Absence of the biological father from the home
is the single major indicator of risk for teenage
pregnancy in girls
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May 14, 2003
The University of Canterbury’s Dr Bruce Ellis and Dr Lianne Woodward, in a team
with scientists from the Christchurch School of Medicine and three United States
universities, carried out two community-based studies of nearly 800 girls from New
Zealand and the US, tracking the girls from early in life to age 18.
The study looked at whether father absence placed daughters at special risk for early
sexual activity and teenage pregnancy. The US and New Zealand have the first and
second highest rates of teenage pregnancy in Western industrialised countries, with
about 10% of girls in the US and 7% of girls in New Zealand between the ages of 15
and 19 becoming pregnant each year.
Dr Ellis said the study revealed that the absence of the biological father from the
home was an over-riding risk factor for early sexual activity and teenage pregnancy,
and the earlier father absence occurred the greater the risk. For example, rates of
teenage pregnancy increased from about 1-in-20 among father-present girls to 1-in-3
among early father-absent girls in the US sample and from about 1-in-30 among
father-present girls to 1-in-4 among early father-absent girls in the New Zealand
sample. (Early father absence was defined as the first five years of life.)
Father absence emerged as a major pathway to risky sexual behaviour, even for girls
who came from otherwise socially and economically privileged homes. “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 neighbourhoods, 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 said.
“Importantly, other types of behavioural and mental health problems -- anxiety,
depression, suicide, violent offending, antisocial behaviour, school drop-outs – were
not as strongly and consistently linked to father absence as were early sex and
pregnancy.”
He cautioned that although the robust relationship between father absence and risky
sexual behaviour could have far-reaching social policy and even clinical implications,
the path between cause and effect needs to be further investigated.
“There are two different possible explanations for this relationship. First, father
absence might actually cause higher rates of early sexual activity and teenage
pregnancy in daughters through such mechanisms as changes in early motivational
systems that underlie precocious sexual behaviour with males or social learning of
mothers’ sexual and re-partnering behaviour following divorce.
“Secondly, the relationship could be spurious -- a result of high genetic loading for
risky sexual behaviour in father-absent families. Specifically, mothers who experience
early onset of sexual activity and pregnancy not only tend to have daughters with
similar experiences (through genetic transmission), but also tend to expose their
daughters to father absence because young mothers are less likely to form stable
relationships with the fathers of their children.”
Dr Ellis said the competing explanations need to be evaluated in future research.
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Source: Ellis, B.J., Bates, J.E., Dodge, K.A., Fergusson, D.M., Horwood, J.L., Pettit, G.S.,
& Woodward, L. (2003). Does father absence place daughters at special risk for
early sexual activity and teenage pregnancy? Child Development, 74, 801-821.