In studies that followed hundreds of 5- to 18-year-old girls from New Zealand and the United States, was linked to sexual activity before age 16.

Father's absence

Explanation:

A research was carried out to determine the influence of father's absence as a major risk factor for early sexual activity in girls. United States and New Zealand were used as case studies. Results from this study in addition to other numerous studies concluded that the absence of biological fathers from home is a risk factor for girls early sexual activities and also teenage pregnancy. This also affects their mental health and academic progress.

Conversely, the studies showed that, the presence of fathers in homes were major protective factor against early social activities and teenage pregnancies.

buildings

explanation:

there are no options provided but you can choose among the following gender-neutral pronouns: zir, hir, eir, vis, tem, eir.

in the normal course of maintaining a pronoun-antecedent agreement, we could have used the words his or her but since we are also required to use gender-neutral language, we need to replace it with its equivalent gender-neutral pronoun.