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PubMed2001

International Child Care Practices Study: infant sleep position and parental smoking.

UNLABELLED: The International Child Care Practices Study (ICCPS) collected descriptive data from 21 centres in 17 countries. In this report, data are presented on the key sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) risk factors of infant sleep position and parental smoking. METHODS: Using a standardised protocol, parents of infants were surveyed at birth by interview, and at 3 months of age mainly by postal questionnaire. Data entry and descriptive analysis were undertaken with Epi Info. Centres were grouped according to geographic location. Also indicated was the level of SIDS awareness in the community, i.e. whether any campaigns or messages to "reduce the risks of SIDS" were available at the time of the survey. RESULTS: Birth interview data were available for 5488 individual families, and 4656 (85%) returned questionnaires at 3 months. Overall, 52.5% (95% CI, 43.5-61.3) of infants were placed in the supine or back sleep position, 37.8% (95% CI, 30.6-45.7) in the side position and 13% (95% CI, 9.3-17.9) in the prone or front position. The prevalence of supine sleeping ranged from 14% (Santiago, Chile) to 89% (Tokyo/Yokohama, Japan). The prevalence of reported smoking was between 0% and 34% for mothers and 10% and 64% for fathers. In samples from Western countries, there was a trend for rates of maternal smoking to be similar to paternal smoking, whereas in other samples, low rates of maternal smoking contrasted with high rates of paternal smoking. CONCLUSIONS: These data highlight considerable variations and interesting patterns in the prevalence of these two important SIDS risk factors in these diverse samples. Impressive differences in rates of smoking within and between these communities may reflect different stages of the inevitable progression of the smoking epidemic, but may also provide some encouragement that reduction in smoking rates, in both mothers and fathers, is possible.

Global Health↗
PubMed1987

"Resource" exchange in the biparental California mouse (Peromyscus californicus): water transfer from pups to parents.

Mammalian mothers provide water to their young via milk. Rodent mothers reclaim much of this water by licking the anogenital areas of their pups, stimulating reflexive urination, and consuming the pups' urine. Male rodents do not provide milk (hence water) to the young, but in some species male parents may nevertheless lick their pups. We determined the amount of water transfer from pups to mothers and fathers in the biparental California mouse, Peromyscus californicus, by injecting 5-, 10-, 20-, and 30-day-old pups with tritiated water and measuring the radioactive label in maternal and paternal plasma after 24 hr of interaction with their litter. On Days 5 and 10 mothers obtained more pup urine than did fathers. Parents consumed equivalent amounts of pup urine on Days 20 and 30. Mothers engaged in more pup anogenital licking than did fathers, which accounted for the difference in pup urine consumption. Salt appetite controls in part, pup anogenital licking in lactating rats (Gubernick & Alberts, 1983). Salt appetite was not implicated in the modulation of anogenital licking in the California mouse because the mice failed to display a salt appetite. Licking of young and urine consumption are not dependent solely on the bidirectional exchange of water between the dam and her offspring.

Animals↗
PubMed1997

Paternal care reduces maternal hyperthermia in Djungarian hamsters (Phodopus campbelli).

Throughout lactation, maternal body temperature, nest attendance, activity level and reproductive success of solitary female Djungarian hamsters housed at the recommended ambient temperature of 23 degrees C (Canadian Council on Animal Care guidelines) were compared with those of paired females housed at the same temperature and with solitary females housed at the natural burrow temperature of 18 degrees C. As expected, cooler ambient temperature improved pup survival and weaning weight. Likewise, paternal presence largely compensated for the poor pup growth typical at 23 degrees C. However, the mechanisms were not the same. Females at reduced ambient temperatures were as hyperthermic as females at the higher temperature and spent the same proportion of their day at very high body temperatures. However, the steeper temperature gradient available for passive cooling allowed those females to enhance maternal care by shortening their nest bout absences. In contrast, body temperatures of paired females were tightly regulated compared to the hyperthermia of solitary females and rarely included the highest body temperatures. This alleviation of maternal hyperthermia was not achieved through a reduction in nest attendance. Therefore, maternal hyperthermia in Djungarian hamsters is not essential and may be considered a substantial cost to females when males are not present.

Animals↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Forgotten fathers: an exploratory study of mothers' report of drug and alcohol problems among fathers of urban newborns.

