Timing of menarche and initial menstrual experience

This study sought to compare the relative importance of subjective and objective timing of menarche for initial menstrual experience. Objective timing is defined as when an event occurs relative to a person's actual chronological age. Subjective timing is when a life event occurs relative to social norms for the timing of its occurrence, and has been cited as being of importance in determining the events' psychological significance. In this study, college women completed a survey in which they recorded their age at menarche, an estimate of the number of their peers reaching menarche before them, and their memory of their initial experience of menstruation, on a 7-point scale ranging from 1 (completely positive) to 7 (completely negative). The assumption was that girls who reported early menarche in relation to peers subjectively experienced themselves as early maturers, the converse being true for girls reporting late menarche. Since a curvilnear relationship between subjective timing and objective timing has been reported for girls by other studies, linear relationships were not considered; instead, a chisquare analysis and a measure of the relative strength of each relationship were performed on the date, the results indicating that subjective timing was significantly related to menarcheal experience, but objective timing was not, with girls who experienced themselves as early remembering a more negative menarche than girls who experienced themselves as "on time" or late. The results validate the importance of the concept of "social clocks" in adolescent development and suggest that future studies of the importance of pubertal timing should include measures of subjective as well as objective timing.