Ok after a cursory glance I read that girls do indeed “begin” to mature earlier than boys. Some as early as age eight. But by 20 everyone has caught up with each other. We’re talking physically of course.
Needs2know
It’s MHO that ALL children born and raised in CA mature slower than the rest of the country, both female and males. Or maybe just slower than other Western States, especially Utah, CO, and Idaho.
The comparison population is unfairly skewed by the large population of boys who do not mature slower than girls because in order to mature slower than girls they would have to mature.
OK…but seriously folks…I asked this question myself when I was 14: “I’ve always heard it said that girls mature faster than boys. If that is so, how am I going to find an appropriate girlfriend? I’m 14, should I date 12 year olds?”
I think females in general are better-constructed people from about 9 years old onward, but I don’t think it is innate.
I also think we live in a system where sexual activity is supposed to be precipitated by the male person. Teenage girls are as susceptible to media imagery as the rest of us, and that’s the way media imagery paints it, right? So if you were a teenage girl and just starting to itch a bit, would you want to fumble around with a boy your own age who is no better situated than you are to be a sexual aggressor? Not if you want to be turned on and had by a confident tomcat of a guy. And in all fairness to the girls, some of them DO take the initiative as much as the boys do in the first bloom of sexuality, but it doesn’t last; they get called ugly names and everyone says it should go the other way and the boys would rather try their fumbling out on a less experienced girlchild than risk being laughed at by a more equal girl who keeps saying “I dare ya”.
The Girl from PepperLand (Not to be confused with the Girl from Ipanima) said:
Not quite. My hobbies include (but are not limited to) computers, RPGs, anime, and comic books, so as a result I’ve known a LOT of “nice guys.” Of various levels of niceness and guyness. I’ve yet to meet one who sucked up to attractive women while being unpleasent to average looking women, and still claimed to be a Nice Guy.
Nice Guys usually don’t get laid cause they’re not assertive enough, and allow themeselves to get wedged into the “guy friend” closet. (Which is nice if it’s with someone you want to be friends with, not kinda confining if you want something else) Or because they lack the socal skills required to either get through the required pre-get-laid stage, or express attraction without coming off as desperate. Or because they don’t meet many women in their day to day life. Or because Nice unfortunatly, just isn’t that sexy.
Trust me, Nice Guy is not a label that most guys appriciate, if only because so often it’s attached to “but I don’t want to go out with you.”
Pigs in Space declared:
Ouch. Ok. But only if you women (Yes, I hereby entitle you to speak for ALL WOMEN EVERYWHERE. The power is intoxicating, isn’t it?) stop complaining that men are scum and you can’t find a nice one. Deal? 
And maybe if you stop complaing about your love life with male friends who don’t have one. I don’t know if women do this with other women, but with guys it’s just not very tactful.
Not that I think about this much. Hows that for a hijack?
PepperLandGirl went on
Well, you surely have time to squeeze in one or two before you reach old age at 25 or so.
Yeah, but you’re just saying that because you HAVE COOTIES! COOTIES COOTIES COOTIES!! Sorry. But how often as a quatricenturian do I get an excuse to use the word “cooties?”
Skott, way back in the OP stated:
I think we’re going to have to call the entire nation of Japan on this one. It’s been 20 years, could we PLEASE end this ultra-cute fad now? (Sorry. Not germaine)
PLG again. Maybe I should have put these in some kind of order, huh?
Sting? ‘I’m going to put on a puffy latex G string, oil myself, and gyrate like Axl Rose after a hip operation in Dune’ Sting? This is obviously some strage definition of the word cute that I wasn’t previously aware of.
Does this mean I can discribe, say Michelle Yeoh, Pam Greere, or Sigorney Weaver (circa 1988) as cute?
And now, what you’ve all been waiting for, the last PLG response. I hope you don’t mind the shorthand, pepperlandgirl, but I’m a lazy, lazy man.
And it’s not like there isn’t the male equivelent, Maxim. Just as goofy, but now with more nudity! At least it didn’t ruin a perfectly good descriptive term.
Skott again. Note to self. Arange discussion so that you can respond to people one at a time.
Yeah, but everyone at that age claims to be “more mature” for one reason or another.
A big part of the equasion I think, is that guys are expected to have a wild-oats-sowing, got-into-a-fight-with-six-bikers rolled-my-chevy-at-3am-while-drunk late adolecence/early adulthood. Women are not expected to do so, though some (most?) do. Women are expected to make youthful mistakes, but they’re supposed to be more subtle. So if girls do mature faster, maybe it’s just cause they’re expected to.
. . . Damn it. Needs2Know said that already. And better. So I guess I have nothing to add here.
Damn, I’ve got to cut down on these run-on sentences. Maybe if I start randomly inserting semicolons it’ll help.
–
“We can’t do nothing without a sword. That’s why they call us kenshi”
About the whole Backstreet Boys phenomenon… I read once that one of the driving forces behind the boy band thing was that pre-pubescent girls were preparing themselves for real crushes.
