• Mothers and fathers show similar patterns of brain activity when exposed to stimuli from their infant.
• The observed brain changes occur in areas involved with reward, motivation, and empathy, and are associated with hormonal changes in moms and dads.
• Brain systems may reflect parental potential available to human fathers and other mammalian fathers when they are more involved in caregiving.

Fathers’ brains respond when they are exposed to stimuli from their baby

The neurobiology of fatherhood in humans seems to be similar to the neurobiology of motherhood, involving two brain systems – a “motivational” system that refers to the drive to nurture offspring, and an “empathy” system that refers to the ability to understand the thoughts and feelings of others.

Fathers shown pictures of their own newborns experienced more activation of empathy and reward systems than when shown pictures of unknown newborns.

For example, brain responses of mothers and fathers to pictures or videos of their infants overlap. Increased activity is found in parts of the brain associated with reward, motivation, and empathy. In one study, increased activity in brain reward systems also correlated with the father’s active engagement in caregiving, as reported by the mother.

In another study, fathers shown pictures of their own newborns experienced more activation of empathy and reward systems than fathers shown pictures of unknown newborns. In another study, a new father’s self-reported positive thoughts about his infant correlated with reward system activation in response to his infant’s cries. Future research will look at other brain responses in fathers – to children’s laughter, speech, and movements.

Brain changes are connected to hormonal changes activated by involved parenting

There is growing evidence that these changes are linked with the hormones that are produced when fathers care for their children. The key difference between human mothers and fathers is the degree of variability in fatherhood. After birth, most mothers are actively involved in parenting, but fatherhood is activated only when circumstances require or allow it, and even then it is highly variable.

When fatherhood is activated, neural processes take place in fathers that are similar to those in mothers.

In societies with small family units living apart from extended family networks and in families with scarce resources, paternal involvement is necessary. When fatherhood is activated, neural processes take place in fathers that are similar to those in mothers. It is as if a parental potential resides in all humans and is activated when circumstances require.

In the wild, fathers are actively engaged in caring for their young in only 5% of mammalian species (e.g., some primates, rodents, and canids, in particular). As in humans, this paternal behavior involves similar brain processes as those involved with maternal behavior. But when animals are held in captivity and in non-natural conditions, fathers can become more active. This suggests that parental brain systems may exist in many male mammals, and that they can be activated when an active paternal role is desirable or possible.

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Put simply, gentle parenting  is placing a greater value on parent’s understanding and sensitivity instead of traditional punishments. The three primary components of a Gentle Parenting approach are Empathy, understanding and respect.

Read on to gain a comprehensive understanding from our author, Liza Ware.

Introduction

Gentle parenting is a parenting philosophy first made popular by Sarah Ockwell-Smith in The Gentle Parenting Book. The term is sometimes used synonymously with mindful parenting, respective parenting, and other positive parenting approaches. Although not identical, these approaches share common features—they emphasize parents’ sensitivity and understanding instead of strict discipline or harsh punishment, with the goal of helping children develop independence, confidence, self-regulation, and happiness. Gentle parenting is essentially equivalent to what developmental scientists refer to as the authoritative parenting style, an approach shown to be most ideal for healthy child development.

Gentle parenting involves a two-way partnership between parent and child, where the parent is neither too hands-off nor too controlling. Parents respond to their child’s needs and set boundaries and demands that align with the child’s developmental level. The parents encourage positive behavior – such as kindness, respect, and emotional self-regulation – by modelling it themselves.

The three primary components of the gentle parenting approach

• Empathy – Putting yourself in your child’s shoes to understand what needs or emotions are causing their behavior. For example, a tantrum might be caused by hunger, fatigue, schedule changes, transitions, or a need to spend more time with you.
• Understanding – Considering your child’s needs and behavior in the context of their developmental level, such as behavioral and emotional maturity. For example, while throwing oneself on the floor and sobbing may not be how an adult responds to frustration, it is more acceptable for young children because their abilities to regulate their emotions are limited.
• Respect – Treating your child how you would want to be treated. Parents focus on teaching and guiding, rather than dictating. They avoid commanding, criticizing, punishing, or forbidding. Instead of yelling or saying “no,” a parent might calmly suggest an alternative or explain why behavior is problematic (e.g., “When you throw sand at someone, it can hurt them and they might get upset. Can you practice throwing sand in this bucket instead?”).

By implementing these components, gentle parents aim to help their children feel validated in their thoughts and feelings, learn how to self-regulate, and develop independence and confidence in their ability to navigate daily tasks and problems.

Photo: Jupilu. Pixabay.

Gentle parents and discipline

Gentle parenting is not a discipline-free or boundaryless approach. Like authoritative parenting, gentle parenting is a middle ground between permissive parenting, where discipline is lax and the child has more control, and authoritarian parenting, where discipline is strict and the parent is in control. Control and consistency are critical components of gentle parenting, but they are coupled with empathy, understanding, and respect. This strikes a disciplinary balance that incorporates the child and fosters parent-child communication and connection.

Gentle parenting discipline (or authoritative discipline) involves setting age-appropriate boundaries with the goal of teaching children acceptable and regulated behavior. Gentle parents provide behavioral and emotional guidance while also fostering autonomy and independence. For example, they communicate the rationale for boundaries or rules at a level the child can understand, and they allow room for a reasonable amount of discussion, negotiation, and compromise. Gentle parenting does not include negative discipline, such as scolding, yelling, coercion, expressing disappointment, or any form of corporal punishment.

Does gentle parenting work?

The term gentle parenting has become a catch-all term for positive parenting approaches but its effectiveness for child development has not been directly studied. However, child development research has provided decades of evidence in favor of the authoritative parenting style as well as parenting behaviors that relate to the components of gentle parenting.

