pubertal transition in a stressful social environment because new challenges at the entry to puberty and a widening array of social stressors may overtax their relatively undeveloped coping resources. This proposition can be worded differently to take into account the other end of continuum: The adverse impact of early physical maturation can be attenuated, compensated, and/or suppressed when early-maturing girls are protected by a nurturing and supportive environment. Finally, although it is not an emphasis of the present chapter, the evolutionary hypothesis (Path e) addresses reciprocal causal directions, acknowledging the importance of environmental influence on pubertal timing. Interested readers are referred to the following articles for more details (Belsky, Steinberg, and Draper, 1991; Ellis et al., 1999; Ellis and Garber, 2000; Ellis, 2005). We acknowledge that no single model entirely captures the complexity of the association between puberty and child functioning, and that every piece of the presented model is equally important. However, this chapter mainly focuses on the contextual amplification hypothesis – one of the areas of investigation our research group has been exploring closely.

The Puberty-Initiated Mediation Hypothesis

Because biological changes, particularly development of secondary sex characteristics, have “social stimulus value” (Petersen and Taylor, 1980, p. 137) and psychological meaning, their emergence likely influences girls’ social contexts. The puberty-initiated mediation hypothesis proposes that social contexts mediate the association between pubertal maturation and girls’ behavioral and emotional problems. Specifically, it is expected that girls’ early physical maturation could evoke certain – often challenging – reactions from the surrounding environment, which in turn, leads to their difficulties in emotional and behavioral adjustment.

Though limited, existing evidence has shown that girls’ pubertal maturation indeed elicits certain environmental reactions that can be challenging for girls. For instance, daughters’ sexual maturation often elicits confusion, discomfort, and awkwardness in parents (Paikoff and Brooks-Gunn, 1991). A study by Brooks-Gunn and her colleagues (Brooks-Gunn et al., 1994) provides an illustrative example of how girls’ breast development demands adjustment in her parents, particularly in fathers. The authors examined adolescent girls’ perceptions of parents’ reaction after viewing a picture of a family in which a mother was pulling out a bra from a shopping bag in front of a daughter and a father. When asked to illustrate feelings of three protagonists in the picture, the participating girls described the father’s reaction as either negative (53%) or ambivalent (29%). For instance, a participant in the study described the father’s feeling: “He’s really kind of embarrassed and he can’t stand that his daughter has gotten really big… It’s hard for him to understand, because he’s a man and his daughter’s a girl” (p. 556). Such awkward feelings about daughters’ sexual maturation are particularly evident among fathers (Brooks-Gunn et al., 1994).

More direct evidence for the mediating role of psychosocial contexts comes from the classic study by Stattin and Magnusson (1990). The authors suggested that the higher prevalence of problem behaviors among early-maturing girls could result from their tendency to associate with older peers. Their adult-like physical appearance opens a door to social groups of older peers, which in turn may increase early-maturing girls’ engagement in adult-like behavior that may be risky for young adolescent girls (Magnusson, Stattin, and Allen, 1985). Conformity to older peers’ behavioral norms, thus, places earlier-maturing girls in deviant categories compared to their own age mates.

Based on the afore-mentioned studies, it appears that puberty –an event that occurs within an individual’s biological system – elicits social reactions, which in turn affects the person’s developmental outcome. This is an important mechanism to note because it potentially provides implications to prevention and intervention; if attitudes toward girls’ precocious puberty and sexual maturation in the social environment are somehow changed, the adverse outcome associated with early pubertal maturation may be prevented.

The Contextual Amplification Hypothesis

The contextual amplification hypothesis proposes that contextual processes play a crucial role in amplifying or ameliorating the effects of pubertal transition on the development of girls’ emotional and behavioral problems. Unlike the puberty-initiated mediation hypothesis, it is the interaction between pubertal timing and psychosocial contexts that is emphasized in this hypothesis. Specifically, it is expected that early pubertal maturation exerts the strongest adverse effect when girls live in adverse social contexts. However, an adverse impact of early physical maturation can be mitigated when a supportive and enriched environment protects early-maturing girls. Contextual circumstances can either facilitate or impede early puberty effects through the opportunities, norms, and expectations, as well as through the implicit reward and punishment structures that the contexts provide.

