Growing up without a father around can present a lot of
challenges to a girl. Quite apart from the behaviour problems and lower academic
achievement that can accompany father absence, there are also potential
consequences for sexual behaviour and relationships later in life: Daughters who
grow up without a father in their home are more likely to reach puberty earlier,
have sex earlier and are more likely to get divorced. Dr Lynda
Boothroyd and Professor David Perrett at St Andrews University asked
webrecruited volunteers to rate the appearance of the faces of three groups of
women: those whose parents had a good relationship as they were growing tip,
those whose father was absent, and those whose parents stayed together but had a
poor relationship. 66. __________. So why should separated or
warring parents be associated with masculinity in daughters One theory is that
stress during childhood could raise cortisol levels, and there is some evidence
that this can have masculinising effects. 67. __________. The
researchers suggest that the link between parental relationships and appearance
could have repercussions for the daughters’ choices of partner and success in
relationships later in life, because, in general, less attractive women need to
have lower expectations of partner quality or be willing to settle for
short-term relationships. 68. __________. Dr David Waynforth,
of Durham University, studied the effects of father absence in a Mayan
population in Belize and found that sons of absent fathers had more masculine
faces. He speculates that a masculine appearance and hence high testosterone
levels may be a response to help overcome the disadvantage of being without a
father, enabling sons to push their interests more aggressively to make their
way in society. 69. __________. Another potential influence
on a woman’s sexual behaviour is the quality of relationships she has with men
as she grows up. Professor Bruce Ellis, of the University of Arizona, found in a
long- term study of girls in the United States and New Zealand that daughters
whose fathers were absent tended to reach puberty earlier, and were much more
likely to become pregnant as a teenager than daughters with two resident
parents. He found that this early sexual activity was more pronounced in girls
who were deprived of a father from early in life. Even among the girls who lived
with their fathers, those who had a closer father-daughter relationship delayed
sexual relationships for longer. Prof Ellis suggests that the quality of a
girl’s relationship with her father, especially in the first five or so years of
life, becomes internalised and sets the stage for her later sexual behaviour.
Could the same be true of the physical effects that we see "The
key research agenda for the future will be to assess facial masculinity and
attractiveness in girls early in life," Prof Ellis says, "and then to determine
whether girls who experience father absence and poor mother-father relationships
change over time to become more masculinising and less attractive." 70.
__________. The St Andrews University study rated daughters of
warring couples as the least attractive and they were deemed less healthy
looking than those of separated parents, perhaps as a result of ongoing family
tension. But as Dr Boothroyd says: "It’s nothing new to suggest that long-term
psycho-social stress is not good for children." A. Another possibility is
that hormones are responsible for both marital strife and masculinity in
daughters: High parental testosterone levels or sensitivity could increase the
chances of marital problems and desertion by the father, and if passed on to
daughters could lead to a more masculine appearance. B. The study, published
in Proceedings of the Royal Society, found that father absence and parental
marital strife were associated with less attractive, more masculine faces in
daughters.The researchers also found that these women tended to have less
feminine body shapes and more body fat than women whose parents had a good,
stable relationship. C. For all the disadvantages to girls of being
without a father when they are growing up, they can take some comfort in the
fact that they are likely to be more attractive than those whose parents stayed
together in spite of marital strife. D. "If you’re more masculine it’s going
to be harder to get a good quality mate, in terms of what you’ve got to bargain
with," says Dr Boothroyd. "This could be driving certain elements of why women
who grew up without fathers are less likely to be in long-term
relationships." E. Girls who enter puberty later generally had fathers
who were active participants in care-giving; had fathers who were supportive to
the girls’ mothers; and had positive relationships with their mothers. But it’s
the fathers’ involvement, rather than the mothers’, which seems to be paramount
to the age of the girls’ development. F. Dr Waynforth doesn’t think
that women raised without a father around would be at a reproductive
disadvantage. "While they may through higher facial masculinity be rated a bit
lower for physical attractiveness, they should be more driven to seek sex and
more sexual partners," he says, "assuming testosterone affects female sexual
behaviour in the same ways that it seems to affect male sexual behaviour."