Research on parental empathy

• Parental empathy is critical for building secure attachment, which is a healthy emotional bond between parent and infant. Infants with secure attachment sense that their caregiver is available and responsive to their needs. This promotes feelings of safety and security, emotional self-regulation, and confidence and autonomy in exploring the world. Infants with insecure attachment typically face challenges in these developmental areas and demonstrate anxiety or avoidance in social interactions. Sensitive and responsive parenting helps build secure attachment, such as consistently and warmly responding to a baby’s cries and gestures. In contrast, insecure attachment is associated with inconsistent and insensitive parenting.
• One especially important component of caregiver sensitivity is mind-mindedness – behaviors that acknowledge and interpret an infant’s internal mental states. For example, during play, a mind-minded caregiver uses the child’s actions to infer their interest or boredom with a toy and might comment on their mental states (e.g., as the child reaches for a ball, the parent might say, “Oh, do you like playing with this ball?”). Thus, secure attachment depends on parental empathy for the child’s needs, thoughts, and emotions.
• Parental empathy also supports the development of social competence and prosocial behaviors. Maternal attention to toddlers’ mental states is linked to lower aggression and greater empathy. Positive impacts of parental empathy are also evident in school-aged children, helping reduce negative emotions like anger.
• Importantly, the benefits of parental empathy involve validating both positive and negative emotions. Minimizing or punishing a child’s feelings, even negative emotions likes anger, sadness, or fear, can lead to issues with social competence, difficulties coping with distress, and aggression.

Research on parents’ understanding

• Parents may find it daunting to understand child development because there is certainly a lot to know! A critical factor in the developmental timetable is brain development. As the brain develops from birth through adolescence (and even into young adulthood), children and youth become increasingly better at emotional regulation and impulse control. Especially important is the development of effortful control during the toddler and preschool years, a child’s capacity to voluntarily direct and regulate their attention and behavior, inhibiting and activating responses as needed and appropriate. For example, effortful control is evident when a child stops themselves from hitting a peer when they feel angry or pays attention to the teacher despite distracting conversation from nearby peers.
• As with most aspects of development, both “nature” and “nurture” influence brain developments leading to improvements in control and self-regulation. Biological factors, such as genetics and maturation, play a key role. Therefore, parents need to match expectations regarding behavioral and emotional regulation to their child’s developmental level. Much as one would not expect a young infant to walk or talk due to developmental immaturity, a young child (and even a teenager) should not be expected to readily manage their emotions and behaviors.
• Environmental factors also play a critical role in shaping childhood brain development. Sensitive (i.e., gentle or authoritative) parenting, and opportunities for play and educational activities that support autonomy and control (e.g., games that involve taking turns), are associated with greater advances in self-control.
• Thus, parental understanding involves both knowing what should be expected at their child’s age and what they can do to support and encourage their child’s development.

Research on parental respect

• Parental respect is at the core of authoritative parenting because it involves balancing warmth and responsiveness with discipline and demands. Children learn in a safe and supportive context where their individuality and voice are respected. Authoritative parenting has long been viewed as the gold standard of parenting styles and is associated with many positive developmental outcomes. Parenting that is either too too harsh (authoritarian) or lenient (permissive/indulgent) places children at risk for emotional and behavioral issues, such as substance use and internalizing symptoms (e.g., anxiety, withdrawal).
• One effective authoritative parenting strategy is inductive discipline, which involves explanation and discussion rather than punishment. For example, a parent might use age-appropriate language to explain to a young child why they should not hit their sibling: “Ow, that hurts your sister. Use gentle hands, please.” Inductive discipline can involve helping the child identify alternative behaviors (e.g., “When you’re mad you can squeeze your hands into a ball or stomp your feet instead of hitting your sister”) or asking them to explain the causes of their behavior (e.g., “Are you angry because she took your toy?”). Negotiation can also be included to acknowledge the child’s feelings and promote autonomous decision making (e.g., “Would it be okay if you gave your sister a turn when you’re done playing with the toy?”).
• Inductive discipline provides consistent structure and expectations, coupled with warmth and guidance, to help build self-awareness and self-control. As such, inductive discipline is associated with behavioral, social, and academic adjustment and promotes prosocial behavior, such as empathy.

Photo: Family Equality. Creative Commons.

How to practice gentle parenting

The gentle parenting components of empathy, respect, and understanding and the authoritative balance of responsiveness and demandingness (i.e., parental warmth and sensitivity coupled with a reasonable degree of control and discipline) create a foundation that can be applied to a variety of specific parenting situations. Gentle parenting focuses on acknowledging and supporting a child’s thoughts and emotions and offering them behavioral and coping tools. Gentle parents establish consistent rules and routines but are flexible and willing to compromise within reason.

Gentle parenting example

For example, imagine a child frequently asks to watch or engage with different screen media, getting upset when not allowed to do so, and the parent is questioning how much screen time to allow. A gentle parent might empathize with their child’s interest in screen media, gain a better understanding of media recommendations from experts (e.g., quantity and quality guidelines, parent monitoring and controls), and work with the child to develop a media schedule and plan that meets the child’s needs and the parent’s guidelines. This might include a plan for turning off screens when designated media time is over to promote regulated responses during this schedule transition (e.g., using a visible timer or 5-minute warning to avoid tantrums or demands for more viewing time).

The parent might also consider how to maximize screen-free time by building in family activities, encouraging outdoor time, and offering other enriching activities that help promote parent-child connection and child development. The gentle parent might periodically review and adapt the media plan as the child develops or other situations arise.

