Development of the human body used to approximately judge a child's age based on physical development. Puberty is the process of physical changes through which a child's body matures into an adult body capable of sexual reproduction. It is initiated by hormonal signals from the brain to the gonads: the ovaries in a girl, the testes in a boy. In response to the signals, the gonads produce hormones that stimulate libido and the growth, function, and transformation of the brain, bones, muscle, blood, skin, hair, breasts, and sex organs. Physical growth—height and weight—accelerates in the first half of puberty and is completed when an adult
Theology of the Body At present the "Theology of the Body" has been widely used and included in the curriculum of the Marriage Preparation Course in the Catholic dioceses of the United States. The series of addresses were given as a reflection on the creation of man as male and female, as a sexual being. They sought to respond to certain distorted ideas and attitudes fundamental to the sexual revolution. Pope John Paul II addresses how the common understanding of the human body which analyzes it as a mechanism leads to objectification, that is, a loss of understanding of its intrinsic, personal meaning. Pope