The Ovarian Silence

Researchers have found that women appear to avoid their fathers when they are ovulating.

Researchers at University of California, LA (UCLA), and University of Miami and Cal State, Fullerton, have found that women appear to avoid their fathers when they are ovulating. They found this with the help of cellphone records, and their findings appear in Psychological Science.

“Women call their dads less frequently on these high-fertility days and they hang up with them sooner if their dads initiate a call,” said Martie Haselton, a UCLA associate professor of communication in whose lab the research was conducted.

The researchers could not say for sure why this happens because they did not have access to the details of the phone conversations. But they surmise that this behaviour may be set off by an unconscious motive to avoid male control at a time when they are most fertile. But a more primal impulse may be at work: an evolutionary adaptation to avoid inbreeding. Whatever the case, the researchers know that the findings are consistent with past research on the behaviour of other animals when they are at their most fertile.