Supportive Maternal and Paternal Caregiving and the Children's Emerging Effortful Control Abilities

Prediction of Youth Violence Perpetration by Parental Nurturing Over Time

Parental nurturing, including maternal and paternal caring and discussing ethics, is likely to predict violence perpetration in the youth negatively. This prediction stands on social bond theory, which specifies that parents and their bonding are crucial to curb violence perpetration. Nevertheless, the prediction is unclear from adolescence to young adulthood. To clarify this, the present study examines the effects over 6 years, using the panel data of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health on 3,947 U.S. youths. The examination controlled for prior violence perpetration and, thus, its confounding factors. Results showed that paternal nurturing but not maternal nurturing at Wave 1 and Wave 2 consistently displayed statistically significant inverse effects on violence perpetration at Wave 3. However, the significant effects were very weak. Paternal nurturing was very weakly inversely predictive of youth violence perpetration 6 years later. This conclusion implies that promoting paternal nurturing is slightly but not tremendously helpful to prevent violence perpetration in youth later. Meanwhile, practice can capitalize on the features of paternal bonding to deploy male nurturing and role modeling for such prevention.

Secure attachment to caregiver prevents adult depressive symptoms in a sex-dependent manner: A translational study

Although clinically relevant, evidence for a protective effect of early secure attachment against the development of depressive symptoms in adulthood is still inconsistent. This study used a translational approach to overcome this limitation. The analysis of a non-clinical adult population revealed a moderating effect of secure attachment on depressive symptoms in women only. Thus, we tested the causal link between early attachment with caregiver and adult depressive-like phenotypes in a mouse model of early adversities that is especially effective in females. Repeated cross fostering (RCF) in the first postnatal days prevented the development of pups' secure attachment with the caregiver as tested in a rodent version of the "strange situation"-the standard human test-induced depressive-like behaviors and altered activity of the ventral tegmental area dopamine neurons in adulthood. Finally, a stable alternative caregiver during the RCF experience prevented all these effects, modeling human "earned attachment."