OBJECTIVES: To investigate the relationship between fathers' substance use and maternal and paternal background characteristics, infant outcome measures, and fathers' frequency of caregiving at 6 months postpartum in a cohort of cocaine-exposed and unexposed infants. METHODS: Secondary analysis was completed on data collected through interviews and medical records obtained from 252 mothers participating in an ongoing longitudinal study of cocaine-exposed and unexposed mothers and infants. RESULTS: By maternal report, 22% of the mothers reported that the father of the baby had a history of a drug and/or alcohol problem. Mothers who were classified as heavier cocaine users were 1.6 times more likely than lighter cocaine users and 2.6 times more likely than nonusers to report that the father of the baby had a history of a drug and/or alcohol problem. There was a significant relationship between the father's reported history of a drug and/or alcohol problem and the mother's history of mental and physical abuse during pregnancy; P=.03, P=.001, respectively). Fathers with a history of a drug and/or alcohol problem were more likely to have been in jail (P=.001) and to be unemployed at the time of delivery (P=.04) than fathers without a history of a drug and/or alcohol problem. On bivariate analysis, newborns of fathers with a history by mother's report of a drug or alcohol problem had significantly lower mean birthweights (3003 vs. 3213 g, P=.005) and lengths (47.5 vs. 48.6 cm, P=.01) than newborns of fathers with no such history. However after control for mothers' prenatal use of cocaine, marijuana, cigarettes, and alcohol and for infant gender and gestational age, the differences were not statistically significant (P=.15 for both measurements). Head circumference did not differ significantly between groups in either bivariate or multivariate analyses. Fathers with a reported history of drug and/or alcohol problems were more likely to care for the baby at least once a week than fathers without such a history of a drug and/or alcohol problem at 6 months postpartum. CONCLUSIONS: Childhood cognitive and behavioral outcomes currently attributed to maternal substance abuse may also reflect the genetic, teratogenic, and social influence of fathers. Within an urban, at-risk population, it is important to inquire about the father's participation in the day-to-day life of the infant and to address the father's as well as the mother's possible need for substance abuse treatment and support in parenting.

Alcohol Drinking↗
PubMed2005

Risk of childhood germ cell tumors in association with parental smoking and drinking.

BACKGROUND: The etiology of childhood germ cell tumors (GCT) is not well understood. The Children's Oncology Group conducted the largest case-control study of childhood GCT to investigate whether parental exposures to smoking and alcohol contributed to the disease. METHODS: Cases included 274 children with GCT diagnosed between January 1, 1993 and December 31, 2001 who were age <15 years. Controls (n=421) were selected by random digit dialing and were frequency matched based on gender, age (+/-1 year), and geographic area. Exposure information was collected from subjects' parents using independent telephone interviews and self-administrated questionnaires. RESULTS: No association was found between parental smoking or drinking alcohol and risk of childhood GCT (for smoking: odds ratio [OR]=1.0, 95% confidence interval [95% CI], 0.8-1.3 and OR = 1.2, 95% CI, 0.9-1.5, for mothers and fathers, respectively; for drinking: OR=0.9, 95% CI, 0.7-1.2 and OR=1.0, 95% CI, 0.8-1.3, for mothers and fathers, respectively). No significant trend was observed for length of maternal exposure to passive smoking during the index pregnancy and GCT risk (for total subject: P=0.77; boys: P=0.52; girls: P=0.93). CONCLUSIONS: The authors found no evidence that childhood GCT was related to prenatal exposure to parental cigarette smoking, alcohol drinking, and maternal passive smoking.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1995

Preoptic area lesions disrupt prolactin-induced parental feeding behavior in ring doves.

The role of the preoptic area (POA) in mediating PRL-induced parental responsiveness toward young was investigated in nonbreeding-doves with previous breeding experience. Birds received microinjections of the axon-sparing excitotoxin ibotenic acid to destroy neuronal cell bodies in the POA. Sham-lesioned controls received POA injections of vehicle. Upon recovery, birds received subcutaneous injections of ovine PRL for 7 days, followed by a 2.5-hr test with a foster squab to assess parental responsiveness. Lesioned doves displayed significantly fewer parental feeding invitations, parental regurgitation feeding bouts, and total regurgitation movements than did sham-lesioned animals. As a result, nestlings given to sham-lesioned birds gained significantly more weight than those given to lesioned birds. A significant negative correlation was obtained between the extent of POA damage induced by ibotenic acid infusion and the amount of parental behavior displayed by lesioned animals. These deficits in parental behavior were apparently a selective effect of POA damage because another PRL-mediated behavior, hyperphagia, was unaffected. The results suggest that the POA is an important component of the neural circuitry underlying the expression of PRL-induced parental feeding behavior in non-breeding ring doves. Because elevated PRL levels are temporally associated with parental activity during the breeding cycle, these results also implicate the POA in the spontaneous display of parental feeding activity that occurs naturally at the time of hatching.

