The present study examined relations among maternal psychological resources, rejecting parenting, and early adolescent antisocial behavior in a sample of 231 low-income mothers and their sons with longitudinal assessments from age 18 months to 12 years. The maternal resources examined were age at first birth, aggressive personality, and empathy. Each of the maternal resources predicted rejectin...

BACKGROUND The proportion of mothers who exclusively breastfeed their babies up to 6 months remains low. Determinants of breastfeeding practices have been largely documented in high-income countries. Little evidence exists on possible predictors of breastfeeding behaviors in the Middle East. Our aim was to assess the prevalence of breastfeeding in Beirut and determine the factors that impact br...

Both acute and chronic stress can impair maternal behavior and increase rates of infant abuse in several species. The mechanisms inducing these effects are unknown, but experimental manipulation of circulating corticosterone levels alters maternal behavior in rats, and circulating or excreted cortisol concentrations have been found to correlate either positively or negatively with maternal beha...

Prolactin receptor (PRLR) is the specific receptor for prolactin. Brain-specific control of PRLR gene expression is correlated with the induction of maternal behavior. The aim of this study was to investigate the dynamic changes in the PRLR mRNA level in the sheep pituitary gland and its effect on ewe maternal behavior. The mRNA expression of PRLR during non-pregnancy stage was maintained at lo...

Predatory (towards crickets), intermale, and maternal aggression were examined in four replicate lines of mice that had been selectively bred for high wheel-running (S) and in four random-bred control lines (C). In generation 18, individual differences in both predatory and intermale aggression were significantly consistent across four trial days, but predatory and intermale aggression were unc...

The oxytocinergic system is critically involved in the regulation of maternal behavior, which includes maternal aggression. Because aggression has been linked to anxiety, we investigated the maternal aggression and the role of brain oxytocin in lactating Wistar rats selectively bred for high anxiety-related behavior (HAB) or low anxiety-related behavior (LAB) during the 10 min maternal defense ...

Naturally occurring variations in maternal licking/grooming influence neural development and are transmitted from mother to female offspring. We found that the induction of maternal behavior in virgin females through constant exposure to pups (pup sensitization) was significantly shorter in the offspring of High compared with Low licking/grooming mothers, suggesting differences in maternal resp...