Tag: parenting

Categories : Mental HealthTags : Leave a comment

How Parenting Profiles are Associated with Children’s Behavioural and Emotional Problems

On By ModernMedia

Certain parenting approaches, such as lower supervision and inconsistent discipline, are associated with a higher likelihood that children will show behavioral and emotional problems, such as attention difficulties, anxiety, and depression

The mean of internalising and externalising behaviors by parenting profiles. The horizontal axis displays child internalising and externalising symptom dimensions, while the vertical axis indicates mean severity scores. Colored bars represent the identified parenting profiles. Error bars reflect 95 percent confidence intervals.  Xu et al., 2026, PLOS One, CC-BY 4.0

There’s no one right way to raise a child, but different patterns of parenting are associated with how kids behave. A new study, published on September 30, 2026 in the open access journal PLOS One, identified data-driven profiles of parenting practices and investigated how these relate to children’s behavioral and emotional problems, generally grouped into internalising behaviours (eg, withdrawal, anxiety, depression) and externalising behaviours (eg, aggression, oppositional behaviour, attention problems). The research team led by Dr Xiaoye Xu, an Assistant Professor of Psychology at SUNY Cortland, US, found that several parenting factors, including low supervision and inconsistent discipline, were linked to a higher likelihood that children would exhibit these behaviours.

The researchers assessed these behaviours in more than 2700 children between the ages of five and 18, using data assembled by the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) Program. Parents filled out surveys about their approach to parenting and their children’s behaviour.

Across these responses, the researchers identified three parenting profiles. The first was high positive parenting with better supervision – the term “positive parenting” describes warm, responsive caregiving, such as praising good behaviour and engaging supportively with the child. The other two profiles were lower positive parenting with medium supervision, and medium positive parenting with poorer supervision. While these profiles do not represent the full spectrum of parenting approaches, this range let the researchers analyse the effects of positive parenting and level of supervision together.

Externalising and internalising behaviours were lowest among children raised with high positive parenting and better supervision. These behaviours were more common in the lower positive parenting with medium supervision profile, and highest among children in the medium positive parenting with poorer supervision profile.

Separately, the researchers also examined each parenting behaviour individually rather than as part of a broader profile. This analysis showed that inconsistent discipline – how unpredictably parents enforced rules – was linked to both more internalising and more externalising problems, regardless of a family’s broader parenting profile. Poor supervision, examined this way, was linked to more externalising problems specifically, such as aggression and attention difficulties, but was not significantly linked to internalising problems like anxiety and depression.

The results of this study do not give a full picture of a child’s rearing and its possible influences. The data are based on self-report – mostly mothers filled out the survey, with only 52 fathers participating, and other family or community members involved in the child’s rearing were not included. The researchers also only had a snapshot of the current parent-child relationship, which makes it difficult to establish cause and effect, as both parenting tactics and child behaviour can develop and change in response to one another.

The authors add: “In a large, diverse sample of children across the US, we found that certain patterns of parenting – not just individual behaviours – matter for children’s emotional and behavioral wellbeing. Children tended to have fewer emotional and behavioral problems when parents were consistently positive, provided steady discipline, and stayed closely engaged in their day-to-day lives. It’s a reminder that small, everyday parenting behaviours can add up to meaningful differences for children.”

Provided by PLOS

Categories : NeurologyTags :

Largest Study of New Parents Dismisses ‘Baby Brain’ Myth

On By ModernMedia

The largest and most comprehensive study of memory and cognition in new parents has found no evidence for ‘baby brain’ in parents

Photography by Drew Hays on Unsplash

New mothers often complain about having ‘baby brain’, where memory and cognition become vague and unreliable. Now a Monash University study – the largest ever done comparing cognitive ability in new parents – has unequivocally found no evidence that ‘baby brain’ reflects underlying problems with cognition that result from becoming a parent.

In a study published in the journal Cortex, and led by PhD candidate Navyann Siddiqui and Dr Kelsey Perrykkad from the Cognitive Neuroimaging Lab at the Turner Institute for Brain and Mental Health, researchers examined cognitive differences in 150 mothers and 150 fathers up to two years after their baby’s birth.

The study found that – using a comprehensive battery of cognitive assessments – both mothers and fathers showed similar performance to non-parent (male and female) controls on all cognition measures, “suggesting the absence of so-called ‘baby brain’ effects,” Dr Perrykkad said.

As an explanation of the common stereotype of ‘baby brain’, the researchers found a gender bias, with male non-fathers self-reporting better subjective memory than all other groups. However, according to Mr Siddiqui, “this self-promotion bias appeared to be lost in fathers, driven by lack of sleep”.

