Abstract
Father absence in early life has been shown to be associated with accelerated reproductive development in girls. Evolutionary social scientists have proposed several adaptive hypotheses for this finding. Though there is variation in the detail of these hypotheses, they all assume that family environment in early life influences the development of life-history strategy, and, broadly, that early reproductive development is an adaptive response to father absence. Empirical evidence to support these hypotheses, however, has been derived from WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic) populations. Data from a much broader range of human societies are necessary in order to properly test adaptive hypotheses. Here, we review the empirical literature on father absence and puberty in both sexes, focusing on recent studies that have tested this association beyond the WEIRD world. We find that relationships between father absence and age at puberty are more varied in contexts beyond WEIRD societies, and when relationships beyond the father–daughter dyad are considered. This has implications for our understanding of how early-life environment is linked to life-history strategies, and for our understanding of pathways to adult health outcomes, given that early reproductive development may be linked to negative health outcomes in later lifeThis article is part of the theme issue ‘Developing differences: early-life effects and evolutionary medicine’.
Highlights
Puberty is a life-course transition of considerable interest to the evolutionary, social and health sciences
Those studies that are able to test whether the results differed according to early versus late absence found mixed results: in Malaysia, early absence is associated with accelerated puberty, late absence with delayed; in the US Kinsey survey, results differed according to whether father absence was due to death or divorce; and in Curacao, absence in both early and late childhood is associated with accelerated puberty
A more significant problem may be that the empirical literature in WEIRD societies has developed beyond analysing simple father absence or presence to investigate in much more detail exactly what features of the family environment are most strongly associated with reproductive development
Summary
Puberty is a life-course transition of considerable interest to the evolutionary, social and health sciences. The evolutionary human sciences have been interested in developing functional (i.e. evolutionary, ultimate) explanations about why some individuals should experience puberty earlier than others [3,4] This latter literature has focused on the role of early-life experiences, family environment, on the timing of puberty. Recent research has begun to fill this gap by testing associations between father absence and age at puberty in nonWEIRD populations We review this new literature to assess the current state of knowledge on associations between family environment in early life and the timing of puberty, without relying exclusively on data from high-income populations
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