Avoiding punishment and not relying on rewards

Just as gentle parenting avoids using punishment, it also does not rely heavily on rewards. External material rewards, such as a small prize, are generally ineffective and actually reduce the likelihood of the behavior the parent means to encourage. Rewards undermine intrinsic motivation, or the child’s desire to engage in a behavior because it is inherently enjoyable or beneficial. For example, rewarding prosocial behavior like sharing makes the child less likely to perform that behavior in the future.

Using positive reinforcement

In lieu of rewards, gentle parenting naturally provides positive reinforcement through affection, warmth, connection, and gentle encouragement. Parents can also reinforce and praise in ways that help build self-confidence, self-regulation, and prosocial attitudes. In particular, process praise (e.g., “You were really working hard on that puzzle!”) is more effective than person praise (“You are so good at puzzles!”). Process praise provides specific feedback that helps children understand how to approach and persist in a task. Person praise, like material rewards, can reduce intrinsic motivation and teaches children that their self-worth depends on whether they do a “good job.”

Gentle parenting as a long-term approach

Importantly, any effective parenting approach requires patience, persistence, and flexibility. Gentle parenting is not a magic wand that will instantaneously alter child behavior. Parenting is a long game, and child development and learning require lots of repetition. Parents also evolve and adapt their parenting over time. Understanding your child as they go through different developmental stages requires continuous education. Gentle parents do not need to know everything about their child’s development at the start, but they are committed to learning and adapting with their child.

Photo: Pexels. Pixabay.

Challenges and limitations of the gentle parenting style

1. Focuses mostly on young children

One limitation of the popular literature on gentle parenting is that it focuses mostly on parenting young children (from birth to seven years) in areas of social and emotional development, with some discussion of physical development (e.g., feeding practices). However, research on authoritative parenting is extensive and demonstrates its application and benefits for school-aged children and adolescents. For example, gentle parents might have rules about household chores, curfews, peer and dating relationships, and so on, but adapt them to their child’s developmental level, discuss their rationale with the child, and consider the child’s input in establishing and modifying them.

Authoritative parenting has also been shown to benefit other areas of development, particularly cognition, learning, and academic achievement. Authoritative parents guide and scaffold learning as appropriate for their child’s age and avoid taking over or providing too much direction. In so doing, they promote independent exploration and problem solving.

2. May not apply to all children

An important question to ask of any parenting method is whether it applies to all children in all contexts. Literature on the gentle parenting approach includes minimal discussion of its effectiveness across individual or situational factors, but again, research on authoritative parenting provides insight. One child-specific factor to consider is a child’s temperament, which varies on several dimensions, such as fearfulness, emotional reactivity, and effortful control. Authoritative parenting is effective regardless of temperament, especially benefitting children with more “difficult” temperaments.

Nevertheless, the relationship between parenting and temperament is complex. It can vary depending on other factors, such as children’s gender or genetic predispositions, and can include bidirectional effects, with children’s behavior influencing parenting. For example, a child with high levels of negative emotionality (e.g., one who is easily frustrated or fearful) is more likely to elicit controlling parenting as parents try to contain or direct the child’s emotions. Consequently, adopting and maintaining a particular parenting style may unfold differently depending on child and family dynamics.

3. Can vary across socioeconomic and cultural contexts

Similarly, parenting can vary across socioeconomic and cultural contexts. Some research shows that the authoritative style is beneficial for child development across sociocultural contexts. However, authoritative parenting is somewhat of an anomaly that is found mostly in Western cultures. Authoritarian parenting is the norm in many Eastern cultures and among U.S. families of ethnic or racial minority or lower socioeconomic status. Questions about what is the “best” style must therefore consider the relevance of cultural values (e.g., respect for authority) and environmental factors (e.g., neighborhood safety).

The goals and values of the authoritative parenting style may also lead to different parenting behaviors in different sociocultural contexts. For example, imposing a strict curfew may be overly controlling (authoritarian) in one context but appropriately protective (authoritative) in another. Thus, when assessing parenting effectiveness or educating parents about gentle or authoritative parenting, it is important to consider how social contexts and culture may influence parenting style and practices.

4. Can increase pressure on the parent

Finally, a challenge for any parent is allowing mistakes and avoiding pressure to be the “perfect” parent. Some situations might naturally call for temporarily strict parenting, such as quickly pulling your toddler out of harm’s way when they are about to touch a hot flame or step onto a busy street. Explanation and discussion can be used after the event to incorporate gentle parenting. Parents may also find themselves wavering from gentle parenting in non-emergency situations, such as after a stressful day.

Instead of seeing this as faulty parenting, it can be viewed as an opportunity to reassess and adapt as needed. The parent may need to practice self-care to reduce stress, identify opportunities for co-parenting, or locate educational resources to learn more about their child’s behaviors and needs at their current age and adapt parenting as appropriate. Just as your child is developing, allow yourself the room to develop as a parent and acknowledge that parenting is a skill that can be honed over time.

Photo: Phinehas Adams. Unsplash.

Conclusion

Ample research supports the benefits of authoritative parenting and gentle parenting methods. However, parenting is complex, and a parent’s style and how they apply that style may differ depending on factors specific to the individual child or situation. Work in this area is still ongoing as researchers continue to ask new questions and acquire additional knowledge about parenting. Like the researcher who continues to uncover new information, gentle and authoritative parents are guided by a core style but continue to learn and adapt as their child develops and different situations arise along their parenting journey.

The post What is gentle parenting and is it good for children? appeared first on Child and Family Blog.

Humans develop empathy in response to the basic need to care and we know that children who grow up with non-TD siblings often take on greater caregiving roles. We also know from other research that siblings influence each other’s development of empathy.

In the Israeli study, researchers measured cognitive empathy by asking children to score statements such as “I can often understand how people feel even before they tell me.”