Strikingly, there was no effect of time postpartum on any cognitive measure, with parents’ ability on cognitive tests remaining the same regardless of the baby’s age up to 2 years, when it is assumed that sleep deprivation would be reduced.

While there is evidence of subtle decrements in cognition during pregnancy, according to Dr Perrykkad, “the evidence is inconsistent about the presence of an objective measurable decline in cognitive function during the postpartum period with studies revealing a potential mismatch between the self-reported parental experience and objective measures of cognitive change,” she said.

Mr Siddiqui said that – before the study – they expected that mothers and fathers would show subjective and objective reduction in cognition compared to non-parents. “We expected that there would be little to no difference between the new mums and dads on account of their shared environment post birth and we also expected that cognition would improve in parents with increased time postpartum,” he said.

Dr Perrykkad continued, ‘So why do new parents, especially new mothers, commonly report experiences of baby brain? It is important not to dismiss what new parents are telling us. When we do find evidence for baby brain, it is more related to sleep and wellbeing than a true objective decline in cognition. This indicates it is just as important as ever to support new parents in these formative years. While it isn’t the end of the baby brain story, new parents can take solace in the fact that becoming a new parent doesn’t inherently impair their memory and cognition.”

Source: Monash University

Categories : General Interest NeurologyTags :

fMRI Discovers Where Love Resides in the Brain

On By ModernMedia
The image represents a statistical average of how different types of love light up different regions of the brain. Photo: Pärttyli Rinne et al 2024, Aalto University.

We use the word ‘love’ in a bewildering range of contexts, from sexual adoration to parental love or the love of nature. Now, more comprehensive imaging of the brain may shed light on why we use the same word for such a diverse collection of human experiences.

“You see your newborn child for the first time. The baby is soft, healthy and hearty – your life’s greatest wonder. You feel love for the little one.”

The above statement was one of many simple scenarios presented to 55 parents, self-described as being in a loving relationship. Researchers from Aalto University utilised functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure brain activity while subjects mulled brief stories related to six different types of love.

“We now provide a more comprehensive picture of the brain activity associated with different types of love than previous research,” says Pärttyli Rinne, the philosopher and researcher who coordinated the study. “The activation pattern of love is generated in social situations in the basal ganglia, the midline of the forehead, the precuneus and the temporoparietal junction at the sides of the back of the head.”

Love for one’s children generated the most intense brain activity, closely followed by romantic love.

“In parental love, there was activation deep in the brain’s reward system in the striatum area while imagining love, and this was not seen for any other kind of love,” says Rinne. Love for romantic partners, friends, strangers, pets and nature were also part of the study, which was published in the journal Cerebral Cortex.

According to the research, brain activity is influenced not only by the closeness of the object of love, but also by whether it is a human being, another species or nature.

Unsurprisingly, compassionate love for strangers was less rewarding and caused less brain activation than love in close relationships. Meanwhile, love of nature activated the reward system and visual areas of the brain, but not the social brain areas.

Pet-owners identifiable by brain activity

The biggest surprise for the researchers was that the brain areas associated with love between people ended up being very similar, with differences lying primarily in the intensity of activation. All types of interpersonal love activated areas of the brain associated with social cognition, in contrast to love for pets or nature – with one exception.

Subjects’ brain responses to a statement like the following, on average, revealed whether or not they shared their life with a furry friend:

“You are home lolling on the couch and your pet cat pads over to you. The cat curls up next to you and purrs sleepily. You love your pet.”

“When looking at love for pets and the brain activity associated with it, brain areas associated with sociality statistically reveal whether or not the person is a pet owner. When it comes to the pet owners, these areas are more activated than with non-pet owners,” says Rinne.

Love activations were controlled for in the study with neutral stories in which very little happened. For example, looking out the bus window or absent-mindedly brushing your teeth. After hearing a professional actor’s rendition of each ‘love story’, participants were asked to imagine each emotion for 10 seconds.

This is not the first effort at finding love for Rinne and his team, which includes researchers Juha Lahnakoski, Heini Saarimäki, Mikke Tavast, Mikko Sams and Linda Henriksson. They have undertaken several studies seeking to deepen our scientific knowledge of human emotions. The group released research mapping subjects’ bodily experiences of love a year ago, with the earlier study also linking the strongest physical experiences of love with close interpersonal relationships.

Not only can understanding the neural mechanisms of love help guide philosophical discussions about the nature of love, consciousness, and human connection, but also, the researchers hope that their work will enhance mental health interventions in conditions like attachment disorders, depression or relationship issues.

Source: Aalto University