The Closer You Are To Your Mom, The Longer You'll Wait To Have Sex

Ladies, what if I told you that you may have lost your virginity based largely on your mother’s influence in your life and not just how dreamy the guy you were with was?

This weird revelation comes to us via a Dutch study published in the Pediatrics journal. Girls with really good relationships with their mother actually end up having sex later in life for their first time, it turns out.

The study asked almost 3,000 (heterosexual) boys and girls questions regarding their sex lives and the relationships they had with their parents when they were 12 years of age and then again when they were 16. According to the researchers, the girls who felt they were close to their mothers ended up being nearly 44 percent less likely to lose their virginity during those four years compared to the girls who weren’t!

Shockingly, despite all of the dad jokes about getting the shotgun when boys come around, it’s not your father that influences your decision to have sex for the first time, as the study determined that it didn’t matter how close the girls were with their fathers.

For boys, there was no correlation, and their desire — and choice — to have sex wasn’t affected by their relationship to their parents in the slightest. During the study, 233 of the participants (77 girls and 156 boys) all reported that they’d had sex in the four-year stretch.

The researchers also determined that most times, mothers tend to be the “primary providers of (sex) education within families,” so they are most likely the ones filling in young children on the dangers or joys of sex. The bond between mother-daughter closeness may also affect a young girl’s choice to lose her virginity because she will feel more comfortable approaching the topic with her mother, and possibly even discussing potential issues like STIs, STDs, and pregnancy.

This by no means suggests that girls who choose to have sex early on have bad relationships with their mothers, but the strong bond does help dissuade girls from making that decision due to peer pressure or cultural influences.

So, parents, if you’re looking to make sure your daughter isn’t having sex too early in her life or for the wrong reasons, don’t threaten to get the shotgun — threaten to get Mom. It's far more effective, according to science.