Pubertal Pathways in Girls Enrolled in a Contemporary British Cohort

Table 2

Characteristics of study participants, overall and by initiation pathway.

Characteristic^a	All girls	Thelarche	Pubarche	Synchronous	P-value^b
	N (%)	N (%)	N (%)	N (%)
Total	3938 (100)	1482 (100)	408 (100)	1631 (100)
Mother’s highest education					.03
CSE/none	583 (15.4)	212 (14.8)	43 (10.7)	243 (15.7)
Vocational	351 (9.3)	116 (8.1)	29 (7.2)	158 (10.2)
O-level	1331 (35.2)	515 (35.9)	147 (36.7)	539 (34.8)
A-level	936 (24.8)	374 (26.1)	103 (25.7)	372 (24.0)
Degree	579 (15.3)	217 (15.1)	79 (19.7)	236 (15.3)
Mother’s prepregnancy BMI					<.0001
<18.5	186 (5.2)	56 (4.1)	15 (4.0)	94 (6.4)
18.5–24.9	2671 (75.1)	1007 (74.4)	314 (84.2)	1075 (73.5)
25.0–29.9	516 (14.5)	208 (15.4)	37 (9.9)	217 (14.8)
≥30.0	183 (5.2)	83 (6.1)	7 (1.9)	76 (5.2)
Mother’s age at delivery					.02
<20 years	103 (2.6)	37 (2.5)	4 (1.0)	50 (3.1)
20–24 years	620 (15.7)	240 (16.2)	43 (10.5)	252 (15.5)
25–29 years	1587 (40.3)	585 (39.5)	187 (45.8)	174 (39.1)
≥30 years	1628 (41.3)	620 (41.8)	174 (42.7)	692 (42.4)
Birth order					.01
First born	1326 (34.6)	540 (37.1)	155 (38.8)	515 (32.6)
Second born	1277 (33.3)	485 (33.4)	137 (34.3)	531 (33.6)
Third born or later	1235 (32.2)	429 (29.5)	108 (27.0)	535 (33.8)
Child ethnic background					.0004
White	572 (96.0)	1377 (97.6)	374 (94.4)	1447 (95.0)
Nonwhite	148 (4.0)	34 (2.4)	22 (5.6)	77 (5.0)
BMI at age 8					<.0001
<5th percentile	69 (2.5)	20 (1.8)	12 (3.7)	29 (2.6)
5th–85th percentile	2096 (74.7)	740 (65.8)	285 (86.9)	868 (79.0)
85th–95th percentile	348 (12.4)	182 (16.2)	23 (7.0)	121 (11.0)
≥95th percentile	293 (10.4)	183 (16.3)	8 (2.4)	81 (7.4)

aInformation was missing for some girls, including information on mother’s education (𝑛=158, 4.0%), mother’s age at menarche (𝑛=538, 13.7%), mother’s social class (𝑛=738, 18.7%), mother’s prepregnancy BMI (𝑛=382, 9.7%), sugar in urine at any point during pregnancy (𝑛=362, 9.2%), breastfeeding (𝑛=141, 3.6%), girl’s birth order (𝑛=100, 2.5%), girl’s birthweight (𝑛=53, 1.4%), girl’s race/ethnicity (𝑛=218, 5.5%), girl’s height at age 8 (𝑛=1039, 26.4%), and girl’s BMI at age 8 (𝑛=1132, 28.8%).
bP-value is from univariate logistic regression models.