HDFS201 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Infant Mortality, Birth Weight, Menarche

• School: University of Delaware
• Department: Human Development and Family Studies
• Course: HDFS201
• Professor: Palkovitz Rob

Document Summary

Secular trend: a trend in industrialized society toward earlier maturation and greater body size, secular trends in growth, height. Females are having their first menstrual cycle earlier than in years past: reasons for secular trends: Improvements in healthcare: nutrition, growth hormones in food supply, reduced family size, genes for height dominant (more dominant than not, but not completely dominant, offspring tend to be taller than the average of the parents. In 1840, average age of menarche was sixteen-seventeen years of age. General body development: average infant weighs about seven and a half pounds at birth. Prepubescent growth spurt: right before puberty, increase to about twenty percent per year, corresponds to height spurt. Its signs usually include: decrease in functional capacities, decreased ability to sense and respond to stimuli, decreased mobility, reproductive changes. These things interact, one specific one cannot be identified: phycological again is the professor"s opinion on which is the most important.