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Father Absence and Accelerated Reproductive Development in Non-Hispanic White Women in the United States

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Demography

Abstract

Girls who experience father absence in childhood also experience accelerated reproductive development in comparison with peers with present fathers. One hypothesis advanced to explain this empirical pattern is genetic confounding, wherein gene-environment correlation (rGE) causes a spurious relationship between father absence and reproductive timing. We test this hypothesis by constructing polygenic scores for age at menarche and first birth using recently available genome-wide association study results and molecular genetic data on a sample of non-Hispanic white females from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health. We find that young women’s accelerated menarche polygenic scores are unrelated to their exposure to father absence. In contrast, polygenic scores for earlier age at first birth tend to be higher in young women raised in homes with absent fathers. Nevertheless, father absence and the polygenic scores independently and additively predict reproductive timing. We find no evidence in support of the rGE hypothesis for accelerated menarche and only limited evidence in support of the rGE hypothesis for earlier age at first birth.

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Acknowledgments

This research benefitted from GWAS results made publicly available by the ReproGen Consoritum, Sociogenome, and the Social Science Genetic Association Consortium. This research uses Add Health GWAS data funded by Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Grants R01 HD073342 to Kathleen Mullan Harris and R01 HD060726 to Kathleen Mullan Harris, Jason D. Boardman, and Matthew B. McQueen. This research uses data from Add Health, a program project directed by Kathleen Mullan Harris and designed by J. Richard Udry, Peter S. Bearman, and Kathleen Mullan Harris at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and funded by Grant P01-HD31921 from the NICHD, with cooperative funding from 23 other federal agencies and foundations. This research was supported in part by NICHD P2C-HD050924. Lauren Gaydosh was supported by NICHD F32 HD084117. Daniel W. Belsky is an Early Career Fellow of the Jacobs Foundation and is supported by NIA Grants R01 AG032282 and P30 AG028716.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Medicine, Health, and Society, Vanderbilt University, 300 Calhoun Hall, PMB #351665, 2301 Vanderbilt Place, Nashville, TN, 27235, USA

    Lauren Gaydosh

  2. Department of Population Health Sciences, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA

    Daniel W. Belsky

  3. Population Research Institute, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA

    Daniel W. Belsky

  4. Graduate School of Education, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

    Benjamin W. Domingue

  5. Department of Sociology and Institute of Behavioral Science, University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, CO, USA

    Jason D. Boardman

  6. Department of Sociology, Carolina Population Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA

    Kathleen Mullan Harris

Authors
  1. Lauren Gaydosh
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  2. Daniel W. Belsky
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  3. Benjamin W. Domingue
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  4. Jason D. Boardman
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  5. Kathleen Mullan Harris
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Lauren Gaydosh.

Appendix

Appendix

Table 5 Unrelated non-Hispanic white females and sister comparison
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Table 6 Alternative environmental exposures, hazard ratios for reproductive events: Unrelated non-Hispanic white females
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Gaydosh, L., Belsky, D.W., Domingue, B.W. et al. Father Absence and Accelerated Reproductive Development in Non-Hispanic White Women in the United States. Demography 55, 1245–1267 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-018-0696-1

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