Sizing the Kids; Starting Early

[Pure]

http://www.slate.com/id/2157861/?nav=fix

[start excerpt, "Slate magazine"
Girl, Interrupted
The power to shrink human beings.
By William Saletan

Posted Saturday, Jan. 20, 2007, at 7:06 AM ET



Once upon a time, there was a little girl named Ashley. And she stayed little forever.

It's a true story. You can read it on her parents' blog,

http://www.ashleytreatment.spaces.live.com.


Ashley's brain stopped developing at 3 months. Nobody knows why. She never learned how to roll over, sit up, or walk.


But Ashley's body kept growing. It was hard work lifting her and moving her around. When she was 6, her parents discovered something amazing. "We learned that attenuating growth is feasible through high-dose estrogen therapy," her mom writes. "This treatment was performed on teenage girls starting in the 60's and 70's, when it wasn't desirable for girls to be tall, with no negative or long-term side effects."

Eureka. Ashley didn't have to reach her natural adult size. She could be "attenuated."

So Ashley's doctors reshaped her. Her parents call it the "Ashley Treatment." They lay it out in three steps:

1. Limiting final height using high-dose estrogen therapy.
2. Avoiding menstruation and cramps by removing the uterus (hysterectomy).
3. Limiting growth of the breasts by removing the early breast buds.

The first step alone can reduce a child's adult size by 2 feet and 100 pounds, according to Ashley's doctors. Other parents are already asking for the same treatment. We don't have to make the world fit people anymore. We can shrink people to fit the world.

Is this a good idea?

Ashley's parents think so. The less she weighs, the more she can be "held in our arms" and transported to stimulating activities, they argue. Without treatment, she would exceed her stroller's weight limit and "stop fitting in a standard size bathtub." And breasts would get in the way of her wheelchair straps.

[end excerpt, beginning of article; for further details visit the parents' site, url, above]

 

[Guest]

But there's more to this, Pure.

Her parents plan to take care of her forever. They began this course of treatment because they feared they would unable to lift her and care for her as they grew older.

 

[only_more_so]

The worst part about every article I have read on this subject is that they make light of the use of terms like "pillow angel" that the parents use. The articles all attack the parents as trying to halt the child to maintain her innocence as opposed to halting her growth for practical reasons.

Another article I read pointed out that as a woman takes on her womanly curves, namely hips and bust, her weight is no longer evenly distributed on her side. This will cause bed sores on her hips and chest unless she is turned every few hours. turning a girl who weighs 75 lbs is doable, if not easy, turning a girl who weighs 100 lbs is much much harder. This doesn't even include things such as bathing and moving from place to place.

This is a child with the mental abilities of a 3 month old. Why subject her to bed sores, menstration (with menstral cramps), and a host of other physical discomforts. Also, keeping her small allows her parents to take care of her instead of being institutionalized. This isn't some child pagent star who is being kept small to fulfill a doll fetish. There are very practical reasons.

 

[Stella_Omega]

I thought it was one of the most compassionate uses of the medical technology that I've ever heard of.

 

[lipsofanangel]

I thought it was one of the most compassionate uses of the medical technology that I've ever heard of.

I've thought about this a lot since the whole thing started. I think that in this case, it was the best way to handle a very bad situation. And it's a one in a million kind of occurance that hopefully won't be happening often.

 

[impressive]

I will say only that I believe they mean well.

 

[minsue]

I will say only that I believe they mean well.

Ditto.

 

[Pure]

the article mentions that 'sizing' of teen girls in the US was rather common in the 1960s and 1970s, to keep them--for their own good-- from becoming too tall. iow, injections of estrogens were given to limit height growth. that's one origin of the 'Ashley Treatment.'

---
Ashley doesn't happen every day, but the situation of mildly or moderately retarded childre is hardly rare; their sterilization was rather common a few decades back.

 

[only_more_so]

the article mentions that 'sizing' of teen girls in the US was rather common in the 1960s and 1970s, to keep them--for their own good-- from becoming too tall. iow, injections of estrogens were given to limit height growth. that's one origin of the 'Ashley Treatment.'

---
Ashley doesn't happen every day, but the situation of mildly or moderately retarded childre is hardly rare; their sterilization was rather common a few decades back.

The article never said it was common to size girls, just that it started in that period and was used without ill effects on the girl.

