Girls going up too quickly

[Happysprinkles]

I just would like some opinions on this. Do you think girls are being pushed to grow up too fast now? With the makeup and the Instagram pictures and the pressure of getting all the "likes" it's really as if they don't have much time to be children anymore. AIBU?

Gosh this hasn't been raised on Mumsnet before

I think there has always been pressure on young girls to appear more grown up ( certainly was in the 70s when I was a young teen). I also think there are many girls who reject this and get on with their teenage lives without conforming so much to superficial nonsense.

Exactly what @Finfintytint said.

There's always been pressure and there's always been an emphasis on looks, but yes I think that's increasing at the moment and yes I think social media pushes it on to kids more than ever before. That's two issues.
It is hard for individuals to make a stand against social media as well as the constant, excessive and invasive expectations of its use means that one can be pushed right out of the loop without it and be disconnected from society in the UK. For kids with their constant (again entirely normal) peer pressures that's even worse.

Yabu, hasn't it always been like this? My Dm generation were married by the time they were 20 (my folks married at 18). At least 5 girls pregnant by the time they were 16 in my school year back in the early 90s. I don't think it's any different today

Same old same old.

Yes and then you're told you are old at 30

Of my mother's generation ( born in 1930) you were odd if you were not married and had a first child at 20.
I don't think girls are growing up too quickly - no.

What do you think OP?
Why are you interested, do you have girls, do you think they are growing up to fast/slow? What age are they?

Yeah, don't look back to a sort of misty, 1950s ideal of childhood - where kids were basically the famous five until the age of eighteen.

My grandmother left school at 14 and started working - this was no way unusual at the time. Wasnt that "growing up too fast"?

When I was growing up we felt pressured to look like heroin chic supermodels.

Girls these days feel pressured to look like a Kardashian.

The next generation will feel pressured to look like something equally as ridiculous.

Yes I think so. I know of loads of 12-13 year olds who have the latest tech (iPhones, Apple watches / fitbits), pop to Costa regularly after school, visit the salon for gel nails / highlights in the school holidays, buy ALL their underwear in Boux Avenue etc., will ONLY wear urban decay makeup etc. These are all the kinds of activities that I would not have done until late teens (when I had an income!). I'm late 30s. These families aren't affluent either. It's just normal behaviour for teens to have the spending habits of an adult.

No different than any other time tbh. We didn't have insta, but we did have just 17.

@kenandbarbie I vividly remember a snogging guide in Just 17. I couldn't have been older than 11 when I read it.

This is super interesting... My first thought was to say yes to the OP's question but I hadn't really thought about how our mothers and grandmothers were expected to marry and have kids at 20. But I do think there's more pressure on girls these days. I suppose then, it's that they need to be more sexualised rather than just mature. I'm made the mistake of temporarily following an Instagram account (mum with cute son dressing in matching outfits) but the algorithm now keeps showing me pictures of toddlers dressed, I guess you'd call it, "sassily" complete with filters.

Well at least they’re not being married off at 14. Just saying.

I think maybe we're confusing "growing up" with "being pressured to consume more".

Are children and young people targeted to become consumers and identify with brands younger and younger? Yes.

concernedforthefuture

But is all that a measure of "growing up too quickly?

How do you actually measure that?

Clothes? Make up? First sexual encounters? Age of marriage/moving in together? Age when first baby is born?

I feel a lot of the instagram.make up stuff is a red herring. UI was a teenager in eth 1970s, girls were just as obsessed by make up/ first kiss/sex as they are now. Except they didn't have soial media to share it.
I think girls are more empowered now, in the 1970s girls were on the back foot ( think jimmy saville/rolf harris) , young women and more in control of their sexuality and relationships.

The average age of a woman having her first baby was 21 in 1970.
The average age of a woman having her first baby was 30 in 2018.

I think girls are growing up more slowly than decades ago.

Yeah I think there’s more pressure to consume as though they have disposable income for young teenagers. It just so happens that means looking like a Kardashian for this generation as opposed to looking like Kate Moss when I was a teen.

I'm interested as I have a three year old girl. I've just started noticing how much girls put themselves out there with their clothing at what? Thirteen? It's sad that they feel they have to wear this makeup. But maybe they just enjoy the creativity of makeup.

I think it's actually always been the case. I don't think Instagram is to blame. My friends and I were all reading about boys and snogging and sex and makeup tips in Just 17 when we were about 11 or 12 in the 80s - we used to buy it, pass it round and hide it from our mums.

If I look at photos of my mum and her friends when they were young teens in the 1950s, they're all in heels and pointy bras and grown-up hair dos and lipstick. They had full-time jobs at 15 and were treated as adults (which included going to the pub with colleagues and being asked out on dates by men in their 20s). She was engaged at 18 and married my dad when she was barely 20. And they weren't the first in their friendship groups to get married, either.

I don’t think so. Children have always wanted to grow up faster. My nearly 15 old has spent the last few nights making loom bands. She and her friends have no interest in make up, they like to eat McDonald’s and chocolate and play minecraft. She likes branded clothes such as adidas trainers and Pink knickers in the same way I coveted Naf naf, Levi and converse.

@concernedforthefuture - that is only one group of girls though. There have always been different "tribes" in schools (well, not 'always' but for decades).
I've managed to get 3 dc to adulthood without any of them doing those things. Same, of course, for all the people they mix with.