Menstruation

At internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/society/family/marriage.html#juliet it says
" One common belief about the Renaissance is that children, especially girls, married young. In some noble houses marriages were indeed contracted at a young age, for reasons of property and family alliance, but in fact the average age of marriage was quite old--in the middle twenties.

Marriage statistics indicate that the mean marriage age for the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras was higher than many people realize. Data taken from birthdates of women and marriage certificates reveals mean marriage ages to have been as follows:
1566-1619 27.0 years
1647-1719 29.6 years
1719-1779 26.8 years
1770-1837 25.1 years
The marriage age of men was probably the same or a bit older than that of women. (In 1619, it was about 23 for women, 26 for men.) The age of consent was 12 for a girl, 14 for a boy, but for most children puberty came two or three years later than it does today. "

Ayokunmil i don’t know. But she takes spare pants to school because she ‘feels wet’. Her mum is keeping an eye on things and has spoken to her about it but she is very much still a little girl.

Mean tells you nothing about range especially if it includes second marriages and widows re-married.

Its like when they say that the average life span was less than 30 in the middle ages, but they were including infant deaths in that amd people who made it to adulthood usually made it well beyond their 20s

I don't think it's that uncommon. I was 11,two months off being 12 when I started, my Dd was also 11,but 4 months off being 12. My DGD was 11,and 6 months off being 12. So it seems to get slightly earlier with each generation. My DGD was still at primary school when she started,and far from being the only one,she discovered that there was at least 6 other girls in her year that had started menstruating.

When I was in primary school in the 1950s one girl in our class was much bigger than the rest of us. We were in the playground one day and she was hanging upside down on the metal bars they used to have in school playgrounds. Her knickers were visible and covered with blood and I was horrified. When I went home I told my mother and she gently explained about periods. I would have been about 9 at the time so it was 1952 or 1953.

If it is happening, there is nothing we can do. It does seem very young, but it seems to me that children grow up quicker in so many ways. What a shame.

When my friends daughter started her periods just before she was 9 and before her two years older sister the doctor explained to my friend that mostly the onset of menstruation has to do with the weight of the girl more than age. She weighed more than her elder sister and was around 7st.
I was 11 when I started but one of my good friends was 16 but she was small and dainty compared to the rest of us. She was embarrassed because she hadn't started her periods but we all thought she was lucky.

Gosh! I was 16 and it ended at 50. No sweat(s)
I don't know when my GDs started but my daughters were between 14- 16.

Further to Daisyboots post, I was about 10st or just over, so no dainty doll.

Muffinthemoo

WHAAAAT ? ???
How awful for you.

And don't think you can change to bottled water...........

"According to Martin Wagner and Jörg Oehlmann the Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, plastic mineral water bottles contaminate drinking water with estrogenic chemicals. "

And that was 10 years ago. Is anybody doing anything?

Interesting topic - thanks for all your responses. Seems like it's not that rare then and in some cases has been going on for decades.

^According to Martin Wagner and Jörg Oehlmann the Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, plastic mineral water bottles contaminate drinking water with estrogenic chemicals. "

And that was 10 years ago. Is anybody doing anything?^

Plus estrogen from the urine of women who are on the Pill. There has been research on how that filters into our drinking water too.

We are all so different aren’t we , even in the same family. My grandmother ( b. 1885 ) was 17 I remember her telling me! Extremely late! My mother ( b.1915 ) was just 10! My sister (14) me(12). My daughter b.1977) was 15 , quite Latish for then. So I don’t see any pattern even in families. 9 is very young bless her and I wouldn’t wish it on any girl. But we all have to learn to cope and get on with it. I remember what I felt for my poor mum when she told me she was 10....

Some young girls are unable to attend school when they have their monthly period because their families cannot afford to buy or won’t buy sanitary products for them. Could I ask you to support The The Box Project by making a donation or buying a sanitary product and dropping it off at your local collection point. Thank you.

redboxproject.org/

Thank you ladies for your kind thoughts. Mother is a real job of work.

I always put some sanitary products in the food bank collections at the supermarkets too. Also if you are collecting for/donating to homeless charities/organisations, they are always desperately short of sanitary stuff.

It seems to affect more the overweight girl more than the slim ones, apparently fat makes more Oestrogen in the body and so girls tend to grow breasts etc at a much younger age.. I started mine in 1956 at age 10 but they weren't regular and I was very slim, my mother didn't explain to me why they had come only to not play with the boys...LOL

It is interesting to see how young many of you were when you started menstruating, so it is not that unusual. My friends mostly started between 11 and 13. (late 50s early 60s) Even if it was not discussed it was obvious when they were excused showers after PE.

My mother told me she started at 16 and thought she was dying so went to the doctor. She was orphaned and brought up by her sister who you think would have told her. Anyway to avoid history repeating itself she started telling me at about 8 years old. Imagine my distress when I didn't start till I was almost 18. I was convinced I was a boy especially when the next one didn't appear for 6 months!

I was undernourished and only about 6 stone but went on to be quite normal and had 3 easy pregnancies. I can't remember the menopause exactly but realised it had happened when I was around 50. As Saggi says we are all different.

Interesting about the connection with weight. As I said, I started in 1951 at 11 and three months. I was very, very slim (skinny) but quite tall for my age.

I had been well prepared by my mother, and took it pretty much in my stride.

Later I had a school friend who had been told absolutely nothing and like Grandma2213’s mother thought she was dying. How she had avoided playground gossip I cannot imagine. She was 13 years old, so not particularly young.

There have always been girls who mature earlier than their peers - there were one or two when I was at primary school in the mid-60s. I was a late starter like Chocolatenoodle8 and my mum was preparing to take me to the doctor to see why I hadn't started!

It is harder when they're still at primary school but I think things are much better than in our day and it's a subject that Mums talk to their daughters about more - it was whispered in our house!

I knew two girls at school who started periods at only eight and this was in 1950s. Both were very short when they stopped growing, less than 5’
I think girls who are going to be very tall start puberty late then go on growing for much longer, like big breeds of dogs do.

I was 10 , and a real skinny ma link , menapause ar 55 . Must have spent a fortune on STs , in spite of 6 babies

It was in the late 40s am 81 now

Yes you are correct about weight for girls starting their periods ,they have to be 7stone 3lb strangely enough. Same for anorexia, periods stop if weight falls below that.

There is a lot of info on this on the nhs website
www.nhs.uk/conditions/periods/starting-periods/
It’s perfectly normal for some girls to start showing signs of puberty at 8 and 9 though signs of pubic hair and breast buds growing are the first signs followed by periods 1-2 years later . There is also info on precocious puberty - search under this - on the same site which has good info on many conditions
. If you look at ‘view all health stories ‘ it also debunks the latest health stories in the press by giving you the science and research behind the headlines and tells you how accurate the study was and what the general conclusions are.
Apologies for the soap box but we all need accurate information on our health !
My DIL asked me the same question as the poster about a month ago ! Hope this helps .