Tuesday 1 November 2016

What is Puberty

Puberty In Girls
Puberty In Girl Child
Puberty is a key process, when it comes to human development into adulthood, and this usually involve the most rapid physical growth the human undergoes except for pre-natal and neonatal growth. (Brooks, 1988).
The force behind puberty is hormonal changes and this is responsible for girls’ first menstrual experience (menarche), and boy’s first ejaculation (semenarche) (Brooks, 1988).
The changes that occur during physical growth are usually accompanied by new and complex emotions, including sexual desire and gender identity. The differences that exist between boys and girls become pronounced (WHO and BzgA, 2010).
Young adolescent are able to integrate bodily changes into their self-identity, and to incorporate other responses to these changes into that self-identity. Peers become important at the onset of puberty as someone to talk to, and also, bonding between peers increases, reducing the relationship and closeness of the young with parents (Brooks, 1988). Puberty is also the time when adolescent increases their intellectual capacities and experience, moral development (WHO and BzgA, 2010).
Puberty means the onset of menstruation for considered a private issue, making it difficult to speak about it in public, for instance in classroom, many girls are not properly prepared.Studies show that a very high number of girls start menstruating without having any idea what is happening to them or why it is happening to them (Neginhal, 2010; Jothy and kalaiselve, 2012). Since it has become difficult for parents to speak of sensitive and sexual issues with their children, even while admitting it is also their responsibility , (Risi, 2000; Goldman, 2008). School usually have special role in puberty education. This role involves more than just educating girls, but also boys.

THE ROLE OF EDUCATION

The proper understanding of education equips one with the knowledge of the importance of puberty education. Adolescent should understand the profound change they are experiencing and be equipped with the skills to cope with it. Therefore, education enhances one’s life and makes sense of day-to-day realities in works by authors, researchers and practitioners all over the globe. It is from this tradition that we draw the mandate for the education sector to teach about puberty (Mérieu, 2002).
The important of education gives us the basic importance of puberty education. Adolescents need to experience and be equipped with the skills to cope with it. Thus, education should develop the knowledge, attitudes, values and skill needed to live a healthy life (Mérieu, 2002). Those skills are usually focused at raising self-esteem and self-confidence, (Elliot, 1996), therefore helping young individual to resist peer pressure and increase their health-seeking behaviors. Teaching puberty in schools can help educate young adolescents in better understanding of themselves and deal with the changes they are experiencing, and this helps them to gain the self-esteem to overcome their every day challenges which they may be facing with teachers and peers in school.
Adolescent also become one more conscious of socially- constructed myths and taboos that surrounds puberty, such as negative perception of menstruation or dismissal of emotion as un-masculine (Elliot, 1966). Without the right information, adolescents are at risk of contracting sexually transmitted infections (STI’S), unwanted pregnancies and abuse. Puberty education should also offer learners useful information on relationships, feelings, contraception and STD’s including HIV (Otieno, 2006).
Menstruation is a vital sign of reproductive health, yet the main massage is often that it is a problem that must be managed privately, with an implicit suggestion that it is unpleasant and shameful, and should be hidden. This portrayal of female puberty reinforces negative psychology repercussions on girls. At the same time, the lack of legitimating of female sexuality can implicitly suggest that girls who naturally experience awareness of their awakening sexuality do not have proper control of their bodies; this can lead to anxiety or self-doubt. Furthermore, it confines girls and women to traditional gender roles as future mothers (Otieno, 2006).
Adding the ‘pleasure’ dimension to girls’ puberty education brings balance and normalizes the issue. It can help girls to feel, and be perceived as, equal to men and to be more conscious of their sexuality and its implications in their life, beyond reproduction (Johnston-Robledo, 2013).
Male puberty, in contrast, is often exemplified as the onset of sexual desire and power that boys can enjoy (Wood, 1998). Erection and wet dreams, while also potentially embarrassing occurrences are not usually embedded in the same narrative of shame that girl’s experience.

Overall, the studies of pubertal experience and menstrual knowledge of adolescents are very important. This work is therefore going to examine the different attitudinal reaction of adolescent secondary school girls in Abakaliki Ebonyi State, Nigeria.

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