The association
between father absence and early teenage sexual activity and pregnancy
has long been noted, but many researchers have attributed it
to factors
associated with divorce including poverty, family conflict and erosion of
parental monitoring. But the new findings suggest a more direct link between
a father’s
absence and his daughter’s early teenage sexual activity and pregnancy.
“These findings may support social policies that encourage fathers to
form and remain in families with their children,” unless there is violence
or a high degree of conflict, says study author Bruce J. Ellis of the Department
of Psychology at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand.
Among Western industrialized countries, the United States and New Zealand
have the highest and second-highest rates of teenage pregnancy, past research
has shown. Teenage childbearing is associated with a host of problems, including
lower educational and career achievements, health problems and inadequate social
support for parenting.
“Given these costs to adolescents and their children, it is critical
to identify life experiences and pathways that place girls at increased risk
for early sexual activity and adolescent pregnancy,” Ellis says.
Ellis and colleagues analyzed data from two long-term studies that followed
the progress of 242 girls in the United States and 520 girls in New Zealand
for their entire childhoods, from before kindergarten to approximately age
18. Based on multiple interviews and questionnaires administered over the years
to both parents and children, the data covered everything from family demographics
to parenting styles and child behavioral problems to childhood academic performance.
The researchers defined absence of the biological or adoptive birth father
at or before the child reached age 5 as early onset of father absence, while
late onset of father absence was defined as occurring when the child was between
6 and 13.
The researchers found that father absence places daughters
at special risk for early sexual activity and teenage pregnancy. While
the researchers said
these findings need to be replicated in non-Western, “the striking similarity
in results across the United States and New Zealand samples underscores the
robustness and generalizability of the findings,” Ellis says.
The study results are published in the current issue of the journal Child
Development.
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.
