I thought of writing this post a few weeks ago, when we had an all-too brief burst of sunny weather. But it all seemed so tenuous … I left it.
A boy of about 8 was playing in the fountains. Not at all plump – certainly not obese – just a skinny boy, healthy & lively enough, if anything a tad undernourished, definitely not steak & vegetables & Afternoon Games.
But he definitely had shadowy breast buds, such as you might see in a girl that age, on the verge of development.
Then, last week, with another brief burst of sun, I saw two more boys like this.
One thing that strikes me is that, unless you go to the swimming pool when children are there, or holiday on the kind of beach where lots of families go, you virtually never see small boys dressed only in shorts these days. In hot weather you may see grown men shirtless in town or the supermarket, but not their young sons.
Perhaps it is just the fad for football shirts.
Perhaps the warnings about skin cancer have been heeded.
Or about paedophiles.
Perhaps it is just faulty memory which tells me that boys used to have nipples which were next to invisible.
Then last week Womans Hour carried an item about a Danish study which found that the age of breast development in girls had been declining. The rate was not matched by the decline in the age at menarche, nor did it seem to be related to obesity, as measured by BMI. It is suspected that some environmental agent is at work.
The studies report results only for girls. They should look at boys too.
And is anyone looking closely at the (very low) rate of breast cancer in adult males?
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