UA research: Early puberty threatens girls with troubled dads
by Alan Fischer on Sep. 11, 2008, under Education, Family, Local
Ellis
Girls whose socially dysfunctional fathers leave the family following divorce are at greater risk for early puberty, according to a study by a University of Arizona researcher.
UA professor Bruce J. Ellis and Jacqueline M. Tither of the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand, found girls whose dysfunctional father left their family reached puberty on average one year earlier than their older sisters who lived longer in the two-parent families.
Girls with normative fathers who left saw no significant difference to their older sisters comparing the age when they began menstruating, Ellis said.
“It’s not just about whether the father is there or not; it’s about what the father does,” said Ellis, the John and Doris Norton endowed chair in fathers, parenting and families at the UA Norton School of Family and Consumer Sciences.
“Most girls don’t live with really dysfunctional fathers. There is a small effect of a missing father,” he said. “The large effect is when we’re talking about a father that has a history of socially deviant behavior.
“Early exposure to a very stressful situation, followed by a change in the family when the stress is removed, seems to accelerate puberty,” Ellis said.
Dysfunctional behavior includes a history of suicide attempts, violent offenses or imprisonment, Ellis said.
Reaching puberty at a younger age can mean health problems for females, he said.
“A one-year advancement in the arrival of puberty increases breast cancer risk by an estimated 5 percent,” he said.
Earlier puberty also elevates the risk for mood disorders such as anxiety and depression, and increases the risk of substance abuse and childhood pregnancy, he said.
A better understanding of the factors causing earlier puberty could lead health care officials to better ways to handle such issues, he said.
Ellis and Tither studied 68 divorced families where the father left that had daughters born an average of seven years apart, he said.
They compared these families to 90 with daughters seven years apart where the mother and father remained, he said.
There is not enough information to draw conclusions about girls growing up with fathers in a single family situation, he said.
The average age of puberty worldwide, which dropped the past century, has flattened out at about age 13, except in the United States where it is still declining slightly, Ellis said.
The study appears in the September issue of Developmental Psychology.
