SOC 207 - Units #9 and #10 Forum: Timing of Puberty

Rutherford (2011: 349) describes the work of a group of researchers (Belsky et al.) which suggests that the timing of a girl's puberty can be affected by the presence of an adult male in the family household. This finding may seem quite unusual, or indeed hard to believe. It is useful to be skeptical about new research, which is why academics often wait for follow-up studies before reading too much into early research. It is okay to be unconvinced until you have found more information. That being said, for the sake of discussion read the passage from Rutherford provided below, to prepare for our discussion.

Researchers suggest that there are evolved psychological mechanisms in the child's first five to seven years of life designed to assess the environment in terms of how easily and predictably available resources are (Belsky et al., 1991). These resources might be very broadly defined to include the reliability of social and familial relationships. This information then guides the child into one reproductive life strategy or the other. In other words, there is a sensitive period for acquiring this kind of information which informs the child's strategy from that point on. Childhoods that include family stressors such as the frequent or unpredictable scarcity of food, coercive family relationships, and the absence of a father (meaning the father does not live in the home, not that the father works long hours) will lead to earlier puberty, earlier sexual relationships, and more sex partners. Children who have high levels of support in their family and have a father present will show later sexual maturation (Belsky et al., 1991). These authors explain the commitment to one strategy or the other as a decision about resource allocation in terms of information that is available to the child during development. Since these early findings, we now know that a warm and supportive family environment is associated with later puberty (Ellis, McFadyen-Ketchum, Dodge, Pettit, & Bates, 1999; Graber, Brooks-Gunn & Warren, 1995) and that more frequent interactions with parents during that critical time period also leads to later puberty (Ellis et al., 1999). (Rutherford 2011: 349)

Your task

For this discussion you are asked to consider how a sociobiologist might explain the relationship between the timing of puberty and the presence of an adult male in the household. In what ways might such a process have evolved during the EEA as an advantage for the transmission of the genes of young girls and their immediate family members to future generations?