Individual variation in maternal care in mammals shows a significant heritable component, with the maternal behavior of daughters resembling that of their mothers. In laboratory mice, genetically distinct inbred strains show stable differences in maternal care during the first postnatal week. Moreover, cross fostering and reciprocal breeding studies demonstrate that differences in maternal care...

Associations between marital conflict and infant emotion regulation exist, but explanatory pathways have not been explored. For older children, parental behavior partially mediates this association through a "spillover" process. We test: associations between mothers' and fathers' verbally aggressive marital conflict, infant temperament, and infant withdrawal; mediating effects of negative mater...

It is well known that the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis is activated during stress. Recent work suggests it is also implicated in the regulation of "normal" behaviors. The present studies investigated the effects of adrenalectomy and of varying glucocorticoid concentrations on adult maternal behavior in primiparous rats. In two studies, rats in late pregnancy were adrenalectomized o...

Maternal smoking during pregnancy (SDP) is associated with increased risk of externalizing and internalizing behaviors in offspring. Two explanations (not mutually exclusive) for this association are direct causal effects of maternal SDP and the effects of genetic and environmental factors common to parents and offspring which increase smoking as well as problem behaviors. Here, we examined the...

Disruptive behavior, including aggression, defiance, and temper tantrums, typically peaks in early toddlerhood and decreases by school entry; however, some children do not show this normative decline. The current study examined disruptive behavior in 318 boys and girls at 2, 4, and 5 years of age and frustration reactivity, physiological regulation, and maternal behavior in the laboratory at 2 ...

Early maternal deprivation impairs the behavioral development of young individuals. Recently, strong differences between mothered and maternally deprived chicks have been reported concerning their emotionality, sociality, and spatial skills. Here we investigated long-term and cross-generational impacts of maternal deprivation by comparing the characteristics of the non-reproductive and the mate...

Although data from both animals and humans suggests that adult cocaine use can have long term effects on behavior, it is unknown if prior cocaine use affects future maternal behavior in nulliparous females. In the current study, cocaine or saline was administered to adult female rats for 10 days, the animals were withdrawn from cocaine for 7 days, and the females were then exposed to donor pups...

There is a general uniformity in the hormones that regulate pregnancy among a large variety of mammals. There is also a division of maternal behavior into two main patterns: that shown by mammals that build nests for the altricial young and those that only briefly establish a birth site for the precocial young. Apart from this difference, the patterns of maternal behavior are quite similar, cen...

Maternal aggression is directed towards intruders by lactating females and is critical for defense of offspring. Within-family selection for increased maternal defense in outbred house mice (Mus domesticus; Hsd:ICR strain) was applied to one selected (S) line, using total duration of attacks in a 3-min test as the selection criterion. One control (C) line was maintained and both lines were prop...

OBJECTIVES The present study aimed to explore the inter-relationships among maternal death, household economic status after the event, and potential influencing factors. METHODS We conducted a prospective cohort study of households that had experienced maternal death (n = 195) and those that experienced childbirth without maternal death (n = 384) in rural China. All the households were interv...