This hypothesis, in its broadest sense, acknowledges that human behaviors are usually not randomly distributed. Rather, behaviors are systematically patterned according to characteristics of psychosocial contexts such as history, place, gender, socioeconomic status (SES), race/ethnicity, and past and present life experiences. In fact, the definition of pubertal timing is inherently interactive with context. Unlike pubertal status, which refers to the degree of physical maturation during puberty, pubertal timing is a relative term involving whether the individual’s physical development is earlier, at the same time, or later than his/her same-sex, same-age peers (Graber, Petersen, and Brooks-Gunn, 1996). Thus, the age at which a particular level of physical maturation is reached in a particular context is an essential consideration for measuring pubertal timing. Therefore, a girl whose first period occurred at age 12, who may have been labeled as an earlier maturer 100 years ago, is no longer considered an earlier maturer in a contemporary society where the average age at menarche in Western countries is roughly around 12 and 13 years (Parent et al., 2003). The very fact that physical maturation – an event appearing to be universally experienced – affects individuals differently depending on the timing at which it occurs suggests an interaction between puberty and psychosocial context. Moreover, the fact that girls are consistently found to be more negatively affected by early maturation than boys suggests that the pubertal transitional effects are gender-dependent.

The contextual amplification hypothesis is guided by several well-established theories, including the cumulative risk model (Rutter, 1990; Seifer et al., 1992) and diathesis-stress model (Richters and Weintraub, 1990; Caspi and Moffitt, 1991). The cumulative risk model suggests that adverse effects of risks can be cumulative and individuals’ behavior and well-being are compounded when experiencing multiple risks, rather than a single risk. From this perspective, girls who undergo early pubertal maturation and experience adverse environmental conditions simultaneously are in more peril of developing behavioral and emotional problems than on-time or later-maturing girls or early-maturing girls who are protected by supportive environments.

Our contextual amplification formulation is also conceptually consistent with the diathesis-stress model. Here, diathesis refers to salient vulnerabilities an individual possesses. Early physical maturation can be viewed as a diathesis because it has been shown to increase girls’ risk for problem behaviors and emotions. Stress involves precipitating factors, such as adverse circumstances and stressful life experiences, which operate to exacerbate the harmful impact of the diathesis. According to this model, liability carried by a diathesis reaches its threshold potential when it is coupled with psychosocial stressors. In this instance, problem behaviors and emotional difficulties are triggered or activated when early maturation is combined with certain harmful contextual features.

The contextual amplification hypothesis also incorporates theories of social support: Early-maturing girls may not necessarily suffer from negative consequence in supportive environments. In this sense, this formulation incorporates the well-documented buffering model whereby beneficial effects of a supportive and resourceful environment provided by friends, family, and/or significant others are expected to reduce or neutralize the negative impact of maturing earlier than peers (Cohen and Wills, 1985). Protective circumstances, we believe, should serve to compensate the detrimental effect of a diathesis. For example, early-maturing girls in the Dunedin study did not manifest problem behaviors when they were in girls-only schools, as opposed to mixed-sex schools (Caspi et al., 1993). Incorporating the ameliorating function of protective environmental context, therefore, makes it easier for the model to explain why in some studies early maturation does not always lead to adverse outcomes.

Research has begun to document the evidence for a crucial role of psychosocial contexts in moderating the effects of early pubertal maturation on adolescent developmental outcomes (e.g., Brooks-Gunn and Warren, 1989; Caspi et al., 1993; Ge et al., 1996; Ge et al., 2002; Obeidallah et al., 2004). Recent studies have documented interactions of girls’ pubertal timing with various psychosocial contexts, including race and ethnicity (Cavanagh, 2004), stressful life events (Ge,Conger, and Elder, 2001a), peers (Ge, Conger, and Elder, 1996; Ge et al., 2002; Haynie, 2003; Nadeem and Graham, 2005; Compian, Gowen, and Hayward, 2004; Conley and Rudolph, 2009), family (Dick et al., 2001; Ge et al., 2002; Haynie, 2003), school structures and school sex composition (Blyth, Simmons, and Zakin, 1985; Caspi et al., 1993), and neighborhood (Dick et al., 2000; Ge et al., 2002; Obeidallah et al., 2004). In the sections that follow, we will provide a brief overview of each salient context.

