Early female maturing from Robin Fox’s blog:
The redoubtable Robin Fox has placed two articles on his web site http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/bloggers/robin-fox
since I last mentioned him. The most recent is about patriarchy and incest and is only indirectly related to our main interest here.
However the previous one may in fact have been right down our alley. What he did there
Girls are hitting menarche earlier each decade: why?
was to point out that menarche is coming earlier. I think it is significant that the change he describes in some detail seems closely to parallel the fall in fertility, which is most conspicuous in developed societies. If the pattern is the same, one must question whether the cause is the same.
I have presented copious data that indicate that the fall in fertility societies are experiencing is due to the fall in the number of consanguineous couples. So maybe the early menarche is simply a manifestation of the infertility; in other words I would expect that adolescents with early menarche have early menopause or at least have fewer offspring than their later maturing agemates.
It’s just an idea, but it seemed timely.
Most of the other explanations one hears are expertly dismissed by Professor Fox. He makes no direct mention of estrogens in milk, but does mention other dairy products and I suppose milk is no different.
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