Puberty as Biopsychosocial Enfolding: Mothers’ Accounts of their Early-Developing Daughters

This chapter works to trouble, in productive ways, the disciplinary boundaries that have traditionally been employed to understand bodies. The author asserts that biological, social, and psychological “factors” of sexual development are not distinct from one another, rather, puberty constitutes a process of “bio-psycho-social enfolding.” In this chapter, the author builds on prior work that explored articulations in medical and scientific texts of girls who experience early-onset puberty. Here, the author works with four case studies to explore mothers’ experiences of living with and caring for early-developing girls. This chapter is a contribution to feminist technoscience studies and holds the topic of early sexual development in its complexity.