Parental Care

Question 1

child rearing

Answer 1

process of bringing up children

Question 2

Early 20th Century View of Childrearing

Answer 2

• focus on hygiene, due to new knowledge of disease
• high infant mortality rates due to communicable diseases (cholera, influenza)

neglects emotional development

Question 3

Psychological View of Childrearing

Answer 3

• behaviourist movement, behaviour is entirely shaped through interactions
• engage children with activities during day to stay out of trouble
• love was a reaction that would lead to “over” cuddling
• doting parents endow their child with weakness

Question 4

Harlow Study of Love

Answer 4

seperated monkeys from mothers didn’t survive long
- baby monkeys on wire floors lived shorter than on cloth floors

• baby monkey spent more time on cloth mother than wire mother, even when the wire mother had nourishment
• requires motherly love

Question 5

Attachment Theory

Answer 5

proposing that attachment can be understood in an evolutionary context, caregiver provides safety and security for the infant, attachment is adaptive as it enhances the infant’s chance of survival

Question 6

Still Face Experiment

Answer 6

• babies react just as strongly to their fathers “still face”
• young children learn the foundations of later skills by gathering information from the world
• quality of parenting relationships, not the family structure, matters for most children

Question 7

Estrogen and Progesterone during Pregnancy

Answer 7

• progesterone establishes placenta, strengthens pelvic wall muscles, stimulates growth of blood vessels
• estrogen helps uterus grow, maintain lining

Question 8

Oxytocin during Pregnancy

Answer 8

• levels rise at the start of labour, stimulating contractions of uterine muscle
• fosters maternal behaviour

Question 9

Dampened Stress System during Pregnancy

Answer 9

• necessary for mother leave offspring for period of time to get food or other resources
• mothers respond differently to stress than non-mothers

Question 10

Maternal Stress

Answer 10

Pregnancy
- stress and anxiety negatively impact birth outcomes
- can compromise postnatal infant development

Postpartum
- stress and anxiety increase the risk of postpartum depression and anxiety (low mood, fatigue and restlessness)
- can compromise mother infant relationship

Question 11

Variations of Parental Care

Answer 11

• Indirect care: food, protection (Chimpanzees)
• Biparental
• Sole Caregiver (Titi Monkey)

Question 12

Cooperative Breeding Hypothesis

Answer 12

• challenges maternal instinct
• high levels of non-maternal care
• fathers and other non-mother people directly provide care to babies
• skills for care of offspring are not restricted to mothers

Question 13

Recognising Crying Baby

Answer 13

• parents spending at least 4 hrs with the children recording 90% recognition rate
• experience is more important than maternal instinct

Question 14

Hormonal Changes during Pregnancy for Men

Answer 14

• decline in testosterone
• less hostile behaviour with infant
• more help around house
• possibly relating to psychological changes rather than hormonal

Question 15

Play as a Deferred Evolutionary Adaptation

Answer 15

• helps socialisation skills and emotional regulation
• learn feelings like frustration and how to deal with them
• learn competition, sharing, winning and losing

Question 16

Oxytocin and Parenting

Answer 16

• increased in both parents from first postpartum weeks
• higher in mothers that displayed more affectionate interactions
• fathers felt oxytocin equal to mothers in their interactions despite them being different (same underlying mechanisms)

Question 17

Language and Cognitive Skills

Answer 17

• fathers talk to their young children with more questions that begin the 5 W’s
• more requests for clarification, repeat and revise their utterance, preparing them for preschool and school

Question 18

The Grandmother Effect

Answer 18

adaptationist theory for why human female life span extends beyond fertility
- whale (orca) offspring live with their mothers for their entire lives
- at the time of the grandmother death their likelihood of survival for the descendants of the grandmother drop
- the steepest drop in survival was when a post-reproductive female died

this suggests that the function of the survival after fertility relates to the support in group survival, collecting food and resources

Question 19

Types of Parental Support

Answer 19

physical, emotional, social and intellectual

Question 20

Medical View of Child Rearing

Answer 20

• urged parents to keep a clean house
• avoid physical contact with child
• babies under 6 months should not be played with as they are made irritable and sleep badly

Question 21

Mother Influencing Emotional Development

Answer 21

• placed infant into environment with novel objects
• baby uses the mother as a secure base from which to explore the world
• when mother was taken away, the infant would be in fear

Question 22

Modern Views on Parenthood

Answer 22

focus on social, emotional and cognitive development

Question 23

Strange Situation Test

Answer 23

measures the security of an attachment in infants
20 min participant observation

Stage One: together (understanding baby’s confidence to explore)
Stage Two: baby’s response to unfamiliar newcomer
Stage Three: baby’s response to being left by the mother
Stage Four: baby’s response to mothers return
Stage Five: together
Stage Six: baby alone
Stage Seven: baby with stranger
Stage Eight: together

researchers measured:
- proximity + contact seeking
- contact maintaining
- avoidance of proximity + contact
- resistance to contact + comforting
- exploratory baby

Question 24

Three Attachment Types

Answer 24

Secure, Ambivalent, Avoidant

Question 25

Secure Attachment

Answer 25

- show distress when separated from mother - avoidant of stranger, unless accompanied by mother - happy to see mother after separation 70 percent of infants

Question 26

Ambivalent Attachment

Answer 26

- show intense distress when separated from mother - significant fear of stranger - approach mother but reject after separation 15 percent of infants

Question 27

Avoidant Attachment

Answer 27

- show no interest when separated from mother - play happily with stranger - ignore mother after separation 15 percent of infants

Question 28

Main and Solomon (1990) added Attachment Type

Answer 28

Disorganised Attachment - inconsistent attachment behaviour - ~4 percent of infants

Question 29

Caregiver Sensitivity Hypothesis

Answer 29

Differences in infants' attachment styles are dependent on the mother's behaviour during critical periods of development

Question 30

Effects of non-responsiveness on Baby

Answer 30

- causes stress - only a problem in long spurts

Question 31

Serve and Return

Answer 31

Serves an interaction to an adult e.g. point Return is the parental response - crucial parenting skill to develop skills like initiation, communication and emotional connection

Question 32

Talking Differences between Father and Mother

Answer 32

- fathers are more challenging in the way they talk to toddlers - more requests for clarification

Question 33

Differences in Brain Structure between Mother and Virgin Rats

Answer 33

- function and structure of hippocampus change after pregnancy and motherhood to support better learning - mothers have more protrusions on nerve cells called spines (enable connections to other brain cells)

Question 34

Dam Retrieval in Rats

Answer 34

- seperated pups emit distress (dams) to be found and retrieved - oxytocin is responsible for this learning - not applicable in virgin rats but it is learnable behaviour

Question 35

Dam Retrieval in Rats - Left Auditory Cortex

Answer 35

- stores dam retrieval - if blocked with inhibitory neurotransmitter, restricts pup retrieval and baby is ignored

Question 36

Stress Response of Mothers VS Non-Mothers

Answer 36

- reduced stress reactivity in mothers (lower rises in corticosterone) - necessary adaptation for mothers to leave pups for resources human: - stress reactivity further reduced during lactation - stress inhibits learning, effecting the mother's assurance of baby's survival