Family matters The evidence for an interaction between pubertal timing and familial contexts largely came from the studies conducted in our lab. One of our earlier studies (Ge et al., 1995) found that the negative influence of fathers’ psychological distress was significantly more pronounced among daughters who had experienced pubertal transition. A further investigation revealed that adverse effects of fathers’ hostile feelings on girls’ psychological distress are more pronounced for early-maturing girls than their on-time and later-maturing peers (Ge, Conger, and Elder, 1996). Extending this finding to African American families, Ge et al. (2002) discovered that, indeed, pubertal transition varied in its behavioral impact depending on the family context where a growing girl lived. African American children who were early maturers showed more problem behaviors when living with parents who were more irritable, harsher, and hostile in their disciplinary practices. It appears that early maturation may increase children’s vulnerability to even normally occurring variations in parents’ moods and behaviors, although why this should be the case remains still under-explored.

School matters Three studies are prominent in documenting the moderating influence of school contexts in the link between puberty and behaviors. As early as two decades ago, Simmons and Blyth (1987) showed the dampening effects of overlapping school and pubertal transitions on girls’ emotional well-being. At about the same time, Brooks-Gunn and colleagues (Gargiulo et al., 1987) reported a puberty–school interaction effect on female adolescents’ behaviors. These authors found that physical maturation was related to girls’ dating behavior and body image only in a ballet school context. No such effect was observed in non-ballet schools. Search for a puberty X school context interaction has burgeoned since then. An early effort to test sex composition in school context as a moderator of the puberty-behavior link came from Caspi et al. (1993). Based on the Dunedin sample, these authors reported that early-maturing girls in mixed-sex schools were more likely to engage in problem behaviors than were their peers. In contrast, earlier-maturing girls in single-sex schools did not manifest such problems. Despite the fact that Simmons and Blyth focused on multiple transitions, that Brooks-Gunn and colleagues emphasized the nature of the school (ballet or non-ballet schools), and that Caspi and colleagues placed their reasoning on the different behavioral norms in the same-sex and mixed-sex school settings, the interaction effects demonstrated by these studies had important theoretical implications for how to look at biological changes in school contexts.

Why does school context matter? It matters because school has become an increasingly important social arena where children find themselves upon entering into adolescence. Coinciding with the time of pubertal timing, behavioral norms at school become particularly influential in middle school and youths find themselves feeling pressure to “fit in” to the norm. For instance, heightened desires for a pre-puberty physique among girls attending ballet school was an explanation why females in a ballet school were particularly affected by earlier maturation (Gargiulo et al., 1987). School matters also because the transition to middle school is stressful, which adds an extra load of stressors to early-maturing youths who are undergoing stressful physical maturation at the same time (Simmons and Blyth, 1987).

Place matters It seems that place of residence does matter when examining the pubertal timing effect. In an innovative study based on a sample of Finnish twins, R. J. Rose et al. (2001) reported that the effect of pubertal timing on drinking behaviors among girls was contingent upon whether the girls lived in a rural or an urban setting. Following this line of reasoning, Ge et al. (2002) showed that disadvantaged neighborhoods operated to exacerbate the adverse impact of pubertal timing on a sample of African American children’s behaviors. This same effect was further demonstrated by Obeidallah et al. (2004) in the Chicago neighborhood project: early-maturing girls residing in highly disadvantaged neighborhoods were more likely to engage in violent behaviors.

These findings make a great deal of theoretical sense when we consider two potential explanatory factors: availability and life experiences. It is well known that deviant activities and antisocial peers are disproportionately distributed across places or neighborhoods. For instance, drinking friends or peers would be more readily available in urban rather than rural settings (R. J. Rose et al., 2001), and deviant peers are readily accessible in disadvantaged neighborhoods. Residents living in disadvantaged neighborhoods tend to have limited access to social and economic resources (Leventhal and Brooks-Gunn, 2000), experience declining collective efficacy and eroding informal social ties (Sampson, Raudenbush, and Earls, 1997). Furthermore, their life experiences tend to be more stressful and disruptive. Adaptation may be particularly difficult for girls who negotiate an early pubertal transition in such a high-stress environment because new challenges at the entry to puberty and a widening array of social stressors may overtax their relatively undeveloped coping resources. In fact, evidence shows that early maturation interacted with greater exposure to life stressors to increase girls’ depressive symptoms (Ge, Conger, and Elder, 2001a). It is important to note, however, that neighborhoods are intimately related to school and family socioeconomic background, at least in the United States. Separating the neighborhood effect from that of other contextual factors remains to be a methodological challenge as these are intricately confounded.