“The researchers suggest that a child with a non-TD twin needs to develop better skills of understanding because of the difficulties their siblings experience – for example, with communication.”

The children could have said what they thought the researchers wanted to hear, but this is unlikely because they did not score higher than their peers on other measures of empathy, namely “emotional empathy” and “prosociality.” Emotional empathy – feeling others’ emotions rather than just understanding them – was measured by asking children to rate statements like “When I see someone being taken advantage of, I feel protective toward them.” Prosociality was measured by inviting children to play a computer game that led to a choice about allocating points needed to earn a prize: “Which do you prefer? (1) To earn 20 points for yourself and not donate any points to children in need. (2) To earn 10 points for yourself and donate 10 points to children in need.”

Photo: yan Krukov. Pexels.

Why might a difference exist in cognitive empathy but not in emotional empathy? The researchers suggest that a child with a non-TD twin needs to develop better skills of understanding because of the difficulties their siblings experience – for example, with communication. Meanwhile, greater emotional empathy “might be disadvantageous for the empathizer’s adaptive functioning in a relationship with an individual in distress”.

The study focused on cognitive and emotional empathy toward others in general, not empathy toward children’s non-TD twin in particular.

The study involved 63 twin pairs drawn from a larger study of 778 families with 11-year-old twins. The non-TD twin siblings had a variety of conditions, including language-communication problems (12), cerebral palsy (5), autism spectrum disorder (2), hearing impairment (1), and visual impairment (1).

Whilst most earlier research on children with a non-TD sibling has focused on the negative impacts of having a non-TD sibling, some other studies have also found enhanced empathy, including studies of children with Down Syndrome and of siblings of children with autism. However, results of such research are not entirely consistent due to different methods of measuring and differences in the ages of the children (during childhood or later in adulthood).

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Sex differences are extremely subtle and variable. Instead, what emerges from a large body of research is a mosaic of countless brain attributes that differ in unique patterns across all individuals. There are far more similarities between female and male brains than differences. Brains are more like the heart and kidney than like reproductive organs.

“At birth, the total difference in brain volume between boys and girls is 6%, and this increases to 11% in adulthood. However, the difference in average body mass starts at 4% and increases to 18% over the same period. Therefore, it appears that larger bodies require larger brains.”

When pondering male-female differences, it is customary to refer to sex as the inflexible biological component and gender as the psychosocial manifestation. But with brains, the two are mixed because brains are plastic and alter around experience. So for brain science, the term sex/gender is used and assigned based on how a person identifies themselves.

However, there are small differences between girls and boys and between women and men. A comprehensive review of neuroscience research led by Lise Eliot, author of the book Pink Brain, Blue Brain: How Small Differences Grow Into Troublesome Gaps – And What We Can Do About It, explains the differences found from birth onwards.

A key risk in reviewing the literature is bias driven by medical and popular interest. The public has a strong desire to find differences, so studies that find differences are more likely to be published than studies that do not. Similarly, studies that find differences are more likely to be found in literature searches that use terms like “gender differences” and “sex differences.”

Overall brain size

Overall brain size is unambiguously larger in males. Nevertheless, once the size of the individual is considered, sex/gender alone accounts for little difference. At birth, the total difference in brain volume between boys and girls is 6%, and this increases to 11% in adulthood. However, the difference in average body mass starts at 4% and increases to 18% over the same period. Therefore, it appears that larger bodies require larger brains.

Consider differences by sex/gender of other organs: While the average size of women’s and men’s brains differs by 11%, the size of human hearts differs by 17%, lung size differs by 23%, liver size differs by 14%, the size of the pancreas differs by 18%, the size of the kidney differs by 19%, and thyroid size differs by 25%, with all of these organs larger in men.

Boys and men have a higher proportion of white matter than grey matter in their brains, but this proportion correlates with brain size. Men and women matched for brain size exhibit no difference in the grey matter-to-white matter ratio.

Photo: Ketut Subiyanto. Pexels.

Size of particular parts of the brain

The biggest sex/gender size difference in the human brain is in a tiny component of the anterior hypothalamus, the INAH-3, which is only 0.6 mm in diameter and 60% larger in human males. But even this is a very small difference compared to other animals. In rats, the similar structure is five times bigger in males, so big that it has been named the “sexually-dimorphic nucleus.”

Sex/gender differences in the size of the hippocampus and the amygdala have been a topic of popular interest, given that they are linked to sex/gender differences in learning and emotion. But the differences are tiny – no more than 1% in either case.

The volume of the caudate volume appears to differ between boys and girls in early adolescence, but not before or after that time. This difference could just be a fleeting effect of girls’ earlier entry into puberty.

Studies of sex/gender differences in the average size of the pallidum, thalamus, cerebellum, and nucleus accumbens have found nothing significant. Studies of the thickness of the cortex and of individual regions within the cortex have yielded similar results. Only in the larger putamen has an average size difference been found, but this is less than 3%.

Brain connectivity

There is minimal support for the popular idea that the left and right hemispheres of the brain are more connected in women than in men. This notion has been subject to extensive analysis over decades. These connections have been measured in clinical research, such as studies of aphasia following damage to the left hemisphere. The research has been carried out while men and women were engaged in various auditory, visual, tactile, and dual-task activities, as well as in situations where the subjects were resting. In all cases, sex/gender differences were trivial or non-existent.

“The brain circuitry for emotion processing, like that for language and spatial recognition, shows overwhelming similarities between women and men, and even more similarities between girls and boys.”

A difference in the size of the corpus callosum has been invoked to argue that women have stronger left-right brain connections than men. Researchers have looked for differences in fetuses and children but have not found any.

