Ellis and colleagues noted that girls whose fathers left the family earlier in their lives had the highest rates of both early sexual activity and adolescent pregnancy, followed by those whose fathers left at a later age, followed by girls whose fathers were present.
"It is not just a matter of whether the father is absent, but the timing of that absence," Ellis says. "This issue may be especially relevant to predicting rates of teenage pregnancy, which were seven to eight times higher among early father-absent girls, but only two to three times higher among later father-absent girls, than among father-present girls."
Even when the researchers took into account other factors that could have contributed to early sexual activity and pregnancy, such as behavioral problems and life adversity, early father-absent girls were still about five times more likely in the United States and three times more likely in New Zealand to experience an adolescent pregnancy than were father-present girls.
Girls who grew up in otherwise socially and economically privileged homes were not protected. "Father absence was so fundamentally linked to teenage pregnancy that its effects were largely undiminished by such factors as whether girls were rich or poor, black or white, New Zealand Maori or European, cooperative or defiant in temperament, born to adult or teenage mothers, raised in safe or violent neighborhoods, subjected to few or many stressful life events, reared by supportive or rejecting parents, exposed to functional or dysfunctional marriages, or closely or loosely monitored by parents," Ellis says.
The researchers suggested several mechanisms to explain the results. One is that a longer duration of father absence results in the daughters having greater exposure to their mothers' dating and future relationship behaviors, and this exposure may encourage earlier onset of sexual behavior in daughters. Another possibility is that girls who experience father absence may undergo early personality changes that orient them toward early and unstable bonds with men.
One study weakness is that it could not identify possible genetic causes for the findings, say the study authors. For example, fathers whose inherited temperaments predispose them toward aggression, disruption and resistance to control may be more likely to abandon their families. Daughters who inherit such traits may be more likely to engage in early sexual activity.
In the United States, this work was supported by the National Institute of Mental Health and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. In New Zealand, this work was supported by the Health Research Council, National Child Health Research Foundation, the Canterbury Medical Research Foundation, and the New Zealand Lottery Grants Board.
- Health Behavior News Service
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