Child gender influences paternal behavior, language, and brain function.

ABSTRACT: Multiple lines of research indicate that fathers often treat boys and girls differently in ways that impact child outcomes. The complex picture that has emerged, however, is obscured by methodological challenges inherent to the study of parental caregiving, and no studies to date have examined the possibility that gender differences in observed real-world paternal behavior are related to differential paternal brain responses to male and female children. Here we compare fathers of daughters and fathers of sons in terms of naturalistically observed everyday caregiving behavior and neural responses to child picture stimuli. Compared with fathers of sons, fathers of daughters were more attentively engaged with their daughters, sang more to their daughters, used more analytical language and lan

SUBMITTER: Mascaro JS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5481199 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature