ScienceDaily for September 17, 2010 reported on the influence of absent fathers on daughters.
"The age at which girls are reaching puberty has been trending downward in recent decades, but much of the attention has focused on increased body weight as the primary culprit," said study lead author Julianna Deardorff, UC Berkeley assistant professor of maternal and child health. "While overweight and obesity alter the timing of girls' puberty, those factors don't explain all of the variance in pubertal timing. The results from our study suggest that familial and contextual factors -- independent of body mass index -- have an important effect on girls' pubertal timing."