Animals↗
PubMed1996

Inhibitory effects of naltrexone on the induction of parental behavior in juvenile rats.

Juvenile rats are rapidly responsive to pups soon after weaning, displaying maternal-like behaviors such as licking, retrieving, grouping, and crouching over pups. As juveniles reach 30 days of age, they become less responsive to pups and show increased latencies to display the same parental behaviors. In light of previous data implicating opiates in the display of ongoing maternal behavior, we administered naltrexone, a long-acting opiate antagonist, beginning 5 and 9 days prior to and continuing throughout the period of behavioral testing, which started at 26 or 30 days of age. Male and female juveniles treated with 10 mg/kg of naltrexone SC for 9 days (days 21 to 29 of age) prior to and during behavioral testing (days 30 to 37) showed longer latencies to retrieve, group, and crouch over pups than did the vehicle-injected controls. These results suggest that opioids may have a stimulatory role in parental behavior during this prepubertal period.

Aging↗
PubMed2006

Influence of paternal genotypes on F1 behaviors: lessons from several mouse strains.

F1 and F2 mouse hybrids derived from different parental strains are becoming a useful tool in behavioral research, underlining the importance of their in-depth behavioral phenotyping. 129S1/SvImJ (S1), C57BL/6 (B6), NMRI (N) and BALB/c (BC) mice are commonly used in behavioral neuroscience, demonstrating marked behavioral differences. Here, we assess behavioral phenotypes of male mice of S1 and several hybrid strains (S1B6, S1N, S1BC) in a battery of behavioral tests, including the open field, novel odor exposure, novelty-induced grooming, horizontal rod (Suok) and the elevated plus maze tests. In addition, we assessed aggression and social barbering in these strains. Overall, the substantial differences observed here between these strains allow us to determine the influence of different genetic backgrounds on mouse behaviors, and more fully understand how different strain-specific behaviors overlap in the F1 progeny. Our results imply complex interplay between parental genotypes in anxiety, activity, grooming, aggression and barbering of their F1 progeny, further confirming the utility of F1 hybrids in behavioral neurogenetics.

Analysis of Variance↗
PubMed2006

Elevated prolactin levels immediately precede decisions to babysit by male meerkat helpers.

Recent studies suggest that decisions to care for the offspring of others in societies of cooperative vertebrates may have a hormonal basis. The crucial question of whether changes in hormone levels immediately precede or merely follow bouts of offspring care, however, remains largely unanswered. Here, we show that in wild groups of cooperatively breeding meerkats, male helpers that decided to babysit for the day had significantly higher levels of prolactin, coupled with lower levels of cortisol, before initiating a babysitting session compared with similarly aged individuals that decided to forage. In addition, these hormonal differences disappeared over the course of the day, suggesting that hormone levels changed in a fundamentally different way in meerkats that babysat versus those that foraged. In contrast, long-term contributions to babysitting were not significantly associated with plasma levels of prolactin, cortisol, or testosterone in individual male helpers. Our results show, for the first time, that elevated levels of prolactin may immediately precede bouts of helping behavior but differ from recent findings on the same study population in which plasma levels of cortisol, but not prolactin, were significantly and positively associated with rates of pup feeding by male helpers. Together, these results lend significant weight to the idea that decisions to help in cooperative vertebrates have a hormonal basis, although different hormones appear to be associated with different types of care.

Altruism↗
PubMed1996

A genetic study of maternal and paternal ratings of problem behaviors in 3-year-old twins.

Genetic and environmental influences on problem behaviors were studied in 3-year-old twins. Fathers' and mothers' ratings of problem behaviors in twins-236 monozygotic (MZ) girls, 210 MZ boys, 238 dizygotic (DZ) girls, 265 DZ boys, and 409 DZ opposite sex pairs- were obtained with the Child Behavior Checklist for Ages 2-3 (T.M. Achenbach, 1992). Twin correlations and results from a model fitting approach showed that genetic, shared environmental, and nonshared environmental influences accounted on average for about 64%, 9%, and 27% of the variance. Although shared environmental influences were small for most scales, they were important for Total Problems and somewhat larger for Externalizing than for Internalizing behaviors. Significant sex differences in genetic and environmental influences and evidence for sibling contrast effects were found for the Overactive scale.

