Girls' decisions about sex are significantly influenced by their father’s parenting skills, a new study shows.

“Girls who receive lower quality fathering tend to engage in more risky sexual behavior -- sex without a condom, having sex while drunk, multiple sexual partners and becoming pregnant before age 19 -- in adolescence,” said Bruce J. Ellis of the University of Arizona Norton School of Family and Consumer Sciences, who led the research to be published in the journal Development and Psychopathology.

Ellis said taking both genetic effects and family dynamics, the results demonstrated a cause-and-effect relationship -- different amounts of exposure to different kinds of fathers altered daughters’ sexual behavior.


“We know that poor fathering and daughters’ risky sexual behavior go together, but we haven’t known why and haven’t known how. Our study was meant to figure out that issue,” he said.

Ellis and his team developed a methodology to test for the impact of fathers on their daughters’ sexual risk-taking.

They looked at 59 pairs of sisters from families in which the parents had divorced and the father moved out and compared with 42 pairs of sisters from intact families. (From news reports)