ArticleHuman nature (Hawthorne, N.Y.)2017
The Null Relation between Father Absence and Earlier Menarche.
Article in Human nature (Hawthorne, N.Y.), 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Meta-Analysis of Direct and Indirect Effects of Father Absence on Menarcheal Timing.Frontiers in psychology · 2020Pooled it
- Timing matters: a prospective investigation of father absence and pubertal timing in girls and boys.Biology of sex differences · 2026Article
- Father absence, age at menarche, and genetic confounding: A replication and extension using a polygenic score.Development and psychopathology · 2022Article
- REPRODUCTIVE TOXICOLOGY: Endocrine disruption and reproductive disorders: impacts on sexually dimorphic neuroendocrine pathways.Reproduction (Cambridge, England) · 2021Review
- Cross-cultural evidence does not support universal acceleration of puberty in father-absent households.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2019Review
- Low Maternal Capital Predicts Life History Trade-Offs in Daughters: Why Adverse Outcomes Cluster in Individuals.Frontiers in public health · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Researchers have claimed that the absence of a biological father accelerates the daughter's menarche. This claim was assessed by employing a large and nationally representative sample of Indonesian women. We analyzed 11,138 ever-married women aged 15+ in the Indonesian Family Life Survey 2015. We regressed age at menarche on the interaction of father absence (vs. presence) and mother absence (vs. presence) at age 12 with or without childhood covariates. For robustness checks, we performed a power analysis, re-ran the same specification for various subgroups, and varied the independent variable of interest. All results produced a null relation between father absence and age at menarche. The power analysis suggests that a false negative was unlikely. Our review of the literature indicates that the claim of the relation between father absence and earlier menarche was based on weak statistical foundations. Other studies with higher-quality datasets tended to find no relation, and our results replicated this tendency. Therefore, the influence of father absence does not appear to be universal.
Indexed as
Identifiers
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Registered trials
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