In consequence of doctrine which, for several generations, has trained women to develop for their own uses the masculine potential belonging to sons, many of our present-day boys and girls are seen actually to have exchanged their natural sex-characteristics. Boys are born now, puny, neurotic, and effeminate; while girls are strong and male and masterful. And it is precisely in the families whereof the girls are strong and male and masterful, that the boys are weakly and effeminate; the degenerative lapse from The Normal expressing itself, in both sexes, in terms of abnormal characteristics of the other sex.
That at thirteen, girls now-a-days are taller and heavier than boys of the same age has been established by the Anthropometrical Committee of the British Association.
Dr. J. J. Heslop, after carefully observing the health and the physical growth of children in fourteen elementary schools belonging to the Stretford (Lancashire) Education Authority, has published a striking return of his investigations. The following table shows the average height and weight at this age:
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+ | | Height. | Weight. | +-----------------------+--------------------------+-----------------+ |St. Matthew's | Boys 4 ft. 7-3/4 in. | 5 st. 7-3/4 lb. | | | Girls 4 ft. 9 in. | 5 st. 10-3/4 lb. | |Cornbrook Park | Boys 4 ft. 8-1/2 in. | 6 st. 0 lb. | | | Girls 4 ft. 10-1/3 in. | 6 st. 5-1/2 lb. | |St. Anne's | Boys 4 ft. 7 in. | 5 st. 3-3/4 lb. | | | Girls 4 ft. 9 in. | 5 st. 10-1/2 lb. | |Trafford Park | Boys 4 ft. 7-3/4 in. | 5 st. 4 lb. | | | Girls 4 ft. 9-1/2 in. | 5 st. 8-1/2 lb. | |Gorse Hill | Boys 4 ft. 8-1/2 in. | 5 st. 10 lb. | | | Girls 4 ft. 10 in. | 5 st. 11 lb. | |Seymour Park | Boys 4 ft. 8-2/3 in. | 5 st. 0 lb. | | | Girls 4 ft. 10 in. | 5 st. 11 lb. | +-----------------------+-------------------------+------------------+
The most notable development among girls takes place between the eleventh and thirteenth years.
The opposite bias in this abnormal substitution of alien sex-traits is due presumably, in both sexes, to an antagonising and neutralising of the qualities normal to the one sex by emergence of those of the other. Thus, the boy is puny and emasculate because his impoverished maleness is too feeble to dominate the Female traits inherent in him, as is normal to males. The girl is big and crude and masterful because her impoverished Womanliness is inadequate to inhibit and refine her inherent Male traits.