The effects of delayed menarche in different contexts: Dance and nondance students

The premise that effects of maturational timing are mediated by social context is explored by comparing adolescent girls in dance and nondance schools. Because the dance student must maintain a relatively low body weight, being a late maturer (who is often leaner than an on-time maturer) is expected to be more advantageous to the dancer than to the student not required to meet a weight standard. Girls aged 14 to 18 were seen; 276 attended private schools and 69 attended national ballet company schools. AllSs were weighed and measured and asked questions about their secondary sexual development, weight-related concerns, eating concerns, adult sex-role expectancies, body image, emotional functioning, and family relationships. Menarcheal age was used to classify girls as early (before 11.5 years of age), on time (between 11.5 and 14 years), and late maturers (after 14 years). More dance than non-dance school students were late maturers (55% versus 29%). The dance students weighed less and were leaner, had higher eating scores, and had lower family relationship and impulse control scores than the comparison sample. Across groups, late maturing students weighed less, were leaner, and had lower diet and higher oral control scores than on-time maturers, with the differences more pronounced in the dance than nondance students. In addition, the on-time dancers had higher psychopathology, perfection, and bulimia scores and lower body image scores than the late maturing dancers. The findings are discussed in terms of a goodness of fit between the requirements of a social context and a person's physical and behavioral characteristics.This paper was prepared with the support of grants from the W. T. Grant Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. Research Interests: Girls' psychological adaptation to pubertal change, biosocial aspects of female reproductive events, development in at-risk children and adolescents.