Impact of father-daughter relationship on the daughter’s sexual behavior

There was usually a girl or girls in high school that always seemed to be overly sexual as compared to the others and most of the time people used to wonder why that was so.

The most common reason that people tried to come up with was the fact that they had daddy issues or did not receive enough attention from their fathers so they were constantly in search for that love and attention that they were not receiving at home – speculation of course.

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Well as it turns out, those speculations may have turned out to not just be speculations if a recent study by researchers from the University of Arizona is anything to go by.

According to the study, a daughter’s decision about sex is significantly influenced by her father’s parenting skills.

The study’s lead author, Bruce J. Ellis, confirmed this saying that “girls who receive lower quality fathering tend to engage in more risky sexual behavior in adolescence.”

59 pairs of sisters from which the parents had divorced and the father moved out were compared to 42 pairs of sisters from intact families.

They were all full biological siblings with an average age difference of about 7 years.

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The findings of the study revealed that it did not matter how long daughter’s spent time with their daughter’s but rather what he did when they were together that truly mattered.

Basically the quality of parenting that the fathers provided for their daughters was what mattered most.

This was in the case of divorced families whereby older sisters spent about an average of 7 more years living with their fathers as compared to their younger sisters.

The higher the quality of fathering the less reduced risky sexual behaviors in their daughters and vice versa.

This was achieved based on the rating from the daughters of their father’s quality parenting skills – whether they were warm and supportive or harsh and abusive.

Some of the risky behaviors that these girls engage in include having sex without a condom, having multiple sexual partners and engaging in sex while intoxicated.

There is need for further research on larger numbers of divorced families whereby “older and younger sisters are differently exposed to important dimensions of paternal behavior”.