Predicting sex/gender by measuring brain activity

Researchers have applied artificial intelligence to observing brain structure and activity through magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and efforts to predict if the subject is a woman or a man. The accuracy of such predictions is high, at 80%-90%, but most of the differences identified have been based on brain size. Even efforts to measure brain activity while women and men were doing tasks in which behavioral sex/gender differences are most frequently recognized, such as language or spatial skills, have found little difference. In one study, no differences in brain activity were found in 8-year-olds during spatial tasks.

The behavioral differences between women and men must have a neural basis, but researchers have not found evidence that these differences originate at birth. This supports the idea that these differences are learned through practice and socialization in childhood and beyond. When the brains of men and women military pilots with similar training in spatial skills were compared via MRI scans, no sex/gender differences were found.

There has been a huge interest in finding sex/gender brain differences associated with emotional processing. Objective measures of empathy, such as the ability to identify emotion in photos and video clips of faces, suggest that a female advantage is learned through childhood and adolescence since the differences are small in early childhood. However, there is little consensus in brain research results across hundreds of studies. The brain circuitry for emotion processing, like that for language and spatial recognition, shows overwhelming similarities between women and men, and even more similarities between girls and boys.

The authors of the review conclude: “Scholarly interest in brain sex differences is as old as Aristotle…. these findings can be interpreted as rebutting the popular discourse about the “male brain” and the “female brain” as distinct organs.

Challenges to these conclusions

The conclusions reached by Eliot and her colleagues are not universally accepted and were criticized in a commentary published after their paper appeared (Hirnstein & Hausmann, 2021). Similarly, another recent research report noted that the sex differences were indeed small, as Eliot and colleagues showed, but suggested they might in fact be important (Williams et al., 2021).

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It is important to help children manage their fears and worries about climate change — but also help them know they can contribute to addressing climate change challenges. Feeling agency to do something effective is an essential part of managing fear. So is the social trust that comes with knowing that you are not alone, that other people share the same concerns, and other people are also taking action.

Let your child know that fears about climate change are understandable and other people share them.

If your son or daughter has said something that suggests concern about climate change, create a quiet time to listen openly. Young people who say that family members and friends listen sympathetically and suggest solutions are more likely to report that they are acting to protect the planet and to express hope for the future. Let your child know that fears about climate change are understandable and other people share them.

Also, let your child know that other people are taking climate change seriously and finding ways to address it. Some children say they are doing what they can to mitigate climate change, such as walking or biking to school instead of letting their parents drive them; yet they still report high levels of worry. This is not surprising because when people know that a problem is larger than they can solve by themselves, they can feel that their actions are futile. Most young people report taking individual actions, rather than working together with others.

Photo: Keira Burton. Pexels.

Look for ways that action to protect the planet can be a family activity. Many children express alarm about the impacts of climate change on wildlife and other animals, so you might create a wildlife habitat together in your yard or on a city balcony — and see for yourself that when you plant it, birds, butterflies, and other creatures threatened by changing temperatures find refuge there. You might raise money for a local environmental organization addressing climate change, and visit the organization to learn what they are doing. When you see news stories about people taking constructive action — from politicians to schoolchildren — share the stories with your children. Besides the intrinsic value of these activities, they show your child that individual action matters as well as collective action, because everyone can make a difference together.

Richard Lazarus and Susan Folkman, psychologists who have studied how people cope with difficult conditions and upsetting information, describe two forms of coping: emotion focused, which seeks to escape painful feelings, and problem focused, which addresses the problems that cause these feelings. Sharing feelings with sympathetic and supportive family and friends is a healthy form of emotion-focused coping. It helps protect children against escapist strategies that avoid reality by tuning out information about climate change or denying that it is real or serious. Problem-focused coping includes both individual and collective action.

Look for ways that action to protect the planet can be a family activity.

Susan Folkman identified a third form of coping, meaning focused, that is especially helpful for big, complex problems that require engagement over a long period of time — like climate change. This type of coping involves finding a silver lining in a problem and meaning in confronting it. For example, some young people believe that because climate change is such a serious problem, more people are becoming aware of it, and as a result, more people are acting to steer the world in a safer direction.

Children who report meaning-focused coping are more likely to express constructive hope — the ability to face risks and uncertainty, believe in the power of their own actions and the actions of others, and find positive value in action. By acknowledging your child’s emotions, supporting individual initiative, and finding ways to take effective action together, you can help buffer your child against fears about climate change by building a foundation for constructive hope.

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Mom or dad sharing and modelling how to manage aggression and upset may explain why some impoverished young children grow up more resilient.

Why do some children who are raised amid poverty, risk and danger emerge as more resilient than others in similar circumstances ? Why do some grow up relatively unscathed compared with their peers, whose later lives may be scarred by criminality, poor mental health, and repeated disadvantage?

Having a calm, supportive parent when something goes wrong may be part of the answer. That’s a mom or dad who responds to early childhood frustration, anger, anxiety or tantrums by neither suppressing those emotions nor ignoring them. Rather, such parents are empathetic and understanding, and they help children to steady themselves. They also model this steadiness in the way they deal with the adversities that they encounter. That’s not easy for parents who may themselves be struggling with multiple challenges. But our research suggests that doing it well can make a big difference for their children.

Emotionally supportive parenting has long term impacts

This parental skill of helping young children handle their emotions – in difficult social and economic circumstances that may provoke many strong feelings – can support emotional self-management. This in turn enables young children to concentrate better at school and get along with others. We know from other studies of self-regulation that, in the longer run, these skills help children to grow up at lower risk of anxiety, depression, violent behavior and criminal acts. As adults, they operate better at work, at home and within the law.

