Absent dads may lead to teenage pregnancies

11.45am

Teenage girls from single-parent families without fathers become sexually active earlier and are more likely to get pregnant, New Zealand researchers said today.

Psychologist Bruce Ellis at the University of Canterbury 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 700 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 behavioural 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 behaviour," New Scientist magazine said on Wednesday.

The researchers suggested that girls with absent fathers may learn dating behaviour 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 behaviour.

- REUTERS