title: 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 reproductive success. Our findings thus do not support the concept of predictive-adaptive responses and suggest that alternative explanations for covariation between fatherlessness and early maturation are required.
authors.affiliation: Department of Zoology, Institute of Ecology and Earth Sciences, Tartu University, Vanemuise 46, Tartu 51014, Estonia horak@ut.ee.
authors.forename: Peeter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Hõrak
authors.affiliation: Institute of Psychology, Tartu University, Näituse 2, Tartu 50409, Estonia.
authors.forename: Markus
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Valge
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001827:Body Height; D004957:Estonia; D005191:Family Characteristics; D005220:Fathers; D005260:Female; D005298:Fertility; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D063129:Parental Death; D010298:Parity; D011247:Pregnancy; D011627:Puberty / Q000502:physiology*; D012098:Reproduction / Q000502:physiology*; D047789:World War II
keywords: adrenarche; age of primiparity; completed fertility; fathers; pubertal maturation; thelarche