We’re not necessarily talking about parents working miracles amid adversity. Emotionally supportive parenting can’t turn around every impact of the many difficulties faced by children who, in their early years, may experience poor, crowded housing, an inadequate diet, and insufficient stimulation, surrounded by badly resourced neighbourhoods. But our research shows that, for these children, emotionally supportive parenting can flatten the curve: it can at least stop things from getting worse.

“What do parents do, when, for example,  a young child becomes angry because someone has done something unfair to them, such as take their toy?”

Our study examined the relationship between emotion-related parenting and externalising symptoms such as aggression across early school years among 207 children (two-thirds of them boys) from high-risk urban communities in the United States, who showed aggressive/oppositional behaviors when they started school. Their mothers’ level of supportive, emotion-related parenting was observed in the year of kindergarten during structured interactions at home. Our measure captured how parents responded to children’s emotions, how parents talked about emotions, and the way parents expressed their own emotions. Teacher ratings of externalising symptoms, including aggressive and rule-breaking behaviors, were then measured every year to the second grade.

Aggression rose amid less-skilled parenting

Aggressive behavior worsened among children who lacked emotionally supportive parenting. Each year, teachers reported seeing more problems than in the year before. In contrast, when mothers offered supportive emotion-related parenting, the children did not necessarily improve, but they didn’t get worse. Emotionally supportive parenting seems to halt the escalation in aggression as children grow older, which, research shows, can predict so many difficulties in later life.

In practical terms, we are talking about what parents do, when, for example, young children become angry because someone has done something unfair to them, such as take their toy. A child might want to scream, start crying or punch the child that took the toy. But a parent can encourage a range of strategies to help the upset child avoid following this first impulse.

Doing so might be difficult. The parent might be struggling with a host of other serious issues, such as how to pay the rent, living in a dangerous neighbourhood and parenting a difficult child. These problems can weigh on the parents, making it hard for them to sympathise in the moment about the relatively insignificant problems faced by their child. Mom or dad’s response might be: ‘Life’s unfair. You have no idea. I hate my job.’ They might think it best to toughen up the child to face disappointments, telling them to suck it up and cope with it.

But that’s not as helpful – even when the upset seems to be around something apparently trivial – as when a parent sympathises, talks things through, and helps the child understand their feelings. Simply labelling an emotion, saying it is normal, helps children regulate their reactions. Parents can also help children develop a step-by-step strategy when feeling upset, such as taking deep breaths and calming themselves. Afterwards, parents might say, ‘I’m sorry that your toy was taken, but let’s leave it in the past and do something fun now.’ That can help children who are feeling negative to know that their emotions are understood while giving them a way of coming back and feeling better.

Opportunities to model emotion-related parenting

A lot of parents also find opportunities in daily life – when a young child is not expressing emotions – of exploring feelings and how to handle them. When parents and children read a book, they might encounter a character who is experiencing difficulties. That’s an opportunity to talk about what the character is feeling and what the character could do.

Parents can also model how they deal with their own stress. Parents are the gateway to the world for young children. Stress can either flow through parents by affecting how they respond to their children, or parents can make the decision to demonstrate how stress can be handled. This doesn’t mean parents should hide their emotions, or the fact that they are upset or scared. Children are way too good at picking up on that. It’s better for parents to acknowledge that they are worried and explain how they are going to handle what’s going on. They can say: ‘This is how we will resolve it and, if you are worried about it too, let’s do something together about it.’ These parents are modelling that emotions are normal and that there are ways to manage them.

In our research sample, we did not see a lot of emotionally supportive parenting. Only 10 per cent of the mothers showed consistently emotionally supportive parenting. But where they could offer it, we saw a flattening of the curve, so that, over time, the increased aggression and externalising behavior found in other children were less likely to occur.

Learning to be more empathetic parents 

There is potential to improve this picture further. Few programs specifically focus on emotion-related parenting. One that does so is Tuning in to Kids, which has been tested in low- to middle-income families in Australia. This program had moderate to strong effects, at least in the short term, in improving parents’ supportive behaviors and in reducing parents’ dismissive reactions to children’s emotions.

“Emotionally supportive parenting seems to halt an escalation in aggression as children grow older, which can predict so many difficulties in later life.”

It has also been shown to be effective when implemented in families with children who already demonstrated behavioral problems (similar to our sample), or went through traumatic experiences. And researchers also found improvements in children’s behaviors when parents participated in the program, compared to a control group. This evidence suggests that there may be strong potential to promote supportive, emotion-related parenting behaviors through training programs, even for families in disadvantaged situations.

Many other parent training programs, such as Triple-P and Parent-Child Interaction Therapy, may not specifically target emotion-related parenting, but they include components that try to promote parents’ sensitivity to children’s emotional cues, such as signals that may indicate a child is upset, and teach parents skills to help children regulate emotions.  These programs have been tested in diverse populations, including families living in disadvantaged communities or families with children already showing behavioral problems. They have led to more positive parenting, such as warmth, effective discipline, and sensitivity, as well as improvements in children’s behaviors.

Parents should recognise their achievements

A key message from our research is that children may display behavior problems for many reasons, particularly given the multiple difficulties that disadvantaged families face. Parents should not beat themselves up and be judged as failures if their children continue to have behavioral problems. Their interventions might be doing a lot to stop their children from getting worse amid multiple challenges. That huge achievement should be celebrated.

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Reminiscing has been described as “emotional socialisation”, nurturing a child’s emotional development. Parents sensitively reminiscing about earlier experiences with their children is part of early childhood emotional development.

Is maltreatment by parents associated with less quantity and quality of parent-child reminiscing on the child’ past, and, if so, is this a mechanism by which maltreatment leads to poorer early childhood emotional development?

