Hug the Monkey

Sad Mothers Have Smaller, Weaker Babies

A new study of Bangladeshi mothers illuminates how a pregnant woman's emotional state influences the physical development of her baby.

Connection, Loss, Science and Mothering (Poem)

My friend Alan Phillips has written a poem that intertwines many of the things this blog is about -- love and attachment, labor and birth, mothering, oxytocin, connection.

It's a wonderful poem, and extra wonderful to me because it lets me see all these ideas and scientific studies in a different light.

Please check it out: Legend of My Birth.

Family Connection Boosts School Performance

We're beginning to understand more and more about how important early nurturing is for brain development. A secure home environment does more than build a baby's attachment system. It also can set the tone for how a child manages in the school environment.

According to Science Daily, University of Notre Dame professor of psychology Mark Cummings found that a family's relational style affected school behavior. The three styles he describes map to the attachment styles identified by John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth. They called them secure, anxious and dismissive; Cummings describes families as either cohesive, enmeshed or detached.

According to the article:

"Coming from a cohesive family, in which members tend to be warm and responsive to one another, where problems are resolved, and members cope well, increases the likelihood of children doing well in school," according to Cummings.

Skin Contact Reduces Risk of Postpartum Depression

We all need skin-to-skin contact with other humans. Period.

This contact is vital for newborns. Placing the newborn on her mother's chest as soon as possible after birth seems to trigger the reflex of crawling up to the breast and nursing.

A new study shows that ongoing skin-to-skin contact between mother and baby can increase attachment and reduce the risk of postpartum depression. According to the National Post:

The study also looked at how skin-to-skin contact affects babies’ cognitive functions and their relationships with their mothers.

And infant is also more aware when awake and sleeps more deeply while lying skin-to-skin on the mother’s chest, Dr. Bigelow says.

Read more: http://news.nationalpost.com/2010/07/09/canadian-study-skin-to-skin-cuddles-beneficial-for-new-moms/#ixzz0tJ2Pa3d4

Even a Phone Call Can Boost Oxytocin

This is a really neat study, reported by MSNBC.  Like a lot of the human oxytocin studies, it validates something that feels true already. In fact, this study, by Seth Pollak at the University of Wisconsin, validates a couple things:

First, talking to your mom on the phone can be just as powerful as being cuddled in person. Second, that technology-mediated interactions can feel just as "real" as face-to-face.

In the study, girls 7 to 12 years old had to solve math problems in front of judges, a stress-producing situation. Afterward, one group of girls got together with their moms for hugs and kisses. A second group called their mothers on the phone for verbal reassurance. The third group watched a heart-warming movie. 

The researchers measured the girls' blood levels of cortisol and oxytocin before the math and again after the cool-down. They found higher oxytocin and lower cortisol not only in girls who got cuddles but also in the girls who talked to their mothers on the phone.

According to MSNBC's Linda Carroll,

The study results may not apply to every mother-child pair. Pollak allows that when relationships are more complicated and there is tension involved, mom’s voice might not be so soothing.

“The reason we chose pre-pubertal children is that, for the most part, they still really do like to be comforted by their parents. As kids get older the relationship can get more complicated and strained.”

Pollak says he’d like to explore the effects of a mom’s voice in those complicated relationships in future research.

No kidding. I think my mother's voice probably would raise my cortisol levels.

What Should Boobs Be For?

Despite the pretty much incontrovertible evidence that breastfeeding is the best thing you can do for your baby, and despite all the public info campaigns, less than one-third of American babies enjoy the breast by three months of age.

In my new Psychology Today blog, I asked whether this was due to our culture's obsession with breasts as sexual signifiers. Do you want hot and perky boobs, or breasts that are soft and even stretch-marked -- plus a happy, healthy baby?

I just wish this was a no-brainer question. Please read the post at Psychology Today.

Spanking Teaches Kids to Hit

A new study found that spanking toddlers makes for more aggressive kindergartners.

As ABC News reports, three-year-olds who are spanked are more likely to bully, hit and engage in destructive or aggressive behavior.

The article quotes experts who say it's a simple case of modeling behavior: Your kids imitate your actions for better or worse. Digging down to the neurological level, between two and three years old is the time when the hippocampus is undergoing a growth spurt. Among other things, the hippocampus processes memories before they go into deep storage. In the memory store, they act as a sort of data bank that lets the brain compare stimuli coming in through the senses to previous experience in order to react appropriately.

So, it may be as simple as, "Anger? Hit!" Or, the spanking may have made the hypothalamus/pituitary/adrenal system, which reacts to stress, more reactive, leading to a stronger and more violent response.

Breastfeeding Could Save 1,000 Babies Per Year

A study in Pediatrics says that breastfeeding babies for the first six months could save 1,000 lives and billions of dollars per year.

According to CNN: 

"The United States incurs $13 billion in excess costs annually and suffers 911 preventable deaths per year because our breastfeeding rates fall far below medical recommendations," the report said.

Study co-author Melissa Bartick blames the United States' low rates of breastfeeding on hospitals, which don't do enough to encourage women to breastfeed. Moreover, they often delay or omit altogether placing the baby in skin-to-skin contact with the mother, a practice that stimulates the newborn's natural instinct to nurse.

Mothering More Essential than Food

A study of African families found that children who lost their mothers before age 15 tended to be shorter, left school sooner and were poorer over the course of their lives, an effect that was not correlated with losing a father.

Stefan Dercon, from the Centre for the Study of African Economies at Oxford University, said economic aid organizations typically target families who have lost the family breadwinner, typically the father.  But the mother's role in making sure children are fed and cared for may be even more important.

What Breast Milk Teaches Babies

Baby monkey get signals from their mothers' breast milk that help shape both their behavior and their temperament, a new study found.

Katie Hinde led a team from UC Davis and The Smithsonian Institution that looked at variations in the breast milk of rhesus macaque monkeys living in the outdoor enclosure at the California National Primate Research Center.

The experiment was based on the fact that mothers who are heavier and have raised previous offspring tend to produce more nutritious breast milk than new mothers or mothers who weigh less. This is true even though these monkey are all fed the same diet and live together in the same environment.

After analyzing the mothers' breast milk, the researchers looked at the behavior of their babies when they were three or four months old. According to Science Daily:

At 3 to 4 months old, each infant was temporarily separated from its mother and assessed according to its behavior and temperament. The study found that infants whose mothers had higher levels of milk energy soon after their birth coped more effectively (moved around more, explored more, ate and drank) and showed greater confidence (were more playful, curious and active). Infants whose mothers had lower milk energy had lower activity levels and were less confident when separated from their mother. Mothers and infants were reunited immediately after the experiment.

The scientists think that cues from the breast milk may discourage behaviors that are risky in times of scarcity. For example, if food is scarce, a young monkey shouldn't waste energy playing around.

By the way, there's pleny of reason to assume this would hold true for humans. In fact, rhesus monkeys are often used in research on human diseases and drugs. 

We know that a human baby's brain development is strongly influenced by experiences after birth. It certainly seems like nutritional cues could play a bigger role than we normally think.