The Effect of a Brother in a Girls Development

Even though a girl’s sexual maturity largely depends on the culture, friendships and to the social environment, the environment that the family creates also has a great impact on a girl’s maturity. Even if parents largely control their daughter’s sexual developments by giving them some basic rules and curfews, it has been observed that girl’s development vastly depends on their siblings. Girls with a brother have sexually developed later.  In an experiment done around the same city in Australia, it has been observed that girls with brothers have lost their virginity around the age of 19 compared to the girls with sisters have lost it around 18. After this experiment another observation was done where they looked at the effect of the elder and the younger brothers. It has been observed that girls with older brothers had their period later compared to younger brothers.

Historically, daughters have been caregivers and they look after their younger siblings. So, this leads up to a delay in starting their own families. Since boys require more resources big sisters had to involve even more. However, nowadays people usually don’t start their families until their mid-twenties. The elder and younger brother having an effect on a girl’s sexual development is still not sure. A study shows that a girl growing up with biologically unrelated male in the house would have her period earlier that average.  This is explained with an experiment which shows that brothers send out chemicals by their sweats which slows down their period time and effects their sister’s sexual development.  Same thing can be seen in animals also. The smell would go to the part of the brain where sex hormones are produce and slow down activities.

The role of the gender in the development of a girl has a great effect. In my opinion not in modern societies but in the third world countries brothers have a dominant effect and social pressure on girls and how they should be proper. This stress and pressure may cause girls to unconsciously reduce and inhibit their sexual development. In some countries it is even a shame for girls to lose their virginities before getting married and they have to wait for their brothers or fathers to find them a match that they wish and believe that is appropriate. So it makes me question if the factors in the environment effects and changes the development of the brain

Zeynep Ercan