Father's death does not affect growth and maturation but hinders reproduction: evidence from adolescent girls in post-war Estonia.

ABSTRACT: The popular concept of predictive-adaptive responses poses that girls growing up without a father present in the family mature and start reproduction earlier because the father's absence is a cue for environmental harshness and uncertainty that favours switching to a precocious life-history strategy. Most studies supporting this concept have been performed in situations where the father's absence is caused by divorce or abandonment. Using a dataset of Estonian adolescent girls who had lost their fathers over the period of World War II, we show that father's death did not affect the rate of pubertal maturation (assessed on the basis of development of breasts and axillary hair) or growth. Father's death did not affect the age of first birth but, contrary to predictions, reduced lifetime repr

SUBMITTER: Horak P 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4707695 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature