Parental Care Flashcards
child rearing
process of bringing up children
Early 20th Century View of Childrearing
- focus on hygiene, due to new knowledge of disease
- high infant mortality rates due to communicable diseases (cholera, influenza)
neglects emotional development
Psychological View of Childrearing
- behaviourist movement, behaviour is entirely shaped through interactions
- engage children with activities during day to stay out of trouble
- love was a reaction that would lead to “over” cuddling
- doting parents endow their child with weakness
Harlow Study of Love
seperated monkeys from mothers didn’t survive long
- baby monkeys on wire floors lived shorter than on cloth floors
- baby monkey spent more time on cloth mother than wire mother, even when the wire mother had nourishment
- requires motherly love
Attachment Theory
proposing that attachment can be understood in an evolutionary context, caregiver provides safety and security for the infant, attachment is adaptive as it enhances the infant’s chance of survival
Still Face Experiment
- babies react just as strongly to their fathers “still face”
- young children learn the foundations of later skills by gathering information from the world
- quality of parenting relationships, not the family structure, matters for most children
Estrogen and Progesterone during Pregnancy
- progesterone establishes placenta, strengthens pelvic wall muscles, stimulates growth of blood vessels
- estrogen helps uterus grow, maintain lining
Oxytocin during Pregnancy
- levels rise at the start of labour, stimulating contractions of uterine muscle
- fosters maternal behaviour
Dampened Stress System during Pregnancy
- necessary for mother leave offspring for period of time to get food or other resources
- mothers respond differently to stress than non-mothers
Maternal Stress
Pregnancy
- stress and anxiety negatively impact birth outcomes
- can compromise postnatal infant development
Postpartum
- stress and anxiety increase the risk of postpartum depression and anxiety (low mood, fatigue and restlessness)
- can compromise mother infant relationship
Variations of Parental Care
- Indirect care: food, protection (Chimpanzees)
- Biparental
- Sole Caregiver (Titi Monkey)
Cooperative Breeding Hypothesis
- challenges maternal instinct
- high levels of non-maternal care
- fathers and other non-mother people directly provide care to babies
- skills for care of offspring are not restricted to mothers
Recognising Crying Baby
- parents spending at least 4 hrs with the children recording 90% recognition rate
- experience is more important than maternal instinct
Hormonal Changes during Pregnancy for Men
- decline in testosterone
- less hostile behaviour with infant
- more help around house
- possibly relating to psychological changes rather than hormonal
Play as a Deferred Evolutionary Adaptation
- helps socialisation skills and emotional regulation
- learn feelings like frustration and how to deal with them
- learn competition, sharing, winning and losing
Oxytocin and Parenting
- increased in both parents from first postpartum weeks
- higher in mothers that displayed more affectionate interactions
- fathers felt oxytocin equal to mothers in their interactions despite them being different (same underlying mechanisms)
Language and Cognitive Skills
- fathers talk to their young children with more questions that begin the 5 W’s
- more requests for clarification, repeat and revise their utterance, preparing them for preschool and school
The Grandmother Effect
adaptationist theory for why human female life span extends beyond fertility
- whale (orca) offspring live with their mothers for their entire lives
- at the time of the grandmother death their likelihood of survival for the descendants of the grandmother drop
- the steepest drop in survival was when a post-reproductive female died
this suggests that the function of the survival after fertility relates to the support in group survival, collecting food and resources
Types of Parental Support
physical, emotional, social and intellectual
Medical View of Child Rearing
- urged parents to keep a clean house
- avoid physical contact with child
- babies under 6 months should not be played with as they are made irritable and sleep badly
Mother Influencing Emotional Development
- placed infant into environment with novel objects
- baby uses the mother as a secure base from which to explore the world
- when mother was taken away, the infant would be in fear
Modern Views on Parenthood
focus on social, emotional and cognitive development
Strange Situation Test
measures the security of an attachment in infants
20 min participant observation
Stage One: together (understanding baby’s confidence to explore)
Stage Two: baby’s response to unfamiliar newcomer
Stage Three: baby’s response to being left by the mother
Stage Four: baby’s response to mothers return
Stage Five: together
Stage Six: baby alone
Stage Seven: baby with stranger
Stage Eight: together
researchers measured:
- proximity + contact seeking
- contact maintaining
- avoidance of proximity + contact
- resistance to contact + comforting
- exploratory baby
Three Attachment Types
Secure, Ambivalent, Avoidant
Secure Attachment
- show distress when separated from mother
- avoidant of stranger, unless accompanied by mother
- happy to see mother after separation
70 percent of infants
Ambivalent Attachment
- show intense distress when separated from mother
- significant fear of stranger
- approach mother but reject after separation
15 percent of infants
Avoidant Attachment
- show no interest when separated from mother
- play happily with stranger
- ignore mother after separation
15 percent of infants
Main and Solomon (1990) added Attachment Type
Disorganised Attachment
- inconsistent attachment behaviour
- ~4 percent of infants
Caregiver Sensitivity Hypothesis
Differences in infants’ attachment styles are dependent on the mother’s behaviour during critical periods of development
Effects of non-responsiveness on Baby
- causes stress
- only a problem in long spurts
Serve and Return
Serves an interaction to an adult e.g. point
Return is the parental response
- crucial parenting skill to develop skills like initiation, communication and emotional connection
Talking Differences between Father and Mother
- fathers are more challenging in the way they talk to toddlers
- more requests for clarification
Differences in Brain Structure between Mother and Virgin Rats
- function and structure of hippocampus change after pregnancy and motherhood to support better learning
- mothers have more protrusions on nerve cells called spines (enable connections to other brain cells)
Dam Retrieval in Rats
- seperated pups emit distress (dams) to be found and retrieved
- oxytocin is responsible for this learning
- not applicable in virgin rats but it is learnable behaviour
Dam Retrieval in Rats - Left Auditory Cortex
- stores dam retrieval
- if blocked with inhibitory neurotransmitter, restricts pup retrieval and baby is ignored
Stress Response of Mothers VS Non-Mothers
- reduced stress reactivity in mothers (lower rises in corticosterone)
- necessary adaptation for mothers to leave pups for resources
human:
- stress reactivity further reduced during lactation
- stress inhibits learning, effecting the mother’s assurance of baby’s survival