Abstract
Research in animals has shown that early life experience, particularly parenting behaviors, influences later-life stress reactivity. Despite the tremendous relevance of this finding to human development and brain function, it has not been tested prospectively in humans. In this study two aspects of parenting were measured at age 4 in a sample of healthy, low socioeconomic status, African American children, and stress reactivity was measured in the same children 11–14 years later using a modified version of the Trier Social Stress Test (n = 55). Salivary cortisol was measured before, during and after the stressor and data were analyzed using piecewise hierarchical linear modeling. Parental responsivity, independent of the use of physical discipline, was positively related to cortisol reactivity. Effects were independent of subjective appraisals of the stressor and were also independent of other environmental risk factors and current psychosocial functioning. Therefore this study demonstrates in a novel and precise fashion that early childhood parental responsivity prospectively and independently predicts stress reactivity in adolescence.
Highlights
Parental effects on cognitive and socioemotional development are hypothesized to be due, in part, to the influence of early childhood parental care on stress reactivity [1,2,3,4]
When simultaneously including all such predictors, increased Parental Responsivity remained a specific and selective predictor of increased slope of cortisol change during the reactivity period (B = 0.003, p = .04, reffect = .32). This prospective study demonstrates that parental responsivity in early childhood has an enduring association with reactivity to stress
Lower levels of parental responsivity during early childhood were associated with blunted cortisol reactivity to a laboratory stressor in adolescence
Summary
Parental effects on cognitive and socioemotional development are hypothesized to be due, in part, to the influence of early childhood parental care on stress reactivity [1,2,3,4]. Despite the importance of the hypothesis that early parenting influences laterlife stress reactivity in humans, support is indirect. The limbic hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis is one such stress response system which mobilizes in response to physical or psychological threats to well-being and facilitates homeostatic regulation through change [4,6,7]. Stressful events activating the HPA axis result in a molecular cascade that eventually increases circulating glucocorticoids, cortisol in humans, which in turn provide a signal for deactivation of the system through receptors in the hippocampus. In contrast with the sympathetic adrenomedullary system, which rapidly mobilizes resources and facilitates the fight or flight response, the HPA axis is mobilized more slowly in response to acute stressors and induces longer term changes, in part through changes in gene expression that broadly influence the brain and other organ systems
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