Peers matter Early-maturing girls appear to be sensitive to peer influence, particularly from older ones and boys (Stattin and Magnusson, 1990; Caspi et al., 1993; Ge, Conger, and Elder, 1996; Conley and Rudolph, 2009). Stattin and Magnusson’s (1990) influential book was among the first to direct our attention to the importance of peers and age of peers. Speculation about the importance of sex of peers is also acknowledged by Simmons and colleagues (1987) who showed the sexual pressure by older, male peers dampened early-maturing girls’ self perception. Caspi et al. (1993) further reasoned that earlier-maturing girls’ conformation to the behavior norms of older peers could automatically put them into deviant categories. Building upon these findings, Ge, Conger, and Elder (1996) demonstrated that early-maturing girls with mixed-sex friends manifested higher levels of psychological distress.

The heightened importance of peer relationships in adolescence provides theoretical meanings to a prediction of puberty X peer context interaction. Upon entering adolescence, children are faced with an increasingly complex and expanding social network of friends. At the same time, the widening peer networks often are accompanied by increased disturbances, tensions, turmoil, and strains in peer domains (Brown, 1990). Coupled with their stronger interpersonal orientations and greater emphasis on success in relational arena, girls are more likely than boys to be affected by what happened in interpersonal domains (A. J. Rose and Rudolph, 2006).

An interesting pattern that we see in the literature is that the presence of males in the peer circle brings a new meaning to pubertal maturation for girls, particularly if girls are maturing early. As we have seen previously, early-maturing girls tend to exhibit heightened levels of emotional and behavioral problems when their social network includes boys (Caspi et al., 1993; Ge, Conger, and Elder, 1996). More detailed investigation is needed to examine what it is about the affiliation with boys that accentuates the adverse effect of girls’ early maturation. Perhaps, close contact with boys may magnify the puberty-related risk factors such as sexual pressure (Simmons and Blyth, 1987) and post-puberty body image that are perceived to be different from the ideal for successful romantic relationships (Paxton et al., 1999). In general, it seems that the presence of boys in girls’ peer circles exposes them to behavioral norms that are different from those in girl-only contexts.

In sum, the series of studies reviewed here speaks for the importance of studying puberty in its context. Although puberty itself is a biological event that occurs within each person, its effect on developmental outcomes is better understood if it is examined in context.

RESEARCH FROM OUR LABORATORY: TESTING THE CONTEXTUAL AMPLIFICATION HYPOTHESIS

During the past decade, our research program has accumulated some important knowledge on the effects of pubertal timing in context. The following section summarizes a series of empirical studies from our laboratory that have contributed to the evolution of our conceptualization about the roles of puberty and psychosocial context in adolescent development. In these studies, we have found that early pubertal timing has negative effects both across gender and ethnicity, on different developmental outcomes (internalizing and externalizing problems, depression, and alcohol and substance use) at both the symptom and diagnostic levels, and that these effects often have long-term consequences that go beyond the pubescent years. Most importantly, we have learned that biological maturation occurs within psychosocial contexts both of which contribute, independently and jointly, to adolescents’ emotional and behavioral problems.

Evidence for the Contextual Amplification Hypothesis

This intellectual venture started with a study on trajectories of depressive symptoms in adolescence (Ge et al., 1994). The study revealed that the emergence of gender differences occurred around the age of 13: Girls became significantly more depressed than boys at this age and the gender differences persisted into adulthood. This finding naturally led to the next question: what is happening around age 13?

As one of the most salient factors around this age, puberty became a subject of interest. Motivated to explore the effects of the pubertal transition, we conducted a subsequent study on pubertal timing and girls’ psychological distress (Ge, Conger, and Elder, 1996). In this study, we observed a significant main effect of pubertal timing: Starting from eighth grade, girls who matured earlier were significantly more distressed than their on-time and later-maturing counterparts. The significant effect of early maturation persisted into 10th grade. What is interesting and relevant to the contextual amplification hypothesis is that the impact of familial and peer factors were significantly larger among earlier-maturing girls than on-time and later-maturing girls. Specifically, compared with both on-time and later-maturing girls, earlier-maturing girls experienced higher levels of psychological distress over time, particularly when they associated with mixed-sex peer groups. They were also more vulnerable to psychological problems, deviant peer pressure, and father’s hostile feelings. These findings were our first evidence for the contextual amplification hypothesis: pubertal timing interacts with familial and peer contexts to impinge on girls’ emotional health.

