Young Schoolgirls Research Articles

Maternal consumption: A view from the past

Children’s clothes are an appropriate topic for examining maternal consumption, as they are among the first items provided for infants and must be frequently replaced to accommodate growth, requiring repeated consumption decisions. For contemporary mothers, decisions about clothing may act as a way of defining their parenting practice both to their children and to adult peers, and anxieties about this role may be heightened by the characterization of commercial interests as corrupters of childhood innocence. As Dan Cook has noted, the disjuncture between theories of consumption and the historiography of childhood is a major problem, with the origins of contemporary practices largely unexamined. Thus there is scope for examining maternal consumption in the past in order to illuminate parallels and disjunctures with contemporary practices and issues around maternal consumption. This article examines the role of mothers in providing children’s clothing in Britain from 1890–1914, in a society that was both fixated on consumption as a sign of social status and increasingly concerned about correct methods of mothering. It is framed by a review of some of the main themes and anxieties raised by contemporary studies of maternal consumption. It then examines 19th-century texts addressed to mothers to establish how maternal provision of clothing was conceptualized. These reveal a divergence between the promotion of the pleasures of consumption in dressmaking magazines such as Letts’s Illustrated Household Magazine, Madame Schild’s Shilling Dress Patterns and Myra’s Mid-Monthly Journal and Children’s Fashions and the counsels of restraint in childrearing manuals and wardrobe management guides. Texts addressing the needs of working-class families, such as school textbooks, linked clothing consumption with improving child health and rationalizing scarce resources of time and money. The extent to which consumption practices reflected these competing sources of advice is evaluated through an analysis of school group photographs. A case study of the pinafores commonly worn by young schoolgirls draws out the ways in which this garment embodied social meanings. This leads to reflections on the relevance of these findings for contemporary investigations of maternal consumption.

The effects of concurrent resistance and endurance training follow a specific detraining cycle in young school girls.

The purpose of this study was to compare the effects of an 8-week training period of strength training alone (GR), or combined strength and endurance training (GCOM), followed by 12-weeks of de-training (DT) on body composition, power strength and VO2max adaptations in a schooled group of adolescent girls. Methods: Sixty-seven healthy girls recruited from a Portuguese public high school (age: 13.5+1.03 years, from 7th and 9th grade) were divided into three experimental groups to train twice a week for 8 wks: GR (n=21), GCOM (n=25) and a control group (GC: n=21; no training program). Anthropometric parameters variables as well as performance variables (strength and aerobic fitness) were assessed. Results: No significant training-induced differences were observed in 1kg and 3kg medicine ball throw gains (2.7 to 10.8%) between GR and GCOM groups, whereas no significant changes were observed after a DT period in any of the experimental groups. Significant training-induced gains in CMVJ (8 to 12%) and CMSLJ (0.8 to 5.4%) were observed in the experimental groups. Time of 20m significantly decreased (GR: −11.5% and GCOM: −10%) after both treatment periods, whereas only the GR group kept the running speed after a DT period of 12 weeks. After training VO2max increased only slightly for GCOM (4.0%). No significant changes were observed after the DT period in all groups, except to GCOM in CMVJ and CMSLJ. Conclusion: Performing simultaneous strength and endurance training in the same workout does not appear to negatively influence power strength and aerobic fitness development in adolescent girls. Indeed, concurrent strength and endurance training seems to be an effective, well-rounded exercise program that can be prescribed as a means to improve initial or general strength in healthy school girls. De-training period was not sufficient to reduce the overall training effects.

In the Habit of Independence: Cross-border Politics and Feminism in Two World War I Plays by Sister Mary Agnes

This article examines the life and playwriting of Sister MaryAgnes who wrote a large oeuvre of plays, largely for girls,while living and working in Winnipeg’s St. Mary’s Academy between 1909 and 1928. It examines her biography, religious order, and professional work in order to elucidate the bold political positions expressed in two of her plays,“A Patriot’s Daughter” and The Red Cross Helpers: A Patriotic Play. It endeavours to answer the question,what made it possible for a Catholic nun living in the heavily charged political environment of Winnipeg at the time of the First World War to express views that were contrary to that political environment and to do so in plays for young high school girls?

