The maternal-infant dyad has received the most research attention. However, fathers also can play an important role in infant development. An increasing number of studies focus on the biology of fatherhood and infant care behavior.
Ilanit Gordon along with colleagues in Israel and the United States examined the role of two central neuropeptides in paternal behavior during the first six months of infancy.
In their study, 43 fathers with a firstborn infant were studied when the infants were two and six months old. Fathers were rated on levels of emotional synchrony with their infant. Additionally, fathers were rated on levels of paternal involvement in exploratory play.
Paternal serum oxytocin and prolactin levels were obtained at both the two and six month time points. Oxytocin has been identified as a key neuropeptide in maternal-infant bonding, but it's role in fathers is unclear.
The authors found significant relationships between the two hormones and paternal-infant behavior. Paternal serum oxytocin levels correlated with emotional synchrony while serum prolactin levels correlated with coordinated exploratory play.
The authors note in their discussion that prolactin had previously been identified as important in animal studies of fathers but not in humans.
The mechanism of how these two hormones impact paternal behavior is unclear.
A recent study by Mascaro and colleagues suggest neuropeptides may influence specific brain regions known to be important in empathy (anterior insula and inferior frontal gyrus).
In their study, a series of fathers were studied for responsiveness to the cries of children between one and two years of age. Brain regional activation levels were compared across a paternal responsiveness to infant cries.
The key finding in this study was a nonlinear relationship between anterior insula activation and paternal responsiveness. Fathers with a moderate level of activation outperformed fathers with low or high levels of activation.
These types of studies are important. They may hold promise for improving parental attachment to their children. Additionally, they may provide some insight into the biology of child abuse and neglect. These first studies are limited correlational design studies but they add evidence of the need for additional more complex and sophisticated research.
Readers with more interest in these two studies can get more information by clicking on the PMID links in the citations below.
Image of brain amygdala is a screen shot from the iPad app 3D Brain.
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Gordon I, Zagoory-Sharon O, Leckman JF, & Feldman R (2010). Prolactin, Oxytocin, and the development of paternal behavior across the first six months of fatherhood. Hormones and behavior, 58 (3), 513-8 PMID: 20399783
Mascaro JS, Hackett PD, Gouzoules H, Lori A, & Rilling JK (2014). Behavioral and genetic correlates of the neural response to infant crying among human fathers. Social cognitive and affective neuroscience, 9 (11), 1704-12 PMID: 24336349
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