Family composition and menarcheal age: Anti‐inbreeding strategies

Abstract

Family composition (e.g., the absence of a father) is associated with pubertal timing in women, although the socioendocrinology of the human primate is poorly understood. To better understand social influences on sexual maturation, retrospective data were collected on menarcheal age and family composition from a sample of approximately 1,938 participants from a college population. Absence of a biological father, the presence of half- and step-brothers, and living in an urban environment were associated with earlier menarche. The presence of sisters in the household while growing up, especially older sisters, was associated with delayed menarche. Menarcheal age was not affected by number of brothers in the household, nor was there an effect of birth order. Body weight and race were also associated with menarche. The present findings advance the literature as they are suggestive of putative human pheromones that modulate sexual maturation to promote gene survival and prevent inbreeding, as occurs in rodents and nonhuman primates.

Nutritional Status and Menarcheal Age of Rural Adolescent Girls of Salboni Block of Paschim Medinipur, West Bengal, India

“…growing stage and entering into puberty, girls experience menarche in this period, This study indicates that high Body Mass index girls experience early menarche. Body fat from skinfolds gives a more direct estimate of body fat mass [11] especially more so on children and adolescents [12] and may be used in field studies. In this cross-sectional study it was shown girls with earlier onset of menarche had higher body mass and body fat mass than the other girls prior to menarche or whether these differences were constituted partially or completely after menarche.…”

Paternal effects on offspring fitness in a multimale primate society

“…In these species, parental presence delays maturation in the offspring, and this delay has been interpreted as a mechanism to avoid either incest or parent-offspring competition (45)(46)(47). However, both father-daughter mating opportunities and father-son mating competition are probably more rare in multimale societies with male dispersal than in cooperative breeders because (i) multimale societies will typically have a larger number of reproductive individuals of both sexes than cooperative breeders (reducing both the intensity of competition and the probability of mating between any particular pair), and (ii) fathers will frequently have dispersed from their offspring's group or died by the time the offspring has begun to reproduce (81% of daughters and 88% of sons in our sample).…”

Transfers and transitions: Parent–offspring conflict, genomic imprinting, and the evolution of human life history

“…Moreover, pubertal timing appears sensitive to both nutritional and social cues. For example, children born in the developing world, but adopted by European families, have high rates of precocious puberty (53) and father absence is associated with early menarche (54). Whether this variability reflects evolved responses to cues of local relatedness and resource transfers remains an open question.…”