Gendering the Holy Cross School Dispute: Women and Nationalism in Northern Ireland

This article explores the Holy Cross school dispute in Northern Ireland from a feminist perspective. This ethnic quarrel produced a situation whereby women and young schoolgirls became the focal point of a sectarian protest from September 2001 to early 2002. Throughout the conflict, issues of gender were sidelined from the analysis of the dispute. The article attempts to remedy this omission by moving the category of gender to the forefront of the analysis. It examines the relationship between nationalist discourses of gender identity and representations of the nationalist women's agency during the dispute. While exposing these dimensions of the conflict, the article also considers the impact of women's ethno-nationalist agency on their role and positioning within nationalist cultures. It concludes that the Holy Cross conflict exposes the potentially disruptive aspects of women's ethno-nationalist agency and highlights the political significance of that agency for nationalist cultures pursuing ideals of gender equality.

Blue Pencils & Hidden Hands: Women Editing Periodicals, 1830-1910 (review)

Reviewed by: Blue Pencils & Hidden Hands: Women Editing Periodicals, 1830–1910 Juliette Berning Schaefer (bio) Sharon M. Harris , ed., Blue Pencils & Hidden Hands: Women Editing Periodicals, 1830–1910 (Boston: Northeastern UP, 2004), pp. xxxvi+279, $45.00 cloth. In Blue Pencils & Hidden Hands, editor Sharon M. Harris includes twelve essays that examine American women editors during the period from 1830 until 1910, as well as representative selections from the original periodicals. She groups the essays into three main parts, depending on the subjects' role in editing periodicals: "Apprenticeship," "Editing as Impetus," and "Career Editors." In the foreword, Ellen Gruber Garvey states that "new research on women editing periodicals is allowing us to examine and reexamine questions about magazines as a genre: about their creation, about the communities surrounding them, about how women, who might have been excluded from other kinds of careers, created and ran them" (xxii). Harris states in her introduction that "[p]erhaps the most important aspect of studying women editors and the periodicals they produced is understanding how women wielded the editorial pen to influence public opinion" (xxxv). In Part I, "Apprenticeship," Harris includes essays that address young schoolgirls who published a school paper and editors of special issues. Lucille M. Schultz writes about The Jabberwock, a student-run school paper, and argues that it "provided a site where a girl might experience herself as a writer in a public forum of students, faculty, and friends of the school" (7). In the next essay, Ann Mauger Colbert discusses women's editions of newspapers from 1894–1896. Colbert states that "[w]hatever the rationale for publishers' permission, the women used their foray into publishing to form firm links of communication and marketing with other women's groups around the country" (23). In Part II, the longest section of Blue Pencils & Hidden Hands, "Editing [End Page 83] as Impetus," Harris includes essays about "women for whom editing was an impetus to other kinds of literary or activist endeavors" (xxvi). Jennifer Blanchard argues that Ann S. Stephen's "rhetoric of modesty, femininity, and local loyalties" in the Portland Magazine is "steeped in nineteenth-century ideals of gender and class" (46, 44). Linda Frost describes Miriam Frank Leslie's "Ladies' Conversazione," a column that invited female readers to engage in a "free exchange" with the editor, as an outlet for "the domestically isolated reader" (60, 63). Carolyn Karcher describes Frances Wright's mission in the Free Enquirer as an attempt to "raise the level of the American press" by adopting "an aggressively masculine voice" (85, 80). Katharine Rodier describes the life and work of lecturer and activist Lucy Stone who used the The Woman's Journal, "a weekly newspaper dedicated to women's issues," to "help create a public record of her remarks" (99, 100). Jacqueline Fear-Segal asserts that Marianna Burgess created an anonymous persona who interjected "comments and opinions all through the paper," the Carlisle Indian School's publication The Indian Helper, to "control, intimidate, and manipulate the children" who read it (124, 126). Hanna Wallinger discusses Pauline E. Hopkins's work on the Colored American Magazine, where she "chan-nel[ed] ... her literary activities" which were replete with her main political concerns, gender and race (148). In the final essay in this part, James H. Cox explains that "we can understand [Gertrude] Bonnin's work as editor [of The American Indian Magazine] most clearly by focusing on her role within the context of continuing and emerging Native intellectual traditions in the era in which assimilation was federal policy" (174). In Part III, Harris includes essays about "women for whom editing was their primary work" (xxvi). Steven Fink discusses antebellum periodical editors such as Sarah Josepha Hale, Caroline Kirkland, and Ann Stephen, as "engaged in the business of periodical publication" in their relationship with the owners/publishers, with contributors, and with readers (208). In the next essay, Paula Bernat Bennett argues that Mary Louise Booth "exploited" Harper's Bazar from its inception "as a cover for her advocacy of social and, in particular, gender reform" (226). In the final essay, Gary Scharnhorst discusses Kate Field and her "campaigns for progressive causes" in her Kate Field's Washington. This volume...

