Daddy's girl

Young girls with close relationships with their fathers may enter puberty later than girls with distant or non-existent relationships with their father. According to Bruce Ellis of the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, good mother-daughter relationships were also found to delay puberty somewhat, but "in total, the quality of fathers' investment in the family emerged as the most important feature" of the puberty timing of daughters. They studied 173 girls and their families for eight years, when the girls proceeded from pre-school to the seventh grade. The exact mechanism behind the connection is as yet unknown, but it does "highlight the importance of early paternal involvement in the development of 'healthy' reproductive functioning in daughters" ( Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , Vol 77, No 4).