Boarding Schools for Girls

A survey conducted by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) indicates that "problem parents" are to blame for increased rates of smoking, drinking, and drug use among U.S. teens.

According to an Aug. 14, 2008, release on the CASA website, the organization's 13th annual "National Survey of American Attitudes on Substance Abuse" reveals that parents who are lax in their supervisory responsibilities or who model inappropriate behaviors put their children at greater risk for engaging in unhealthy activities:

Problem parents - those who fail to monitor their children's school night activities, safeguard their prescription drugs, address the problem of drugs in their children's schools, and set good examples - increase the risk that their 12- to 17-year old children will smoke, drink, and use illegal and prescription drugs.

"This year's survey reveals that too many mothers and fathers are problem parents who fail to take essential steps to prevent their kids from smoking, drinking or using drugs. By their actions - and inactions - by failing to become part of the solution, these parents become part of the problem of teen alcohol and drug abuse," said Joseph A. Califano, Jr., CASA's chairman and president and former U.S. Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare.

"Indeed, these problem parents enable - some even encourage - their 12- to 17-year olds to use and abuse tobacco, alcohol, and illegal and prescription drugs."

The release included the following findings that CASA personnel said were indicative of poor parenting:

• Though 46 percent of 12- to 17-year-olds reported leaving the house on school nights to hang out with friends, only 14 percent of parents said their children did so.
• Thirty-four percent of teens with knowledge of prescription drug abuse said the abusers got the medication from home.
• Twenty-five percent of students who were surveyed said they know another teen whose parent smokes marijuana - and 10 percent said that the parent has smoked marijuana in the presence of teenagers.

"Every mother and father should look in the mirror and ask themselves if they are doing the parenting essential to help their child negotiate the difficult teen years free of tobacco, alcohol, and drugs," Elizabeth Planet, CASA's Director of Special Projects, said in the release.

Labels: alcohol, drug_use, parenting

The classic image of a school bully is a brutish boy who terrorizes other students for their lunch money, their homework, and whatever expressions of fear he can cause them to emit. And though faux-macho little monsters do exist - and continue to cause mayhem in hallways and schoolyards across the country - they're not the only bullies in town.

A 2005 report by the National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) examined a phenomenon of girl bullies who inflict pain not with their fists, but rather through a mean-spirited manipulation of scholastic social networks. In "Girls Bullying Girls," the NASP notes that this type of behavior is neither new nor benign:

The term "relational aggression" is used to describe a type of bullying primarily used by pre-adolescent and adolescent girls to victimize other girls - a covert use of relationships as weapons to inflict emotional pain.

Researchers have found that, contrary to popular belief, girls are not less aggressive than boys, they are just more subtle or covert in their use of aggression. ...

Acts of relational aggression are common among girls in American schools. These acts can include rumor spreading, secret-divulging, alliance-building, backstabbing, ignoring, excluding from social groups and activities, verbally insulting, and using hostile body language (i.e., eye-rolling and smirking).

Other behaviors include making fun of someone's clothes or appearance and bumping into someone on purpose. Many of these behaviors are quite common in girls' friendships, but when they occur repeatedly to one particular victim, they constitute bullying.

Whether conducted in person or via online attacks - using e-mails and popular social sites such as MySpace to spread malicious information and embarrassing (often digitally altered) photographs - relational aggression can inflict severe and lasting damage on the target of the abuse.

Parents who suspect that their daughter is being bullied - or is being a bully herself - are urged to contact school officials and arrange for their child to be evaluated by a mental health professional.

Labels: bullies, bullying, fighting

In the 30-plus years since Title IX opened up a world of opportunities for female athletes in the United States, girls have made significant strides in all fields of competition. But one area in which women are outpacing their male counterparts is nothing to celebrate: According to a CNN report, girls are up to eight times more likely than boys to suffer serious injuries to their anterior cruciate ligaments, or ACLs.

"I reconstructed ACLs for just four male high school soccer players [in 2006], compared to 25 girls," orthopedic surgeon John Xerogeanes told CNN reporter Judy Fortin for a March 27, 2007 article.

One of the knee's four major ligaments, the ACL helps stabilize the knee and minimize the amount of stress that is placed on the joint. Because of the strain that many sports place on the knee, ACL injuries are relatively common among athletes.

According to the Sports Injury Clinic website, the following symptoms may indicate that an athlete has torn her ACL:

• An audible pop or crack when the injury takes place


• Extreme pain, followed immediately by a feeling of instability in the knee


• Extensive swelling soon after the injury occurs


• Restricted ability to move the knee or straighten the leg


• Tenderness alongside the knee joint

Though specialists have documented the disproportionate risk faced by female athletes, they have not determined exactly why girls are more prone to ACL tears.

"We know that there is a huge increase in ACL injuries when you compare female athletes to male athletes," Xerogeanes said during the CNN interview. "We've looked at a million different things in terms of size of the pelvis, angulation of the knees, hormones and the way girls fire their muscles when they land. We're not exactly sure why this happens."

Labels: athletes, injuries

A research team at the University of Alabama has concluded that early puberty and poor parenting skills can result in increased levels of aggression among adolescent girls.

The UA study, which was published in the August issue of the journal Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, involved interviews with 330 fifth-grade girls and their parents.

About 80 of the girls who were surveyed were discovered to have matured early, which the researchers defined as beginning to menstruate one year earlier than the average age for their racial and ethnic group. These early maturers were more likely to engage in delinquent behaviors than were the other girls, but they were not more aggressive - unless they also had parents who showed little interest in them.
"Early maturation only predicted physical aggression when combined with low maternal nurturance," wrote the authors of the study, which was led by Dr. Sylvie Mrug.

