Please join us for the next Developmental Science Seminar featuring Dr. Randy Corpuz, Assistant Professor of Psychology at UMass Boston.

All are welcome!

Date: Tuesday, February 15th
Time: 1:00-2:00 pm
Location: Zoom Meeting 916 8523 2011, Email Jen McDermott <jmm@umass.edu> for passcode

Human fathers and the psychobiology of the transition to first-time parenthood

Paternal care exists in only 5-10% of mammals and is largely absent in closely related primate relatives.  In humans, levels of paternal care are variable between and within cultures as well as across time. Knowledge on developmental contributions to and psychobiological functioning of paternal care are not well understood. In addition, illuminating the underlying (endocrine and epigenetic) mechanisms of father-offspring intergenerational transmission have been occluded by human models that include fathers as merely auxiliary and/or animal models that explore parenting using rodent species where paternal care is absent. In this talk, I will recap some of the findings in our lab’s recent work with a community sample of couples transitioning to first-time parenthood (n=229 families). This includes a finding that adds much-needed nuance to the conventional evolutionary/psychobiological understanding of how testosterone (T) relates to paternal care. Male T is a key hormone that modulates how one manages the mating/parenting tradeoff. Much of the mating literature on T has used univariate models--increase in T means more mating where lower T means more parenting. In our study using two measures of care, males with a less pronounced rise in T were better at direct care (i.e., time spent) --a finding that aligns with extant work on T. However, we found that higher increases in T--while related to less direct care--demonstrated increased quality of care during an activity where infants were challenged. I will also present recently published work on interesting correlations uncovered among all three (mother, father, infant) family members. I plan on providing preliminary ideas/speculation on “paternal effects” on infant development including growth (pace and tempo), endocrine functioning (e.g., infant T), and the utility of exploring epigenetic correlations.