The effect of childhood unpredictability on co-parenting relationships during the transition to parenthood: A life history approach

2020 ◽  
Vol 37 (8-9) ◽  
pp. 2438-2458
Author(s):  
Ohad Szepsenwol
Keyword(s):  
Life History ◽  
Early Life ◽  
Life History Theory ◽  
Transition To Parenthood ◽  
Life Experiences ◽  
Parental Behaviors ◽  
Childhood Socioeconomic Status ◽  
Environmental Unpredictability ◽  
History Approach

Recent extensions to life history theory posit that exposure to environmental unpredictability during childhood should forecast negative parental behaviors in adulthood. In the current research, this logic was extended to co-parental behaviors, which refer to how parents coordinate, share responsibility, and support each other’s parental efforts. The effects of early-life unpredictability on individual and dyadic co-parental functioning were examined in a sample of 109 families (two parents and their firstborn child) who were followed longitudinally from before the child’s birth until the age of two. Greater early-life unpredictability (family changes, residential changes, and parents’ occupational changes by age 8) experienced by mothers, but not fathers, predicted more negative co-parental behaviors in triadic observations 6 months post birth, and lower couple-reported co-parenting quality assessed 3, 9, 18, and 24 months post birth. These effects were not explained by parents’ childhood socioeconomic status or current relationship quality. These findings highlight the role of mothers in shaping co-parenting relationships and how these relationships might be influenced by mothers’ early-life experiences.

scholarly journals Gene regulation contributes to explain the impact of early life socioeconomic disadvantage on adult inflammatory levels in two cohort studies

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Cristian Carmeli ◽  
Zoltán Kutalik ◽  
Pashupati P. Mishra ◽  
Eleonora Porcu ◽  
Cyrille Delpierre ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Dna Methylation ◽  
Gene Regulation ◽  
Cohort Studies ◽  
Early Life ◽  
Life Experiences ◽  
Socioeconomic Disadvantage ◽  
Mediating Role ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractIndividuals experiencing socioeconomic disadvantage in childhood have a higher rate of inflammation-related diseases decades later. Little is known about the mechanisms linking early life experiences to the functioning of the immune system in adulthood. To address this, we explore the relationship across social-to-biological layers of early life social exposures on levels of adulthood inflammation and the mediating role of gene regulatory mechanisms, epigenetic and transcriptomic profiling from blood, in 2,329 individuals from two European cohort studies. Consistently across both studies, we find transcriptional activity explains a substantive proportion (78% and 26%) of the estimated effect of early life disadvantaged social exposures on levels of adulthood inflammation. Furthermore, we show that mechanisms other than cis DNA methylation may regulate those transcriptional fingerprints. These results further our understanding of social-to-biological transitions by pinpointing the role of gene regulation that cannot fully be explained by differential cis DNA methylation.

scholarly journals Trade-off between offspring mass and number: the lightest offspring bear the costs

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 20190707
Author(s):  
Joanie Van de Walle ◽  
Andreas Zedrosser ◽  
Jon E. Swenson ◽  
Fanie Pelletier
Keyword(s):  
Life History ◽  
Litter Size ◽  
Phenotypic Variation ◽  
Reproductive Strategy ◽  
Life History Theory ◽  
Brown Bear ◽  
Offspring Size ◽  
Trade Off ◽  
The Relationship

Life-history theory predicts a trade-off between offspring size and number. However, the role of intra-litter phenotypic variation in shaping this trade-off is often disregarded. We compared the strength of the relationship between litter size and mass from the perspective of the lightest and the heaviest yearling offspring in 110 brown bear litters in Sweden. We showed that the mass of the lightest yearlings decreased with increasing litter size, but that the mass of the heaviest yearling remained stable, regardless of litter size. Consistent with a conservative reproductive strategy, our results suggest that mothers maintained a stable investment in a fraction of the litter, while transferring the costs of larger litter size to the remaining offspring. Ignoring intra-litter phenotypic variation may obscure our ability to detect a trade-off between offspring size and number.

Beyond allostatic load: Rethinking the role of stress in regulating human development

2013 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce J. Ellis ◽  
Marco Del Giudice
Keyword(s):  
Life History ◽  
Stress Response ◽  
Allostatic Load ◽  
Life History Theory ◽  
Calibration Model ◽  
Load Model ◽  
Adaptive Calibration ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Response Systems

