Elsevier

Biological Psychiatry

Volume 68, Issue 4, 15 August 2010, Pages 377-382
Biological Psychiatry

Archival Report
Oxytocin and the Development of Parenting in Humans

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsych.2010.02.005Get rights and content

Background

The nonapeptide oxytocin (OT) has been repeatedly implicated in processes of parent-infant bonding in animal models; yet, its role in the development of human parenting has received less attention and no research has addressed the involvement of OT in the transition to fatherhood.

Methods

Using a prospective longitudinal design, 160 cohabitating mothers and fathers and their firstborn infant were visited at home during the first postpartum weeks and again at 6 months postpartum. Mothers' and fathers' plasma OT was analyzed at each time point with enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay methodology. Interactions between each parent and the infant were observed in the postpartum and microcoded for parenting behavior.

Results

Overall, parental OT increased across the study period and there were no differences between maternal and paternal OT at each time point. Oxytocin showed high intraindividual stability across the first 6 months of parenting and the OT levels of husband and wife were interrelated at both assessments. Maternal OT was related to the amount of affectionate parenting behaviors, including “motherese” vocalizations, the expression of positive affect, and affectionate touch, whereas paternal OT correlated with the degree of stimulatory parenting behaviors, including proprioceptive contact, tactile stimulation, and object presentation.

Conclusions

Results are the first to describe plasma OT levels in new fathers and mothers across the transition to parenthood in relation to maternal and paternal typical parenting behaviors. These data may provide a normative basis for the study of parenting under conditions of high risk.

Section snippets

Participants

Eighty cohabitating couples and their firstborn infant (n = 240 participants) participated in the study. Of these, 128 parents (66 mothers and 62 fathers) were seen again when the infant was approximately 6 months old (M = 24.8 weeks, SD = 4.38). Fathers' age averaged 29.45 years (SD = 3.87) and education averaged 15.7 years (SD = 2.85), and mothers' age averaged 27.24 years (SD = 3.67) and education averaged 16.08 years (SD = 2.22). Parents were all residing in central Israel, were of middle

Oxytocin

Maternal and paternal plasma OT levels in the second and sixth postpartum months are presented in Table 1. As seen, OT levels are consistent with previous studies in adults using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay methodology (27, 28, 30). Figure 1 illustrates frequency distributions of OT levels in mothers and fathers during the first and second visits. Prior to data analysis, OT levels were log transformed and outliers higher than three standard deviations of the mean in both time points were

Discussion

Results of the present study provide the first normative data on the distributions of OT in human mothers and fathers across the first months of parenthood. The data point to similarities between the OT levels of mothers and fathers and show that during the early phases of parenthood, peripheral OT levels in cohabitating parents are interrelated. Finally, the findings point to gender-specific associations between parental OT and parenting behaviors during dyadic interactions in the first

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