Individual Differences in Maternal Style: Causes and Consequences for Mothers and offspring

Abstract

This chapter focuses on spontaneously occurring individual differences in maternal behavior within primate species. It argues that maternal style is both an expression of temperament-based differences among adult females, and a mechanism for transmitting individual differences across generations. The chapter describes the principal dimensions of maternal style that have been identified in studies of cercopithecine primates, and examines the variables that have been proposed to explain this variation in maternal behavior. It demonstrates that maternal style is responsive to social and ecological circumstances to a certain degree, but that there are also stable individual differences among females that persist in the face of changing conditions. The chapter also focuses on research on the consequences of individual differences in maternal style for the mother and for the offspring. There is evidence that maternal style influences future fertility for the mother. Maternal style also predicts individual differences in temperament and response to novel and challenging situations for juvenile and adolescent offspring, and influences the maternal behavior of adult daughters. Some of the proximate mechanisms that mediate these effects are discussed.