Puberty in Crisis
The Sociology of Early Sexual Development

Puberty has long been recognised as a difficult and upsetting process for individuals and families, but it is now also being widely described as in crisis. Reportedly occurring earlier and earlier as each decade of the twenty-first century passes, sexual development now heralds new forms of temporal trouble in which sexuality, sex/gender and reproduction are all at stake. Many believe that children are growing up too fast and becoming sexual too early. Clinicians, parents and teachers all demand something must be done. Does this out-of-time development indicate that children's futures are at risk or that we are entering a new era of environmental and social perturbation? Engaging with a diverse range of contemporary feminist and social theories on the body, biology and sex, Celia Roberts urges us to refuse a discourse of crisis and to rethink puberty as a combination of biological, psychological and social forces.

Reviews & endorsements

'With characteristic, clear-eyed style, Celia Roberts negotiates the shoals of biological and social reductionism to give us a rigorous, richly entangled account of contemporary puberty. She clarifies the anxieties around the 'precocious girl' and identifies the many tributaries that feed the moral panic around feminine sexual development. This book should be read by anybody interested in a critical account of girlhood, the life course, sexuality, and the ways the biological and the social collaborate in the history of the body.' Catherine Waldby, Professorial Future Fellow, University of Sydney

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Product details

• Date Published: August 2015
• format: Hardback
• isbn: 9781107104723
• length: 300 pages

• dimensions: 237 x 160 x 24 mm
• weight: 0.6kg
• contains: 11 b/w illus.
• availability: Available