The growth pattern indicates that growth progresses from the top of the body to the bottom

human development, the process of growth and change that takes place between birth and maturity.

Human growth is far from being a simple and uniform process of becoming taller or larger. As a child gets bigger, there are changes in shape and in tissue composition and distribution. In the newborn infant the head represents about a quarter of the total length; in the adult it represents about one-seventh. In the newborn infant the muscles constitute a much smaller percentage of the total body mass than in the young adult. In most tissues, growth consists both of the formation of new cells and the packing in of more protein or other material into cells already present; early in development cell division predominates and later cell filling.

Types and rates of human growth

Different tissues and different regions of the body mature at different rates, and the growth and development of a child consists of a highly complex series of changes. It is like the weaving of a cloth whose pattern never repeats itself. The underlying threads, each coming off its reel at its own rhythm, interact with one another continuously, in a manner always highly regulated and controlled. The fundamental questions of growth relate to these processes of regulation, to the program that controls the loom, a subject as yet little understood. Meanwhile, height is in most circumstances the best single index of growth, being a measure of a single tissue (that of the skeleton; weight is a mixture of all tissues, and this makes it a less useful parameter in a long-term following of a child’s growth). In this section, the height curves of girls and boys are considered in the three chief phases of growth; that is (briefly) from conception to birth, from birth until puberty, and during puberty. Also described are the ways in which other organs and tissues, such as fat, lymphoid tissue, and the brain, differ from height in their growth curves. There is a brief discussion of some of the problems that beset the investigator in gathering and analyzing data about growth of children, of the genetic and environmental factors that affect rate of growth and final size, and of the way hormones act at the various phases of the growth process. Lastly, there is a brief look at disorders of growth. Throughout, the emphasis is on ways in which individuals differ in their rates of growth and development.

The changes in height of the developing child can be thought of in two different ways: the height attained at successive ages and the increments in height from one age to the next, expressed as rate of growth per year. If growth is thought of as a form of motion, the height attained at successive ages can be considered the distance travelled, and the rate of growth, the velocity. The velocity or rate of growth reflects the child’s state at any particular time better than does the height attained, which depends largely on how much the child has grown in all preceding years. The blood and tissue concentrations of those substances whose amounts change with age are thus more likely to run parallel to the velocity rather than to the distance curve. In some circumstances, indeed, it is the acceleration rather than the velocity curve that best reflects physiological events.

In general, the velocity of growth decreases from birth onward (and actually from as early as the fourth month of fetal life; see below), but this decrease is interrupted shortly before the end of the growth period. At this time, in boys from about 13 to 15 years, there is marked acceleration of growth, called the adolescent growth spurt. From birth until age four or five, the rate of growth in height declines rapidly, and then the decline, or deceleration, gets gradually less, so that in some children the velocity is practically constant from five or six up to the beginning of the adolescent spurt. A slight increase in velocity is sometimes said to occur between about six and eight years.

This general velocity curve of growth in height begins a considerable time before birth. The peak velocity of length is reached at about four months after the mother’s last menstruation. (Age in the fetal period is usually reckoned from the first day of the last menstrual period, an average of two weeks before actual fertilization, but, as a rule, the only locatable landmark.)

Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. Subscribe Now

Growth in weight of the fetus follows the same general pattern as growth in length, except that the peak velocity is reached much later, at approximately 34 weeks after the mother’s last menstrual period.

There is considerable evidence that from about 34 to 36 weeks onward the rate of growth of the fetus slows down because of the influence of the maternal uterus, whose available space is by then becoming fully occupied. Twins slow down earlier, when their combined weight is approximately the 36-week weight of a single fetus. Babies who are held back in this way grow rapidly as soon as they have emerged from the uterus. Thus there is a significant negative association between weight of a baby at birth and weight increment during the first year; in general, larger babies grow less, the smaller more. For the same reason there is practically no relation between adult size and the size of that person at birth, but a considerable relation has developed by the time the person is two years old. This slowing-down mechanism enables a genetically large child developing in the uterus of a small mother to be delivered successfully. It operates in many species of animals; the most dramatic demonstration was by crossing reciprocally a large Shire horse and a small Shetland pony. The pair in which the mother was a Shire had a large newborn foal, and the pair in which the mother was Shetland had a small foal. But both foals were the same size after a few months, and when fully grown both were about halfway between their parents. The same has been shown in cattle crosses.

Poor environmental circumstances, especially of nutrition, result in lowered birth weight in the human being. This seems chiefly to be caused by a reduced rate of growth in the last two to four weeks of fetal life, for weights of babies born in 36 or 38 weeks in various parts of the world in various circumstances are said to be similar. Mothers who, because of adverse circumstances in their own childhood, have not achieved their full growth potential may produce smaller fetuses than they would have, had they grown up in better circumstances. Thus two generations or even more may be needed to undo the effect of poor environmental circumstances on birth weight.

The great rate of growth of the fetus compared with that of the child is largely due to the fact that cells are still multiplying. The proportion of cells undergoing mitosis (the ordinary process of cell multiplication by splitting) in any tissue becomes progressively less as the fetus gets older, and it is generally thought that few if any new nerve cells (apart from the cells in the supporting tissue, or neuroglia) and only a limited proportion of new muscle cells appear after six postmenstrual months, the time when the velocity in linear dimensions is dropping sharply.

The muscle and nerve cells of the fetus are considerably different in appearance from those of the child or adult. Both have little cytoplasm (cell substance) around the nucleus. In the muscle there is a great amount of intercellular substance and a much higher proportion of water than in mature muscle. The later fetal and the postnatal growth of the muscle consists chiefly of building up the cytoplasm of the muscle cells; salts are incorporated and the contractile proteins formed. The cells become bigger, the intercellular substance largely disappears, and the concentration of water decreases. This process continues quite actively up to about three years of age and slowly thereafter; at adolescence it briefly speeds up again, particularly in boys, under the influence of androgenic (male sex) hormones. In the nerve cells cytoplasm is added and elaborated, and extensions grow that carry impulses from and to the cells—the axons and dendrites, respectively. Thus postnatal growth, for at least some tissues, is chiefly a period of development and enlargement of existing cells, while early fetal life is a period of division and addition of new cells.