Child Behavior Disorders↗
PubMed1996

The European study of assisted reproduction families: family functioning and child development.

Findings are presented of a European study (conducted in the UK, Italy, Spain and The Netherlands) of family relationships and the social and emotional development of children in families created as a result of the two most widely used reproductive technologies, in-vitro fertilization (IVF) and donor insemination (DI), in comparison with control groups of families with naturally conceived child and adoptive families. Mothers of children conceived by assisted reproduction expressed greater warmth towards their child, were more emotionally involved with their child, interacted more with their child and reported less stress associated with parenting than mothers who conceived their child naturally. Similarly, assisted reproduction fathers were found to interact more with their child and to contribute more to parenting than fathers with a naturally conceived child. With respect to the children themselves, no group differences were found for either the presence of psychological disorder or for children's perceptions of the quality of family relationships. The findings relating to the quality of parenting and the socio-emotional development of the children were similar in each of the four countries studied.

Adoption↗
PubMed2006

Life history evolution in cichlids 1: revisiting the evolution of life histories in relation to parental care.

Empirical links between egg size and duration of parental care in fishes have generated a considerable amount of theory concerning life history evolution. However, to date, this link has not been investigated in relation to other important life-history traits such as clutch size and body size, or while controlling for shared ancestry between species. We provide the first phylogenetically based tests using a database with information on egg size, clutch size, body size and care duration in cichlid fishes (Cichlidae). Multiple regression analyses, based on independent contrasts on both the species and the genus level, showed that clutch size is the variable most closely related to duration of care. This pattern appeared to be driven by post-hatch care relationships. Our results show that, contrary to expectation, there is no positive link between egg size and care duration in Cichlidae. Instead, greater reproductive output through increased clutch size investment appears to have coevolved with greater care of offspring. We suggest that re-evaluation of the generality of current models of the evolution of egg size under parental care in fishes is needed.

Animals↗
PubMed2005

Relaxation of selection with equalization of parental contributions in conservation programs: an experimental test with Drosophila melanogaster.

Equalization of parental contributions is one of the most simple and widely recognized methods to maintain genetic diversity in conservation programs, as it halves the rate of increase in inbreeding and genetic drift. It has, however, the negative side effect of implying a reduced intensity of natural selection so that deleterious genes are less efficiently removed from the population with possible negative consequences on the reproductive capacity of the individuals. Theoretical results suggest that the lower fitness resulting from equalization of family sizes relative to that for free contribution schemes is expected to be substantial only for relatively large population sizes and after many generations. We present a long-term experiment with Drosophila melanogaster, comparing the fitness performance of lines maintained with equalization of contributions (EC) and others maintained with no management (NM), allowing for free matings and contributions from parents. Two (five) replicates of size N = 100 (20) individuals of each type of line were maintained for 38 generations. As expected, EC lines retained higher gene diversity and allelic richness for four microsatellite markers and a higher heritability for sternopleural bristle number. Measures of life-history traits, such as egg-to-adult viability, mating success, and global fitness declined with generations, but no significant differences were observed between EC and NM lines. Our results, therefore, provide no evidence to suggest that equalization of family sizes entails a disadvantage on the reproductive capacity of conserved populations in comparison with no management procedures, even after long periods of captivity.

Animals↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Coping and confidence among parents of children with diabetes.

Sixty-two mothers and 45 fathers of children with diabetes completed questionnaires to assess their confidence to manage the disease and treatment. Implications of parental confidence for attitudes to (1) child-rearing, (2) coping and (3) perceived restrictions of the disease were considered. Mothers and fathers differed in reported child-rearing behaviours and strategies for coping. More confident fathers reported that information was helpful in coping with the disease, while more confident mothers reported that support from the family was more helpful. Predictors of children's locus of control scores differed between mothers and fathers. However, children expressed more external locus of control beliefs where parents believed their children to be more restricted.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed1976

The culture of youth and drug abuse in some European countries.

Old patterns of education are being replaced in some European countries by the different ideological norms of the various groups composing modern society. Youth has lost the sure feeling to belong to a certain culture. Drug abuse primarily represents an attempt to get over this insecurity. In an inquiry in Swiss military schools, recruits were questioned about drug and alcohol use and cigarette smoking, and this was related to the home situation. Juveniles who do not have enough affective support in the primary group seem to be more subject to the conflicts of norms going on in our society. Three general factors seem to be responsible for the drug use among juveniles: (1) the family situation of childhood, (2) the conflicts of norms of the society in which they are involved, and (3) the milieu provocation.

Adolescent↗