The primary goal of the current study was to examine the association between maternal distress during pregnancy, conceptualized as stress, anxiety, and depression, and infant reproductive outcomes. It was hypothesized that women who report high levels of distress during pregnancy would be more likely to experience adverse reproductive outcomes. An additional goal of the study was to examine the...

Background: Most primiparous women don’t have enough sense of competency, most of it being due to lack of experience. Maternal self efficacy-based training, have led to improved maternal-infant outcomes. Aim: : To determine the effect of self-efficacy education on maternal sense of competency of primiparous women in the infant care. Methods: In this clinical trial, 61 primiparous women were ran...

Both the environments experienced by a mother as a juvenile and an adult can affect her investment in offspring. However, the implications of these maternal legacies, both juvenile and adult, for offspring fitness in natural populations are unclear. We investigated whether the juvenile growth rate and adult reproductive traits (length, body condition, and reproductive investment at spawning) of...

It is widely acknowledged that the nature of the maternal care a child receives can have long-term repercussions, and that children raised in deprived environments can have severe cognitive and behavioural difficulties that last into adulthood. The mechanisms underlying these effects are not understood, but recent data from rodents provide insight into a potential molecular mechanism. Like huma...

This study investigated the influence of maternal socialization (i.e., maternal support, discussion of emotion, negative affect) on children's emotional understanding in 24 neglectful mother-child dyads and a matched control group. Mothers and children were administered an interaction task. Mothers were also assessed for negative emotional experience, and children were assessed for emotional un...

The developmental transition to motherhood requires gene expression changes that alter the brain to drive the female to perform maternal behaviors. We broadly examined the global transcriptional response in the mouse maternal brain, by examining four brain regions: hypothalamus, hippocampus, neocortex, and cerebellum, in virgin females, two pregnancy time points, and three postpartum time point...

In spite of the growing knowledge and understanding of addiction as a chronic relapsing medical condition, individuals with substance use disorders (SUD) continue to experience stigmatization. Pregnant women who use substances suffer additional stigma as their use has the potential to cause fetal harm, calling into question their maternal fitness and often leading to punitive responses. Punishi...

Dear Editor-in-Chief The recent report on “The Adverse Effects of Pregnancies Complicated by Hemoglobin H (HBH) Disease” is very interesting (1). Rabiee et al. reported a pregnant case complicated with HBH disease. Indeed, this problem might not common in the Middle East but it is very common in Southeast Asia. The authors hereby would like to share the experience on this top...

dear editor-in-chief the recent report on “the adverse effects of pregnancies complicated by hemoglobin h (hbh) disease” is very interesting (1). rabiee et al. reported a pregnant case complicated with hbh disease. indeed, this problem might not common in the middle east but it is very common in southeast asia. the authors hereby would like to share the experience on this topic. in the recent r...

Theories of human development suggest that experiences embedded in social relationships alter prefrontal brain systems that mediate emotional self-regulation. This study tests for experience-dependent effects on prefrontal gray and white matter volumes determined in 39 young adult monkeys (Saimiri sciureus) 4 years after conditions that modified early maternal availability. These conditions wer...