According to a press release that accompanied the study's publication, the researchers theorize that reduced parental involvement may contribute to increased aggression by forcing the young girls to find other (often less-than-ideal) mentors outside the family.

Early-maturing girls may be at higher risk of aggression or delinquency because they are more likely to be accepted by and form relationships with older boys, who are more likely than younger children to engage in undesirable behaviors, the authors note.

"Parental nurturance may decrease girls' susceptibility to negative peer influence," they write. "Also, parental nurturance may help girls cope with challenges associated with early puberty. By listening to their daughters' difficulties and providing support and encouragement, nurturing parents can help them develop better coping skills and diffuse negative emotions that might otherwise manifest as aggression."

As a result of their findings, the researchers recommend that health care professionals who treat early-maturing girls help ensure that the patients' parents understand the importance of adequate levels of guidance and nurturing.

Labels: aggression, parenting, puberty

Losing weight is more important in preventing diabetes than eating a low-fat diet, according to a new study in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

Dr. Lesley Tinker studied 48,000 overweight women ages 50 to 79 and found no difference in the rates of Type 2 diabetes among those on low-fat diets and those who did not diet. However, women who lost weight reduced their risk for diabetes.

The critical issue, Dr. Tinker said, may be caloric intake.

Labels: diabetes, obesity, overweight

A study co-sponsored by the British version of the Girl Scouts and the United Kingdom's Mental Health Foundation has found that teenage girls are having a hard time resisting social pressures surrounding materialism and sexuality.

As described by Alexandra Topping in the July 14 edition of The Guardian newspaper, the report (titled A Generation Under Stress?) revealed the following facts about the emotional state of British teen girls:

• Forty percent of girls who were surveyed said they felt worse about themselves after looking at pictures of models, pop stars, and actresses in magazines.
• Some teens said they also felt pressure from such publications to be thin, take drugs, and even have plastic surgery.
• Many were self-conscious about their appearance and weight, and described being sexually pressured by boys at school or feeling obliged to wear clothes that made them look older.

The findings were based upon information provided by hundreds of teen girls who participated in online survey and eight focus groups.

Tracey Murray of Girlguiding UK told Topping that young girls believe that the pressures on them are increasing, as are the social penalties to be paid by those who refuse to conform. "Young girls today often feel there is a growing checklist of ideals they have to adhere to," Murray said. "If they don't they often feel singled out and vulnerable to bullying."

Noting the number of young girls who consider plastic surgery or see self-harming behaviors as "normal," the chief executive of the Mental Health Foundation told The Guardian that today's adults are responsible for alleviating the pressures that are weighing down modern adolescents.

"Girls and young women are being forced to grow up at an unnatural pace in the society that we, as adults, have created and it's damaging their emotional wellbeing," McCulloch said. "We have a responsibility to put this right - we must tackle head-on the difficulties that the younger generation are facing."

Labels: influences, peer_pressure, sex

About three percent of teenaged girls experience physical or sexual assault from boyfriends or on dates, according to a new study from the Medical University of South Carolina. The abuse rate is probably higher, experts believe, because the researchers did not look into verbal abuse and less serious assaults such as slapping and shoving.

Dr. Kate Wolitzky-Taylor and her colleagues interviewed a national sample of both boys and girls ages 12 to 17 years old, and found that 2.7 of girls and 0.6 of boys had been victims of dating violence, including being threatened with a weapon and physical or sexual assault. The victims had four times the risk of post-traumatic stress syndrome or depression.

Teens with histories of trauma - such as loss of a parent or witnessing violence at home - were at greater risk for being victims of dating violence. Older teen girls were more likely to experience dating violence than younger teens.

This study appeared in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

Labels: dating, rape, violence

Researchers with the University of Michigan have concluded that sexual activity among teen girls has no effect on the likelihood that they will contract the genital human papillomavirus (HPV) later in life.

Dr. Amanda Dempsey, the leader of the research team that conducted the study, told Michigan Messenger reporter Alexa Stanard that the study's results support the recommendation by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that all women ages 11 to 26 be vaccinated against HPV. Opponents of universal vaccination for HPV have argued that young girls who are not sexually active do not need to be vaccinated because they are not at risk for contracting the virus.

"We couldn't find any discernible adolescent behavior, including sexual activity, that was associated with an increased risk of HPV infection as a sexually active young adult," Dempsey told Stanard, who reported on the study in a July 11 article that was posted on the Messenger website. "HPV is so prevalent that everyone who becomes sexually active is at risk."

Stanard reported the following facts about HPV and the UM study:

• The researchers found no correlation between an adult woman's risk for HPV infection and her number of sexual partners, her history of having older male sexual partners or a new sex partner with the past year, her illegal drug use, her history of sex while alcohol-impaired, or her regular use of cigarettes or alcohol.


• HPV infection usually occurs shortly after a woman becomes sexually active. Most women never know they have HPV because the virus often causes no symptoms and vanishes on its own.


• The HPV vaccine advocated by the CDC guards against four types of HPV: two that cause 70 out of 100 cases of cervical cancer, and two that cause 90 out of 100 cases of genital warts.

The CDC's vaccination recommendation has not met with universal acceptance. In February 2007, Texas Gov. Rick Perry issued an executive order directing all sixth-grade girls to receive the series of three shots - but two months later the Texas legislature passed a bill to overturn Perry's decree. The American Cancer Society has echoed the CDC's recommendation of vaccinating young girls, but has called for further study into the necessity of providing the vaccine to women ages 19 to 26.

The only drug currently approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration as an HPV vaccine is Gardasil, which is manufactured by Merck & Co. According to information provided by the CDC, the three-shot regimen required for inoculation against HPV costs $125 per dose, or $375 for the entire vaccination series.

Labels: HPV, sex, studies