Girls who grow up in broken homes 'have babies earlier'

The stress of being raised in a broken or unstable home pushes girls into having babies earlier in life, a study has found.
Scientists say that girls who live apart from their mothers in the first few years of life on average start their families two years earlier than those from stable backgrounds.
And young girls who live apart from their fathers – or whose dads have little to do with their upbringing – start their families a year earlier.
They are also more likely to get pregnant earlier if they were breastfed for just a short period or if they moved house several times as young children.
The findings add to the evidence that family break-up, insecurity and stress in the first few years of life have long-lasting impacts on children.
Psychologist Dr Daniel Nettle, who led the study at Newcastle University, said: ‘The most interesting finding is that where a girl was separated from her mother for six to 24 months in the first five years of life, you get earlier pregnancies.
‘But if the separation is more than two years, it’s as if there is no separation at all.
It suggests that these girls were being adopted and cared for by a new family which completely compensates.’
The factors linked to earlier pregnancies are signs of an unstable home, he said.
‘I think it could be stress and/or insecurity,’ he added.
The psychologists looked at the records of 4,553 women in an ongoing study of those born during the same week in March 1958.
They looked at a host of lifestyle factors that could have influenced the upbringing of the women who had become pregnant by the age of 33.
Dr Nettle and colleagues identified around 500 women who had been separated from their mothers as babies for at least six months.
Women who had never been separated from their mothers began their own families at the age of 24, on average.
But those who had been separated for six to 24 months had their babies aged around 22, according to the study, published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
Past studies have shown that baby girls raised in unstable homes tend to reach puberty earlier than those raised in a stable family.
Dr Nettle said there were evolutionary reasons why women have babies earlier if their own childhoods were unstable.
He said that if they are born into turbulent homes where the risk of violence and disease are greater, it makes evolutionary sense for them to have babies earlier in life – to increase the probability that they will pass on their genes.