As for sterilization of retarded children... That is a wholely different can of worms (although it is one of many factors in Ashley's situation). Ashley's hysterectomy was to prevent puberty and the bodily changes that would occur. A "bonus" one could say is that her parent's don't have to worry that she might get pregnant if she were ever raped. Especially since rape is much more common amoung the mentally challenged than in the general population.

 

[Pure]

as to the commonness of 'sizing' teen girls, the article says this

(would you go with, 'sizing was hardly uncommon in that period')

:

It's equally curious that the parents were inspired by the shortening of tall girls in the 1960s and 1970s. Half the nation's pediatric endocrinologists participated in that fad. They changed bodies to match a feminine ideal. Some parents shortened their daughters to fit the physical requirements of flight attendants or ballerinas. Most did it to fit the culture.

removing a uterus because of rape/abuse fears seems a bit odd. if she's ever in an institution, or has a regular home attendant, her 'caretaker' can fuck her for years without fear of consequences.

Ashley's hysterectomy was to prevent puberty

a hysterectomy doesn't prevent the changes associated with puberty, excepting those connected to the uterus; i.e., the girl will not have menstrual discomfort or bleed; in every other way, she'll be normal (or would have been except for removal of parts of her breasts).

 

[only_more_so]

as to the commonness of 'sizing' teen girls, the article says this

(would you go with, 'sizing was hardly uncommon in that period')

:

It's equally curious that the parents were inspired by the shortening of tall girls in the 1960s and 1970s. Half the nation's pediatric endocrinologists participated in that fad. They changed bodies to match a feminine ideal. Some parents shortened their daughters to fit the physical requirements of flight attendants or ballerinas. Most did it to fit the culture.

removing a uterus because of rape/abuse fears seems a bit odd. if she's ever in an institution, or has a regular home attendant, her 'caretaker' can fuck her for years without fear of consequences.

Ashley's hysterectomy was to prevent puberty

a hysterectomy doesn't prevent the changes associated with puberty, excepting those connected to the uterus; i.e., the girl will not have menstrual discomfort or bleed; in every other way, she'll be normal (or would have been except for removal of parts of her breasts).

How many pediatric endocrinologists are there? There can't be that many. And just because half do something, doesn't mean they do it on that many of their patients, perhaps only once or twice. So the article doesn't say it is common, perhaps it wasn't uncommon though. I am sure there are plenty of women who read this thread that were of growing age in the 60's and 70's and I would be curious if any of them have even heard of such a thing.

You were right about the hysterectomy only being for the menstration issues. I think between the hysterectomy, the estrogen therapy and the breast bud removal they are doing everything they can to prevent puberty's effects.

 

[Pure]

hi oms,

just curious why you say that sterilization of retarded childred is a 'wholely different can of worms.' surely it was partly done for their own good because of fears about their decisionmaking abilities and parenting skills.

 

[Stella_Omega]

just curious why you say that sterilization of retarded childred is a 'wholely different can of worms.' surely it was partly done for their own good because of fears about their decisionmaking abilities and parenting skills.

That was the reasoning, yes.
Back in the seventies, it seemed compassionate to allow a mentally retarded man or woman their sexual freedom, to a degree. Of course that was before the advent of AIDs and penicillin-resistant venereal diseases- and I don't know what the policies are nowadays.

 

[Pure]

here's a bit of info on 'sizing' of female teens

LATimes

[...]
Few doctors followed the hormone-treated girls into adulthood, but one 2005 study in the journal Social Science and Medicine identified 396 Australian women who between 1959 and 1993 had been treated with estrogen to reduce their final adult height. They were compared with 448 women who, as girls, had been offered treatment but decided against it.

In questionnaires given up to 40 years later, almost all the untreated women, 99.1%, said they were glad they weren't treated, no matter how tall they became, while 42.1% of the treated women expressed dissatisfaction with the treatment decision.

Some of the treated women who said they were dissatisfied with their treatment had long-standing and unanswered questions about the health consequences of the hormone therapy. Of the 396 treated women, 67 had problems getting pregnant and wondered if the problems were caused by treatment during their teen years. Worse, one of the estrogens commonly used in treatment was diethylstilbestrol, or DES, linked in 1971 to vaginal and cervical cancer in the daughters of women who took the drug to prevent miscarriages.