Absent Fathers, Confused Daughters
One of the many unpleasant ironies in contemporary culture is that young women are paying a particularly high price for the denigration of fatherhood implicit in feminist orthodoxy. The latest documentation of the problems visited upon young women because of the cultural denigration of fatherhood comes in a study recently published in Child Development by researchers at Duke, Auburn, and Indiana Universities in the United States and the University of Canterbury in New Zealand.
Examining data collected from community samples of girls who were followed prospectively from age five to approximately age eighteen, the researchers discern a strong statistical relationship in both countries linking father absence to early sexual activity and adolescent pregnancy. Explaining what they interpret as "a dose-response relationship between timing of onset of father absence and early sexual outcomes," the researchers note that "early father-absent girls had the highest rates of both early sexual activity and adolescent pregnancy, followed by late father-absent girls, followed by father-present girls." The American and New Zealand scholars particularly emphasize the effects of father absence on adolescent pregnancy, calculating that "rates of teenage pregnancy...were 7 to 8 times higher among early father-absent girls, but only 2 to 3 times higher among late father-absent girls, than among father-present girls."
The authors of the new study believe their findings merit particular attention because earlier researchers on this topic have typically defined father absence as "a dichotomous yes-no variable" rather than as a "dose-response" variable and have consequently "underestimated the impact of father absence on daughters' sexual outcomes."
In interpreting their findings, the American and New Zealand scholars confront the "widely held assumption...[central-though they do not say this-to a great deal of feminist dogma] that it is not father absence per se that is harmful to children but the stress associated with divorce, family conflict, loss of a second parent, loss of an adult male income, and so on." But the authors of this new study subject this assumption to withering scrutiny.
The scholars responsible for the new study do acknowledge "a pervasive relationship between early timing of father absence and more exposure to familial and ecological stressors." In other words, in both countries, "girls whose birth fathers were absent from an earlier age were more likely to come from socially disadvantaged backgrounds characterized by young motherhood, minority race status, lower S[ocio]E[conomic]S[tatus], more family life stress, poor parental relationships ... and low-quality parental investment (i.e., harsh discipline, lack of parental monitoring, low maternal emotional responsiveness)." However, when the researchers deployed sophisticated statistical models that took into account all of these background variables, "there continued to be a linear logistic association between earlier onset of father absence and higher rates of both early sexual activity and adolescent pregnancy in both samples." The researchers interpreted this finding as clear evidence that father absence affects daughters' sexual behavior "through processes that operate independently of life-course adversity." "In relation to daughters' sexual development," they stress, "the social address of father absence is important in its own right and not just as a proxy for its many correlates." Or, put another way, "father presence was a major protective factor against early sexual outcomes, even if other risk factors were present."
The authors of the new study speculate that father absence may lead to problematic sexual behavior among adolescent daughters because of these daughters' "exposure to their mothers' dating and repartnering behaviors." Such exposure, they reason, "may encourage earlier onset of sexual behavior in daughters, with consequent risk of teenage pregnancy." The American and New Zealand scholars also conjecture that "girls whose early family experiences are characterized by father absence tend to develop sexual psychologies that are consistent with the expectation that male parental investment is unreliable and unimportant."
But however father absence works its unhealthy effects, the researchers see in their findings reason to "support social policies that encourage fathers to form and remain in families with their children."