Researchers who asked this question in a recent study found a pathway between maltreatment and emotional development. Specifically:

• Maltreatment predicts less sensitivity in reminiscing activity (less encouragement, more criticism); perhaps these parents are less able to reminisce about the past, or they are less sensitive to the child while reminiscing.
• Less sensitive reminiscing predicts less developed emotion regulation and less inhibitory control on the part of the child.

Reminiscing has been described as “emotional socialisation”, nurturing a child’s emotional development. Other research has shown that parents’ sensitively reminiscing about earlier experiences with their children plays a significant role in early childhood emotional development. Conversely, children of mothers who are unable to discuss past emotional experiences with their children in a sensitive way are more likely to display deficits in remembering their past lives, understanding emotions and regulating their emotions.

In this based experiment, the researchers worked with mothers only, acknowledging that later research should include fathers and others who are likely to reminisce with young children. The study, based in the USA, involved 111 maltreating mothers and 65 non-maltreating mothers of 3- to 6-year-old children, all from similar demographic backgrounds.

The researchers asked the mothers to reminisce with their children about four past emotional events – one in which the child was happy, then others in which the child was sad, angry and scared. The sessions were videotaped and coded against measures of how well the mother stayed focused on the task, how encouraging and non-critical the mother was towards her child, how engaged and interested the child remained, how the mother responded to negative emotions, how well the mother worked with the child jointly to construct stories, how well the stories matched the happy/sad/angry/scared themes, and how fluent and clear the stories were.

The researchers homed in on three specific components of early childhood emotional development to measure:

• ‘lability/negativity’ – things like wide mood swings and quickly becoming frustrated
• ‘emotion regulation’ – things like being empathetic towards others and responding positively to peers
• ‘inhibitory control’ – the ability to control attention and not react compulsively.

The first two were measured by asking the mothers to complete questionnaires. Inhibitory control was tested with the children by giving them a task that could challenge them – saying “day” when presented with pictures featuring the moon, and “night” when presented with pictures featuring the sun.

The researchers found a pathway to two of the early childhood emotional development outcomes, emotion regulation and inhibitory control; they did not find a pathway to child lability/negativity. However, children who experience maltreatment are more likely to show greater lability/negativity. So the correlation between maltreatment and poorer emotional development does not appear to be influenced by how well the mother is able to engage in reminiscing with the child. Alternatively, it may be a deficit in the research method, given that all forms of maltreatment were lumped into one, and the impacts of different levels/types of maltreatment on emotional development might be significant.

Of course, reminiscing with parents is not the only activity that supports early childhood emotional development. Interactive reading and conversation through free play, for example, are other ways to enhance child emotional development. Other research has shown some differences in outcomes between these types of parental engagement. Reminiscing activity has a stronger link with language and literacy than does reading books together, for example.

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Research into the neuroscience and biology of fatherhood has concluded that the idea that women are “primary caregivers”, solely responsible for nurture and care, limits our understanding of human caregiving and child development.

Examining the biology and neurobiology of fatherhood, neuroscience researchers Eyal Abraham and Ruth Feldman have concluded that the idea of women as “primary caregivers”, solely responsible for nurture and care—a “matricentric” view that’s deeply rooted in cultures globally—limits our understanding of human caregiving and child development.

Scientific enquiry shows that caring fatherhood, and cooperative care between mothers and others, has played a key role in the survival of the human race, enabling the long and substantial investment required to raise newborns to adulthood, and also enabling shorter birth intervals. Humans would not have emerged as a dominant species if active fatherhood had not emerged.

Anthropologists have observed that human babies, beginning at birth, are typically surrounded with and carried by group members other than the biological mother. Another key observation from anthropology is that human parenting varies across cultures. Sometimes fatherhood is more about active caring, and sometimes it is less so. For example, when there are large family groups with many women present, the contribution that men make to caring tends to be more limited.

With a view to evolutionary history, Feldman and Abraham argue: “If males have played an essential, albeit flexible and variable role in human parenting across human evolution by reducing Homo females’ reproductive costs, their physiological systems have evolved by selective pressures to respond to committed fathering and to provide adequate and sensitive care to their infants.” They argue that neural circuits and hormonal biology have developed in all humans such that—with practice, attunement and social experiences—all humans can provide nurturing care, irrespective of gender. At the same time, these attributes have transformed humans into a uniquely collaborative hyper-social species.

Parent-child behavioural synchrony

Mother-infant and father-infant pairs show similar levels of “synchrony”, that is adaptation of the parent’s behaviour to the infant’s state and social signals. Abraham and Feldman call this a “dance” between parent and infant. Mother-infant synchrony tends to display slow oscillations between states of low and medium arousal. Father-infant synchrony tends to be faster, with quicker and more sudden peaks associated with play. Fathers who are more involved in household and childcare responsibilities are likely to be more sensitive to their infants.

Both mother-infant and father-infant synchrony predict greater parent-child interaction through childhood and adolescence. Mother-infant synchrony tends to predict children’s greater social competence in preschool. Father-infant synchrony tends to predict reduced aggression and better conflict negotiation in adolescence.

The hormones of fatherhood

Levels of oxytocin, prolactin, vasopressin and testosterone have been measured in fathers.

Oxytocin and fatherhood

Oxytocin increases in fathers as much as in mothers in the transition to fatherhood and during the first six months of fatherhood. Increased oxytocin is associated with greater engagement with the child; this was also observed when fathers were administered a nasal oxytocin spray. Oxytocin levels tend to synchronise between mothers and fathers who are coparenting. They also synchronise between father and child – when oxytocin is higher in the father, it increases in the child.

Prolactin and fatherhood

Prolactin increases in fathers during pregnancy. It is associated with greater engagement in play activities and greater responsiveness to a baby crying.

