Brief report: Fathers’ and mothers’ marital relationship predicts daughters’ pubertal development two years later Darby E. Saxbe * , Rena L. Repetti University of California, Department of Psychology, 1285 Franz Hall, Box 951563, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA Abstract Parents of 50 4th grade girls reported on their marital relationships and then, two years later, rated their daughters’ pubertal development. Fathers’ ratings of marital dissatisfaction, mothers’ ratings of less emotional support from husbands, and both parents’ ratings of aversive marital conflict were correlated with more advanced pubertal development in daughters. Fathers’ withdrawal behavior during marital conflict emerged as the strongest predictor. These results are consistent with evolutionary theories of pubertal development and suggest that parents’ impressions of the marital relationship may be linked with girls’ pubertal development, even in a middle-class sample with both parents present in the household. They also suggest several heretofore underexplored foci for researchers in this area, such as parents’ behav- iors during marital conflict and fathers’ experiences of the marital relationship. Ó 2008 The Association for Professionals in Services for Adolescents. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Puberty; Pubertal timing; Adolescent development; Father absence; Parental marital conflict; Parentechild relationship Multiple factors, including genes, caloric intake, and body fat, have been linked with the timing of pubertal development in girls, and psychosocial stress and family composition may also play a role (Ellis, 2004). Evolutionary psychologists have suggested that the family environment * Corresponding author. Tel.: þ1 310 663 6082. E-mail addresses: dsaxbe@ucla.edu (D.E. Saxbe), repetti@psych.ucla.edu (R.L. Repetti). ARTICLE IN PRESS 0140-1971/$30.00 Ó 2008 The Association for Professionals in Services for Adolescents. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.adolescence.2008.06.009 Please cite this article in press as: Darby E. Saxbe, Rena L. Repetti, Brief report: Fathers’ and mothers’ marital relationship predicts daughters’ pubertal development two years later, Journal of Adolescence (2008), doi:10.1016/j.adolescence.2008.06.009 Available online at www.sciencedirect.com Journal of Adolescence xx (2008) 1e9 Journal of Adolescence www.elsevier.com/locate/jado