Abset Dads May Lead to Teen Pregnancies

[mcs328]

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.j...toryID=2742959

Study: Absent Dads May Lead to Teenage Pregnancies
Wed May 14, 2003 03:14 PM ET
LONDON (Reuters) - Teenage girls from single-parent families without fathers become sexually active earlier and are more likely to get pregnant, researchers said on Wednesday.
Psychologist Bruce Ellis at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand suspects girls brought up without fathers undergo personality changes when they are young which make them more likely to interact with males.

He and his team studied 7,000 girls from pre-school to age 18 and found teenage girls raised without fathers were more likely to suffer from depression, drop out of school and have other behavioral problems.

"But while these problems were clearly linked to psycho-social stress, it was the presence or absence of a father that had the biggest impact on the girls' early sexual behavior," New Scientist magazine said on Wednesday.

The researchers suggested that girls with absent fathers may learn dating behavior earlier by mimicking their mothers.

"Other studies showed that girls raised in the absence of their fathers tend to sit closer to, and interact more readily with, men," the magazine added.

But Ellis believed absent fathers may not be the only reason for high pregnancy rates. Some girls, he said, may inherit a tendency to indulge in risky sexual behavior.
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Interesting.

[tweeteresa]

i was gonna ask....what's abset???

[RoniMan]

it means very angry.

i was so mad, i was abset.

[shock32638]

If I remember correctly from the film I watched in middle school, it's reather difficult for a girl to get pregnant if the dad is'nt present...Oh it's talking about her dad, nevermind.

[mcs328]

Argh!! Typos suck!!

[sbp]

Really been some winning studies lately.

Imagine that-not having daddy around increases the chances of negative things happening. Its not like this is news and hasn't been known.

The sad cycle continues.

[molecularfire]

Well... it's a lot harder to impregnate a girl when her father is around... I don't know about you guys, but shotguns scare me.

[Memo]

Correlation != Causation

[WhiskeyPapa]

This isn't exactly new news. I'm surprised they're even researching it still. Girls without a good relationship with their fathers tend to seek out replacement relationships with other men/boys. Not a real brain teaser.