WHY THE FAITHFUL WELCOME SCIENCE (via Mike Daley)

Absent fathers linked to teenage pregnancies (Rachel Nowak, 15 May 03, New Scientist)

Numerous studies show that girls reach puberty younger, become sexually active earlier and are more likely to get pregnant in their teens if their father was absent from the home from when they were young. But the usual explanation - that such families are under more stress - is now being challenged by a long-term study of girls in New Zealand and the US, the Western countries with the highest teen pregnancy rates. [...]

A team led by psychologist Bruce Ellis of the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, followed more than 700 girls from preschool to age 17 or 18, monitoring 10 different aspects of their lives including family income, behavioural problems, exposure to violence and parenting styles.

They confirmed that teenage girls raised without fathers are more likely to suffer from depression, drop out of school and have other behavioural problems.

But while these problems were clearly linked to psychosocial stress, it was the presence or absence of a father that had the biggest impact on the girls' early sexual behaviour.

"The study rules out that these teenage girls are at risk for early pregnancy only because absence of the father introduces stressors into the home such as poverty," says Ellis, whose results appear in Child Development.

Why they are at risk is not clear. "The study certainly suggests that some Factor X triggers early sexual activity in girls who grow up without their fathers, but it is difficult to work out what the mechanism might be," says James Chisholm, an expert on early puberty at the University of Western Australia in Perth.

It is not simply the absence of a father figure. Other work by Ellis's team suggests that girls raised with stepfathers engage in sexual activity even earlier. One possibility is that the girls learn "dating" behaviour earlier by mimicking their mothers.

One of the conceits of the rationalists is that Reason (Science) is the enemy of Faith (Religion). So the faithful always find it amusing that science continually affirms--and never contradicts for very long (see for example the debunking of things like the non-geocentricity of the Universe, spotted moths and the notion of genes for alcoholism and homosexuality)--what are thought to be mere unthinking traditional prejudices. Of course, the reasons for this affirmation are easy enough to comprehend: Western Civilization is the product of thousands of years of experimentation, so the answers it offers to questions have been tested many times. It takes a bravely foolish (or cynically nihilistic) person to disagree with the wisdom of the ages. Sadly, such are never in short
supply. Posted by Orrin Judd at May 19, 2003 12:23 PM