Early menarche is associated with preference for masculine male faces and younger preferred age to have a first child
Date
04/2016Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
One developmental factor that is associated with variation in reproductive strategy is pubertal timing. For instance, women who experience earlier menarche have their first pregnancy earlier and prefer more masculinized male voices. Early menarche may also lead to preferences for masculine faces, but no study has shown such a link. We therefore investigated the relationships between pubertal timing, reproductive plans, sexual attitudes and behaviors, and masculinity preferences in nulliparous women aged 18–30 from the United Kingdom (N = 10,793). We found that women who experienced earlier menarche reported a younger preferred age to have a first child and showed stronger masculinity preferences. This provides evidence that women experiencing early menarche not only have children earlier but notably plan to have children earlier. Additionally, our findings provide evidence that age of menarche influences partner selection, which is instrumental for the implementation of reproductive strategies.
Citation
Batres , C & Perrett , D I 2016 , ' Early menarche is associated with preference for masculine male faces and younger preferred age to have a first child ' , Evolutionary Psychology , vol. 14 , no. 2 , pp. 1-8 . https://doi.org/10.1177/1474704916637876
Publication
Evolutionary Psychology
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
1474-7049Type
Journal article
Rights
(c) The Authors 2016. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
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