Protective parenting: neurobiological and behavioral dimensions

The current review focuses on a dimension of parenting that has largely been neglected in studies on human parenting, namely parental protection. Human protective parenting can be observed already during pregnancy, when mothers experiencing morning sickness avoid foods that are likely to carry pathogens and thus could be harmful to the fetus. After the birth of the baby, one of the foremost anxieties of parents is that their child will be abused or killed by strangers. Protective parenting seems to be a species-wide evolutionary-based behavior complementary to the innate bias of each newborn to strive for proximity to a potentially protective attachment figure. Most important target for future work might be to describe, explain and uncover the correlates and consequences of individual differences in the quality of protection—in parents and other caregivers.

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