As for maturity- I started puberty when I was nine. I was one of the first in my grade. The boys didn’t noticably hit puberty until somewhere around 13.
\
Let me clarify a little: I have nothing against guys who want to DATE more. It’s the ones who want to get LAID (puts them on the road out of Nice) and blame their lack of success on women (and they’ve arrived in Jerkland).
I don’t believe that men are scum (what is this, the 80’s?), I’ve never complained about a lack of good men (just men good for me 
), I just don’t like people blaming others for their own problems (most of which you covered). In other words, not all men who say this bug me, just the ones who weren’t nice to begin with.
Anyhoo, to get back on-topic, I do think that girls, about 16-20, are a little more mature than boys. Of course, that’s in general, with some big outliers.
IMHO, it’s partly because of societal expectations, like others have said. The other part, I’d say because girls hit puberty and the turbo-hormones first, so they learn to deal with it earlier. A lot of the immature behavior in boys has to do with semi-hormonal things like proving how fearless and strong they are.
Hi, I hope I’m not hijacking the topic (I’m newish here), but I gotta say that this ‘girls mature’ thing is among the worst things you could tell a teenage (or even preteen) girl. OK, worst thing other than “You’re lookin’ a little chunky there, sister.”
To me it seems that most young girls don’t seem to get the difference between “Girls mature faster than boys” and “Girls are more mature.”
To generalize, I’ve seen plenty of girls make stupid mistakes (drugs, sex, abusive relationships, you name it – and I’m sure everyone has an example) thinking that they can handle it. Because, after all, girls are, like, more mature, right? Like, fer sure.
While I’m sure the above is true in some cases, I think many men do not realize that just because one of their friends is a “nice guy” around other guys and a good friend doesn’t mean that he is a genuine “nice guy” in his romantic relationships with women.
A friend of mine (I’ll call her Bettina because I don’t know anyone named Bettina) used to date a guy (I’ll call him John because that’s his real name) described by all of his male friends as, yes, a nice guy. Before John started dating Bettina I even heard him on more than one occasion go into the nice guys finish last, nice guys never get the girls speech. I personally am disinclined to trust anyone who says anything like that because I have found that they are rarely really nice at all. There may be exceptions, but John wasn’t one of them. While some of his behavior towards Bettina was indeed nice it wasn’t long before things got creepy.
John wanted to know where Bettina was at all times. He called her constantly and became very upset if she was not there. On one occasion he called Bettina at my house although I had never given him my phone number and she hadn’t told him she’d be with me. We later learned that John had lied and told Bettina’s roommate that there was an emergency and he needed to speak with her so the roommate told him where Bettina was and how he could reach her.
Bettina and I drifted apart for various reasons so I never knew exactly what happened with her and John, although I did hear from mutual friends that they eventually broke up. I am sure that in John’s mind this is another example of the nice guy missing out and his friends are probably still wondering how any woman could break up with a nice guy like John.
…that may or may not be related to the OP ( to Ura-Maru).
From my memory, the average girl phsyically begins to mature at age 11, while the average boy begins around 13. Those averages are for here in the US. Also, it’s interesting to note that the physical maturation ages are decreasing for both sexes.
So, can I mention rednex and Candians too?
I don’t know if you’ve read the book “Nice Guys Don’t Get Laid”, but it’s not directly about nice guys not getting laid, it’s about the tendency of girls to go out with “bad” guys and ignore the “nice” guys because they aren’t exciting enough.
It also divides men up into four categories: Momma’s Boys, Nice Guys, Bad Guys, and Totally Wacko. It sounds like John was a Momma’s Boy: Someone who when they finally got into a relationship was so completely needy that they destroyed the relationship.
I think we all know the difference between the Nice Guy and the Bad Guy. The Total Wacko is the one who’s idea of a fun date is sacraficing small animals in the middle of the night, naked (that is, he’s naked, not the animals), under the full moon.
Someone whining about not getting laid usually doesn’t fall into the Nice Guy category, since the Nice Guy wants a good relationship before sex… by definition. :}
Isn’t the phrase “real crush” a contradiction in terms?
IMHO, the word cute should be used in only three instances: 1) To describe small furry animals; 2) To describe small, non-furry human beings (i.e. babies); 3) Sarcastically, as in “That was cute :P” when your best friend makes a complete ass out of themselves.
I would love to see at least anecdotal evidence of this. My observations have lead me to conclude that even when there is a girl that is more mature than the average boy of the same age, it’s offset by a girl who is less mature. And any girl who acts more mature, will always have a weakness that will drive them back to immaturity. Of course, these are generalizations, and to those who fall outside them, more power to you.
In the end, it all balances out: Nobody, in general, is more mature than anyone else, in general, at a specific age.
I think it would help to clarify what we mean by “maturity”.
Physically, there’s no doubt that girls (in general) mature more quickly than boys (in general). The confusion begins when a girl reaches that clearly-demarcated moment when she “Becomes a Woman”; the ability to reproduce does not equal adulthood.
Once upon a time, when a girl reached this stage, she really was an adult- that is, prepared to start doing all the stuff and assuming all the responsibilities of adulthood. She’d be married off and begin keeping house and taking care of babies- like it or not.