Association between overweight or obesity and household income and parental body mass index in Australian youth: analysis of the Australian National Nutrition Survey, 1995.

This study is a secondary data analysis based on the 1995 Australian National Nutrition Survey (NNS). A random subsample of 1581 school children aged 7-15 years old from the NNS was studied. The results show the prevalence of overweight, obesity and combined overweight and obesity was 10.6-20.9%, 3.7-7.2% and 15.6-25.7%, respectively. The odds ratio of overweight or obese boys with highest household income was significantly smaller than those with the lowest household income. The proportion of combined overweight and obesity in children whose parents were overweight or obese was significantly greater compared with those whose parents were not. The trend of increasing prevalence of overweight or obesity among children with increasing parental body mass index (BMI) was significant after adjusting for age except the trend of father's BMI for boys. This study provided baseline data on the recent prevalence of overweight or obesity of Australian school children using new international absolute BMI cut-off points. It indicated that young school girls (7-9 years) were more likely to be overweight or obese compared with boys, the prevalence rates of overweight or obesity in older boys (13-15 year) was significantly greater than in other age groups while in girls it was the opposite. The boys with lowest household income ($0-17 500) were more likely to be overweight or obese compared with those with the highest household income (greater than $67 500). Having parents especially mothers who were overweight or obese may increase the risk of children being overweight or obese.

Powers, Problems, and Paradoxes of Twinship in Niger

Among Hausaphone Mawri communities of Niger, twins are powerful yet dangerous beings endowed from birth with extraordinary abilities. While they are welcomed by parents who interpret multiple births as lucky, twins are feared because they kill offenders and perceive things which normal people cannot see. Twins are also fiercely jealous of each other. Defusing this rivalry entails treating both children identically, lest they hurt each other. This essay explores how the Mawri deal with the paradox of double births through practices that emphasize the magical powers of twins or, conversely, stress their vulnerability. It also discusses how, with the emergence of reformist Islam, the meanings and implications of twin births are being reassessed through debates over morality. (Twinship, West Africa, Islam, reformist movements) Soon after my arrival in the Hausa-speaking town of Dogondoutchi in Arewa (southern Niger) to conduct fieldwork, my neighbor Houre took me to the house of Salamatou and Abarshi, who were celebrating the birth of their twin girls. Outside the walled family compound, the men who early that morning had come to share the joy of the new father and to receive kola nuts were now gone. The two rams slaughtered in celebration of the twins' birth had already been cut up and their meat apportioned between different family members and patrons. The courtyard's messiness betrayed the unusual degree of activity that had taken place in the last few days. In one corner, two women were engaged in the careful division of cooked millet balls into communal portions that, with sauce, would be later served to guests. Upon entering the room where the new mother sat surrounded by the female friends and neighbors who had come to attend the naming ceremony, Houre and I deposited our monetary contributions into the mother's hands before sitting on a mat next to the barber who would soon shave the infants' hair. In a corner, a young schoolgirl was busily tallying the gifts of money in a rumpled notebook, the Carnet de Sante (immunization record) of Salamatou's first-born (a girl who had died in infancy), that would help the young mother keep track of each visitor's contribution.(1) Meanwhile, we were each handed a small plastic bag filled with fried cakes covered with powdered sugar, the usual counter-gift whose lengthy preparation had absorbed the neighbors and co-wives of the parturient for most of the morning. As is customary for a biki (birth celebration), the walls of the crowded and stuffy room were decorated with the colorful handwoven blankets Salamatou had received as wedding gifts. A couple of griots (praise singers) standing in the doorway were singing the praises of the newly named babies, Hassana and Housse, each of whom lay in a pair of arms, unaware of the turmoil generated by their recent arrival. One of the babies is so much bigger than her sister, I remarked to the woman sitting next to me. Shhh! she exclaimed before I had a chance to finish. You must never say this! Let's hope they haven't heard you. Puzzled, I asked her why I should hope that the babies had not heard what I assumed to be an inoffensive comment. If she feels jealous, she will try to kill her twin, the woman answered softly before she was asked to trade places with the midwife, who, following conventions, would hold one of the babies while her pagan hair was shaved away. I soon became too immersed in the aski (shaving) performance to pursue inquiring about twinship, but later found ample confirmation that in Mawri society twins are powerful beings endowed from birth with special capacities that make them at once, more than and less than human (Turner 1969:47). These special capacities, the practices that have traditionally surrounded the treatment of twins, and the emergence of a new moral framework for dealing with the problem of twinship are discussed here. This article explores how the experience and interpretation of twinship have recently become the focus of local debates over the meaning of Islamic identity, marriage, and morality. …