AbstractHow do exposures to stress affect biobehavioral development and, through it, psychiatric and biomedical disorder? In the health sciences, the allostatic load model provides a widely accepted answer to this question: stress responses, while essential for survival, have negative long-term effects that promote illness. Thus, the benefits of mounting repeated biological responses to threat are traded off against costs to mental and physical health. The adaptive calibration model, an evolutionary–developmental theory of stress–health relations, extends this logic by conceptualizing these trade-offs as decision nodes in allocation of resources. Each decision node influences the next in a chain of resource allocations that become instantiated in the regulatory parameters of stress response systems. Over development, these parameters filter and embed information about key dimensions of environmental stress and support, mediating the organism's openness to environmental inputs, and function to regulate life history strategies to match those dimensions. Drawing on the adaptive calibration model, we propose that consideration of biological fitness trade-offs, as delineated by life history theory, is needed to more fully explain the complex relations between developmental exposures to stress, stress responsivity, behavioral strategies, and health. We conclude that the adaptive calibration model and allostatic load model are only partially complementary and, in some cases, support different approaches to intervention. In the long run, the field may be better served by a model informed by life history theory that addresses the adaptive role of stress response systems in regulating alternative developmental pathways.

scholarly journals An integrative evolutionary framework for psychopathology

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Marco Del Giudice ◽  
John D. Haltigan
Keyword(s):  
Life History ◽  
Mental Disorders ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Life History Theory ◽  
Developmental Trajectories ◽  
Theoretical Models ◽  
Integrative Framework ◽  
History Approach ◽  
P Factor ◽  
And Behavior

Abstract The field of psychopathology is in a transformative phase, and is witnessing a renewed surge of interest in theoretical models of mental disorders. While many interesting proposals are competing for attention in the literature, they tend to focus narrowly on the proximate level of analysis and lack a broader understanding of biological function. In this paper, we present an integrative framework for mental disorders built on concepts from life history theory, and describe a taxonomy of mental disorders based on its principles, the fast–slow–defense model (FSD). The FSD integrates psychopathology with normative individual differences in personality and behavior, and allows researchers to draw principled distinctions between broad clusters of disorders, as well as identify functional subtypes within current diagnostic categories. Simulation work demonstrates that the model can explain the large-scale structure of comorbidity, including the apparent emergence of a general “p factor” of psychopathology. A life history approach also provides novel integrative insights into the role of environmental risk/protective factors and the developmental trajectories of various disorders.

Biological Sensitivity to Context

2019 ◽  
pp. 600-624
Author(s):  
Nila Shakiba ◽  
Elisabeth Conradt ◽  
Bruce J. Ellis
Keyword(s):  
Stress Response ◽  
Early Life ◽  
Mental Health Problems ◽  
Life Experiences ◽  
Developmental Model ◽  
Context Model ◽  
Stress Responsivity ◽  
Response Systems ◽  
Biological Sensitivity To Context

It is now well established that early experiences of adversity play a central role in development of many mental health problems in adulthood. However, the effects are more pronounced and detrimental for some individuals compared to others. Informed by the biological sensitivity to context model, an evolutionary-developmental model of individual differences in stress responsivity, the present chapter highlights the role of stress response system as one moderating mechanism in the pathway between early life experiences and development of internalizing and externalizing behaviors. The model posits that the magnitude and integrated patterns of autonomic and adrenocortical responses to psychosocial challenges are indicators of the organisms’ level of susceptibility to both positive and negative environmental influences. The final part of the chapter focuses on the role of early life experiences in programming the functioning of stress response systems, development of adaptive stress responsivity patterns, and related behavioral profiles.

scholarly journals Strategic adjustment of parental care in tree swallows: life-history trade-offs and the role of glucocorticoids

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (12) ◽  
pp. 160740 ◽  
Author(s):  
Çağlar Akçay ◽  
Ádám Z. Lendvai ◽  
Mark Stanback ◽  
Mark Haussmann ◽  
Ignacio T. Moore ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Life History ◽  
Parental Care ◽  
Life History Theory ◽  
Optimal Strategies ◽  
Plasma Corticosterone ◽  
Tree Swallows ◽  
Feeding Rates ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Strategic Adjustment

Life-history theory predicts that optimal strategies of parental investment will depend on ecological and social factors, such as current brood value and offspring need. Parental care strategies are also likely to be mediated in part by the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis and glucocorticoid hormones. Here, we present an experiment in tree swallows ( Tachycineta bicolor ), a biparental songbird with wide geographical distribution, asking whether parental care is strategically adjusted in response to signals of offspring need and brood value and if so, whether glucocorticoids are involved in these adjustments. Using an automated playback system, we carried out playbacks of nestling begging calls specifically to females in two populations differing in their brood value: a northern population in Ontario, Canada (relatively higher brood value) and a southern population in North Carolina, USA (relatively lower brood value). We quantified female offspring provisioning rates before and during playbacks and plasma corticosterone levels (cort) once during late incubation and once immediately after playbacks. Females in both populations increased feeding rates temporarily during the first 2 h of playback but the increase was not sustained for the entire duration of playback (6 h). Cort levels from samples at the end of the playback did not differ between control females and females that received playbacks. However, females that had higher increases in cort between the incubation and nestling period had greater fledging success. These results suggest that females are able to strategically respond to offspring need, although the role of glucocorticoids in this strategic adjustment remains unclear.

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