A new study links girls’ stress of being raised in an unstable home to having babies earlier in life, reports the Daily Mail.
Scientists say that girls separated from their mothers in the first few years of life, start their families at age 22, an average of two years earlier than those from stable backgrounds.
Young girls who live apart from their dads – or whose fathers have little to do with their upbringing – tend to have babies a year earlier, at an average age of 23.
Women who experienced no separation from their mother, or who were separated more than two years from mom (indicating adoption into a new family), began their own families at an average age of 24.
Researchers at Newcastle University, UK, looked at the records of 4,553 women in an ongoing study of those born during the same week in March 1958.