HOW NOT TO EDUCATE YOUNG GIRLS—AS VIEWED IN 1853

A commonly held view of mid-nineteenth century physicians, especially in New England, was that young schoolgirls should not be worked too hard and too long at their studies. The editorial below from a highly-respected medical journal is evidence of this unwarranted belief. Every effort in the school now is to cultivate their minds at the expense of their bodies. They consequently have a sickly life, if perchance it is not cut off in early girlhood; they make poor mothers, are unable to nurse their children in many instances with a tendency to some of the most distressing complaints, and disease is propagated to their children. Much of this arises from the popular mistake that young misses must study algebra, chemistry, scientific botany, Latin, and perhaps Greek and Hebrew, by the time they are fifteen, in order to become ladies. They have no frolicking girlhood—because it is plebeian to romp out of doors with freedom, as nature intended in order to strengthen and perfect their delicate organization. A knowledge of domestic economy is decidely vulgar, and belongs to poor kitchen girls, whose red cheeks, round arms, splendid busts and fine health are perfectly contemptible. There is a kind of imagined gentility in always being under the care of a doctor, and jaunting through the country in pursuit of air, water, or expensive medical advice. Physicians deplore this wretched system, without being able to awaken public sentiment to its destructive character. Teachers are also aware of it, and exert themselves at times to counteract the evils which their every-day lessons exert on the frail, delicate pupils under their charge; but, alas, the poison and antidote are taken at once, and they exhibit the effects of their bad treatment, aided by silk hose in January, thin shoes, the impure atmosphere of crowded rooms and cold night air. Parents are the persons to blame and not the instructors of their children. Young girls are put to school too early and worked too hard and too long at their studies. More active play and fewer books, pudding-making in the place of algebraical equations, with a free exercise of their feet, which were actually designed for walking, would produce a race of women in our midst, such as cannot now be found, in regard to figure, capacity and beauty. What father has the moral courage to set the example, by allowing his daughters to become the angelic creatures they were designed to be, buoyant with spirit, vigor and health, fit companions of man, and the glory of an advanced civilization? Let them gambol in the open air, and, when indoors, act out the governing instincts of their nature in manufacturing rag dolls, till by means of bodily health and vigor, a foundation is laid for intellectual pursuits, and then and not before, may they with safety begin to be exercised in abstract, educational studies.

Nickel dermatitis from cheap earrings.

In 1988, 64% of our patients patch test positive to at least 1 allergen of the ICDRG standard series were nickel sensitive. In 70% of 300 patients evaluated, dermatitis started on the earlobes and was related to the regular wearing of cheap earrings. At the same time, 62% of 735 young schoolgirls were found to have dermatitis of their earlobes and all regularly wore cheap earrings. 9 clasps and clips commonly used in earrings released high quantities of nickel ions (between 49 and 103 micrograms/12 h), having been stored in synthetic sweat. A round piece cut from a clasp was taped to the skin of 30 nickel-sensitive patients, previously tested with 20 microliters of NiSO4 5%, 2.5%, 1% aq. solutions, giving a response similar to that caused by the 5% solution. High daily absorption of Ni ions through the skin follows its repetitive exposure to cheap earrings, causing, firstly, a direct inflammatory reaction, then followed, in our opinion, by sensitization.

Induced illegal abortions in Benin City, Nigeria.

Abortions of all types constitute about 25% of our gynaecological admissions. In 8 months period between July 1974 and February 1975, 59 patients admitted into our unit with confirmed illegally induced abortions were studied personally by the author. It was found that most patients with this type of abortion were single, young schoolgirls. Most of the patients were 12 weeks pregnant or more at the time of the attempted termination. Most of the people who carried out these 'operations' by instrumentation were usually unskilled personnel. The complications in these patients which included one death are discussed. It is concluded that sex education including the use of contraceptive devices will help in reducing the high incidence of this 'social evil'. It is also thought that the liberalization of abortion laws in this country will also be helpful in reducing the complications associated with induced abortions.

Dermographia in the Insane

” In a recent murder trial at Los Angeles, California, one William Edward Hickman was indicted for the murder of a young schoolgirl. At the trial an attempt, which appears to have been unsuccessful, was made to set up a defence of insanity (dementia praecox).