Two key findings are particularly noteworthy from these afore-mentioned studies. First, pubertal timing appears to play an important role in girls’ troubled emotions and behaviors. Second, gender differences in psychological distress and internalizing problems emerge around the time of pubertal transition. Putting these pieces of information together, we raised this question: does pubertal timing indeed explain the emerging gender differences in psychological distress? We suspected that it might be the depression levels of early-maturing girls that drove the emergence of the observed female preponderance for depression. In order to test this hypothesis, we divided girls into three groups (i.e., early, on-time, and late-maturing) in a subsequent study (Ge,Conger, and Elder, 2001a). As expected, the early-maturing girls manifested disproportionately high rates of depressive symptoms. Interestingly, once the early-maturing group was removed from the analysis, depressive symptoms of the on-time and later-maturing girls were no longer significantly different from those of boys, suggesting that pubertal timing explained, at least in part, the observed emergence of gender differences in depressive symptoms. More relevant to the contextual amplification hypothesis, this study showed that stressful life events not only had a main effect on depressive symptoms, but also interacted with pubertal timing to further increase girls’ risk for depressive symptoms.

Early adolescence is the time for drastic changes in various aspects of youths’ lives, and all dimensions of changes are intertwined with each other. One area of change, of course, is the biological transformation from child-like physique in childhood to sexually mature body in adolescence. Another, with developing autonomy and physical mobility in adolescence, is an increasing exposure to a widening range of social environments. We suspected that the meaning and value attached to puberty, and psychosocial resources needed to negotiate a smooth pubertal transition would vary depending on the family and social environments adolescents are exposed to. For instance, menarche may be particularly stressful and confusing for a maturing girl if an adult has not discussed and prepared her for the onset of menarche. Menarche can be shocking for maturing girls who live in places where the information is difficult to ask for or acquire. However, if her mother provides her guidance and resources to handle the first period, menarche could be less unexpected and stressful for her. Similarly, in neighborhoods where information about menarche is available and individuals are more open to discussing this information, it may provide a context to make this transition less abrupt and confusing.

Given the importance of family and neighborhood environments in adolescents’ lives, we tested whether early pubertal timing differentially affected adolescents who lived in different neighborhoods and familial contexts (Ge et al., 2002). Results indicated that early-maturing children residing in more disadvantaged neighborhoods were more likely to affiliate with deviant peers, and early-maturing children with harsh and inconsistent parents were more likely to show problem behaviors. These interaction effects were not specific to girls. This study is important in the formulation of the contextual amplification hypothesis because it directly demonstrates that the pubertal timing effect may vary by contextual factors on both family and neighborhood levels.

Our previous studies had mainly tested the contextual amplification hypothesis using two child outcomes: depression and delinquency. However, the hypothesis seemed to be applicable to a wide range of child outcomes, including substance use. Indeed, the results of a study based on African American adolescents (Ge et al., 2006b) indicated that the effects of pubertal timing differed by peer context in predicting adolescent substance use. First, we found that there was a substantial increase in the risks for substance use from fifth to seventh grades: in seventh grade, adolescents were more willing and intended to use substances if available, and girls, in particular, were more likely to hold favorable impressions toward peers who used substances. More importantly, pubertal timing interacted with peer substance use such that early-maturing adolescents whose friends were substance users were more likely to develop favorable perceptions about substance use and to be at risk for substance use problems.

Altogether, the evidence has converged to suggest that biological changes and social challenges in adolescence operate jointly to affect various adolescent developmental outcomes, including depression, delinquency, deviant-peer associations, and substance use. Generally, the results from these studies appear to purport the following implications in our current thinking of puberty research: (a) pubertal maturation is directly and indirectly related to adolescents’ emotional and behavioral problems, particularly for girls, and (b) the adverse effect of early maturation is exacerbated in challenging psychosocial contexts.

Replication across Racial/Ethnic Groups

Although the effects of pubertal timing in European American teenagers had been well documented, little attention was paid to extend the research to non-Caucasian samples before 2000. Given the fact that timing of pubertal maturation differs across ethnicity (Herman-Giddens et al., 1997), it was important to test whether pubertal timing differed in explaining adolescents’ emotional and behavioral problems across racial/ethnic groups. One of our earlier studies was designed to accomplish this task by examining the link between early physical maturation and the development of self-esteem and body image across gender and ethnic groups (Ge et al.