The World of the Keenies
Between Childhood and Youth
When the bodies of young girls and boys undergo rapid, hormonally conditioned transformation, their erotic interest in the opposite sex grows as well. A century ago, this threshold was still reached between the ages of 13 and 16. With increas-ing frequency today, even 11-year-old girls begin to grow breasts, to have rounded hips. Such girls look as though they were 13 or 14, and they see them-selves as mature adolescents. Before long, they begin wearing makeup and seduc-tive clothing, and people around them respond accordingly. Earlier, there were distinct phases of development: childhood lasted until age 12, and adolescence began at age 13. But today, psychologists are talking about so-called “keenies†: no longer children, but not yet teenagers, there is little doubt about it: they are ex-periencing puberty ahead of schedule.
For parents, it is not easy to come to terms with a child's early development. It can mean losing control of their offspring, accepting the fact that a child of 11 no longer wants to talk everything over with his or her parents. What is it like for par-ents and when a daughter who accepted their authority at age 10 brings her first boyfriend home when she is just 12 – and moreover a boy who may be as old as 16? Should her mother take her to the pediatrician to get a prescription for birth control pills? Can children who experience such precocious maturity appreciate the implications of their situation? When children become mature sooner than ex-pected, parents torment themselves more than usual concerning their education and upbringing – which is only natural, for their charges are experiencing prob-lems more acutely than those of other pubescent children. When is my child really mature? How long must he or she be protected? Can a parent continue to act as a confidant? How to give a child the necessary self-confidence? We accompany two “keenies† and their parents on the path leading from childhood to adolescence.