We’ve drastically lengthened childhood by determining that adulthood doesn’t officially begin until age 18 to 21, while ironically (due to better nutrition and health) kids reach reproductive age even earlier than ever before. Then, we confuse the issue even more by throwing kids together into an artificially contrived teenage subculture (i.e. high school) where they’re isolated from the “real world” of adulthood.
In the past, kids approaching adulthood were far more exposed to adult life and were expected to learn the ropes. Goofing off and hanging out with your friends for several years was a luxury people couldn’t afford and didn’t condone, though boys were allowed quite a bit more leeway in the goofing-off and hanging out department.
Since childhood is artificially extended, kids aren’t forced to assume responsibility as quickly. Since they’re largely isolated from adults, they don’t learn adult coping skills as early. So basically, I think most kids (and a fair number of adults) are hopelessly immature, no matter which sex, and I think this is almost entirely a result of socialization.
Me:
As I mentioned before, some men in college/high school had a tendency to try and prove themselves by doing stupid things. For example, one guy I knew would make dumb statements, usually sexist, and never back down, even though he often didn’t believe in what he was saying (ask him about his little sister and he’d totally contradict himself). The best we could figure out was that he knew it would get attention, bad attention, but attention none the less. And a real man wouldn’t back down. 
Women, in general, did not do this.
As I said, it’s a small difference, with plenty of exceptions. Of course, there’s no objective way to measure immaturity that I can think of, so it’s a hard question to answer. Even harder to prove.
nods Certainly not the maturity level one would hope for. However, to counterbalance, I have a female friend who would treat me worse and worse (and others) in order to find out what my “anger boundry” was.
Well, if you mean that women in general back down when they’ve down something obviously wrong, I might have to disagree. If stubborness is used as a measure of immaturity, I think we all could be in a lot of trouble
True… proving my hypothesis that women aren’t more mature than men may well be impossible. In my mind, I see a random sampling of men and women based on some measured maturity level, and seeing those levels fall into a normal bell-shaped curve. I also see the men’s curve and the women’s curve looking pretty much identicle. But that’s just in my mind.
But likewise, proving that women are more mature than men would have the same problem. Therefore, I still feel that the statement like the one I quoted previously is invalid.
For what it’s worth, I’m a 40 year old male who’s been resisting the call to maturity all my life. Much to her credit, Mrs. Blades has been dragging me kicking and screaming down the path toward greater and greater levels of maturity over the years… however I still stick my tongue out at her every chance I get…
I think environment and role models have more to do with how fast children mature than sex.
“Hey Bevis… he said sex… heh, heh!”
Some people say , however old you look, that’s how old you are. Others say you’re only as old as you feel. But my philosophy is you’re only as old as you act…
Looks like everyone has been talking about me! I consider myself a “Nice Guy” and yes it is true I have many female “friends”. What is wrong with that? I happen to enjoy having intellectual relationships with women, without constantly trying to think of how to get into their pants or having a conversation with their breasts . And contrary to what some may believe, I do get my fair share of bed play. Please, that stereo type about some virgin feeling sorry for himself is bullshit as far as I’m concerned, and should not have the label “Nice Guy”. I have known girls that get into abusive relationships, and I have listened to them and comforted them, and I have felt sorry for them, but I have never ever felt a desire for them. They just seem to lack assertiveness, and they have “victim” written all over them. Not for me thank you. (Before anyone jumps at me for this opinion, I know there are exceptions). I prefer the smart, mature and self-assertive woman any day. Whenever I hear “Nice Guys finish last”, I can’t help but think it should actually be: “loser’s finish last”. A real Nice Guy would never finish last.
Nice Guy Jack
This is something that Pisses me off a girl in my class (7th grade) thought she was sO much morr mature than me and said and i quote “all the boys are so immature when they go to sex ed” but when the boys went to sex ed nobody acted up and was immature in any way. And when the girls went they came back and started making fun of all the boys because of how our bodies work. In my eyes that is the most immature thing you can ever do.:mad:
How very strange to see a post from pepperlandgirl stating that she’s 17. And then I saw the date. Braaaaaainssss…
Ever seen a football game? You know those dudes who paint themselves crazy colors, get drunk and act a fool? Yeah…real mature. Or, for that matter, what is the gender ration in a mosh pit?
All people can get worked up into a frenzy in an energetic crowd scenario.
No guy has ever lost his head over a fast woman? I think it’s well known that young men take break ups much harder than young women. Love makes everyone dumb. That said, not all “bad boys” are bad choices. An exciting, unstable, spontaneous relationship is pretty appropriate for young people.
Because “awesome” is so mature? Dude, hell yeah, bro!
Have you ever read Men’s Health? Anyway, what percent of teenage boys are reading much of anything?
Oops! Taken in by a zombie!
I think that to a large degree “girls mature faster than boys” because the typical behavior of girls of that age happens to be more convenient for adults, so it gets labeled “mature”.
Well, if you were more mature that wouldn’t happen! 