Vasopressin and fatherhood

Vasopressin levels go up in the transition to fatherhood. When vasopressin levels are higher, fathers are more likely to stimulate their child to activity. When a vasopressin spray is administered to expectant fathers, they become more interested in baby-related avatars. After the birth, administration of the spray is related to greater empathy with the child.

Testosterone and fatherhood

Lower testosterone levels in fathers are associated with more father-infant touch, gaze, interaction and vocalisation. When a baby cries, a father’s testosterone level tends to decrease if the father is able to provide care in response. If not, the baby’s cries do the opposite, tending to increase testosterone in fathers, probably linked to the father’s fears for the child’s safety.

Photo: p2-r2. Creative Commons.

The neuroscience of fatherhood

The adult brain becomes more plastic after the birth of a baby, triggered by hormonal changes. This happens in both mothers and fathers—and to a much greater extent than in other mammals. Because of this increased plasticity, humans have a much stronger capacity to change through the practice of direct care for the child. Interestingly, both biological and adoptive fathers who care for their infants have similar brain responses.

Abraham and Feldman identify three neural circuits relevant to motherhood and fatherhood:

Core limbic

The neural patterns observed in this ancient part of the brain during parenting are similar to those found in other mammals. This neural activity is related to vigilance for the child’s safety and well-being.

Empathy sub-network

This helps parents to resonate with the experience of the infant in the moment.

Mentalising sub-network

This helps parents recognise the infant’s cues, make predictions and plan responses.

Using fMRI, Abraham and Feldman studied different fathers – full-time working fathers, fathers who were coparenting 50/50 with mothers, and gay fathers parenting without women. Caring fatherhood was associated with more activation of the empathy network, to the point that, if fathers are caring for the child wholly by themselves (without a mother present), the patterns were similar to those observed in mothers’ brains.

Fatherhood brain changes and later child development: brain-to-brain synchrony

When mothers and fathers interact with their infants, the activity appears to tune the infant’s brain, probably resulting in epigenetic changes in the baby’s brain that alter the way the brain responds to hormonal stimuli later in life, affecting social behaviour. Abraham and Feldman call this parent-infant “brain-to-brain” synchrony.

Changes in parents’ brains through the experience of motherhood and fatherhood are associated with a child seeking safety with a parent and self-soothing when exposed to high emotions.

Changes in empathy networks during fatherhood or motherhood, and greater parent-infant synchrony early on, are associated with children using more advanced methods to control their emotions in pre-school and more expression of positive emotions. At the age of six, correlations were found between parents’ earlier neural activity, on the one hand, and children’s level of oxytocin and better physical health, on the other. When parents’ oxytocin levels are high during early interactions, children’s oxytocin levels tend to be higher in later years.

Changes in mentalising networks through fatherhood and motherhood are associated with improved socialisation in the child in later years.

When greater connectivity is observed in parents’ brains between the empathy and mentalising networks, the child is likely to have lower cortisol levels (associated with anxiety) in pre-school and lower anxiety-related problems at the age of six.

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How empathy is developed in toddlers is important for later social development in children – greater empathy in toddlerhood is linked to later popularity, friendship quality and social competence.

The development of empathy in toddlers is important for children’s later social development in children – greater empathy in toddlerhood is linked to later popularity, friendship quality and social competence. A new study helps us understand the role that mothers and fathers play in this process.

The experimenters observed 156 British two-year-olds with their mother or father responding to a life-like baby doll starting to cry in the same room. The researchers found that the more the parent talked to the toddler about the crying, the more attention the toddler gave to the baby. When parents talked more, the toddler was more likely to describe the emotion they saw in the baby – being “sad”. They found no differences in how mothers and fathers talked to their boys or girls.

The similarity of empathy responses between boys and girls and between mothers and fathers was striking. Only one small difference was observed between boys and girls—girls offered a verbal description of the emotion of the crying baby (e.g., “sad”) more often than boys did. And two very small gender differences were observed among the four possible combinations of boy/girl, mother/father. Boys expressed more distress in the presence of their mother than their father, and girls demonstrated more empathic concern in the presence of their father than their mother. Perhaps by the age of 24 months, boys are already starting to constrain their expressions of distress in the presence of an adult man. Similarly, perhaps girls have already become used to seeing their mothers engaged in soothing activities and hang back more if they are with their mother.

The study confirmed one important finding also found in other research on how empathy is developed: there is a big difference between a toddler showing distress in response to a crying baby and the same toddler showing an empathic response. Some toddlers show distress and are able to contain their response and go on to respond to the baby in a concerned way. For others, the distress becomes too much and they cannot interact with the crying baby, focusing instead on their own distress. There is a link between showing distress and showing empathy only when the toddler shows the capacity to understand and describe the situation.

The study took place in the East of England amongst educated families recruited before their child’s birth in local hospitals. The life-like doll was introduced by the researcher (as “George” to boys and “Charlotte” to girls) and put down for a nap close to where the toddler and parent were to play. The parent was instructed to respond to their toddler’s interest when the remotely controlled baby started to cry, but not to respond if the toddler did not. The toddler’s empathy reactions were measured: their attention to the crying baby, their personal distress, the labelling of the baby’s emotions (“sad”, “hungry”, etc.) and their spontaneous action to help the baby. Everything about the situation was set up the same way for mothers and fathers.

Toddlers’ empathy responses varied widely in the study: 70% showed attention to the crying baby, 39% displayed moderate or strong distress, and 44% described the baby’s feelings. Only 14% acted spontaneously to help the crying baby. Toddlers who offered a description of the baby’s feelings were more likely to display a spontaneous action to help the crying baby. Meanwhile, in line with previous observations, there was no correlation between a distress response and a show of empathy. In contrast to earlier research, no gender differences were observed between boys and girls, other than the slightly greater likelihood that girls would use words to describe the baby’s emotions.

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