We’ve all heard about girls with ‘daddy issues’ from a guy we know or a TV show. A girl has a distant father is therefore, said to be more promiscuous because of it. A study at the Texas Christian University has been carried out to test this theory once and for all! 64 females were asked questions on their relationships with their fathers and then questions about their sex lives.
They were asked about the stability of their relationships with their fathers and then about the frequency at which they have sex and when they lost their virginities. From this findings showed that those with unstable relationships with their fathers, or no relationship at all, were more likely to have lost their virginities at an earlier age and displayed potentially risky sexual behaviour.
Participants were then split into two groups. One group was asked to write about a time in their lives when they had felt that their fathers had been absent the other group were asked to write about a time when their fathers had seemed present. Following this, half of the group were presented with statements about sex and were asked to rate their level of agreement on a scale from one to nine. For example, ‘sex without love is OK.’ The other half were given fourteen incomplete words and were asked to fill in the blanks. Two examples of what they were given are ‘S_X’ and ‘_AK_D’. The findings from this part of the study displayed that the females which were made to think about a time their fathers had been absent completed the word stems in a more sexualised way than the other group.
This shows a direct link between paternal absence and attitudes towards sex. The study is to be published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
