When I was a “pre-teen,” I was informed multiple times by adults in my vicinity that girls matured faster than boys (now “pre-teens” don’t even exist any more, having been replaced by “tweens”). Some evidence around me seemed to support this contention. By all accounts, the girls around me matured physically a year or two years before the boys – and I was a late bloomer. And by some accounts their emotional maturation was faster: while I and my friends were still in our “hate girls” phase, I remember that the girls were already starting to develop crushes (on older boys, naturally).
I never questioned the received wisdom of girls-maturing-faster until recently. The other day I read Emily Bazelon’s detailed explication in Slate of Phoebe Prince’s own bullying behavior. As I made my way through it, I was struck by how girly all of her immature actions were.
It’s a truism that girls stab each other in the back and tear each other down when they have a conflict; boys throw some punches and then shake hands and put it behind them. Can anyone seriously read about Phoebe Prince and not come out thinking that she and the girls around here were shockingly immature? Perhaps we should rethink whether boys or girls are more mature at that pivotal age.
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“Maturity” = a lot of Being Very Serious plus a pinch of passive aggression.
It’s funny when “act your age” means “act different than most people your age”.
I consider that doctrine (not as regards physicality, which varies from one person to another, but regarding emotions and social aspects) to be leftover Victorian chivalrous pedestalization bullshit. One needs only consider the Twilight Moms, or the Sex and the City and Eat, Pray, Love fans; ’nuff said. All them damned mothers trying to be just like and best friends with their daughters, put the lie to that propaganda.
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