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Evidence for an adolescent sensitive period to family experiences influencing adult male testosterone production
Across vertebrates, testosterone is an important mediator of reproductive trade-offs, shaping how energy and time are devoted to parenting versus mating/competition. Based on early environments, organisms often calibrate adult hormone production to adjust reproductive strategies. For example, favora...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
National Academy of Sciences
2022
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9191637/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35639692 http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2202874119 |
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author | Gettler, Lee T. Rosenbaum, Stacy Kuo, Patty X. Sarma, Mallika S. Bechayda, Sonny Agustin McDade, Thomas W. Kuzawa, Christopher W. |
author_facet | Gettler, Lee T. Rosenbaum, Stacy Kuo, Patty X. Sarma, Mallika S. Bechayda, Sonny Agustin McDade, Thomas W. Kuzawa, Christopher W. |
author_sort | Gettler, Lee T. |
collection | PubMed |
description | Across vertebrates, testosterone is an important mediator of reproductive trade-offs, shaping how energy and time are devoted to parenting versus mating/competition. Based on early environments, organisms often calibrate adult hormone production to adjust reproductive strategies. For example, favorable early nutrition predicts higher adult male testosterone in humans, and animal models show that developmental social environments can affect adult testosterone. In humans, fathers’ testosterone often declines with caregiving, yet these patterns vary within and across populations. This may partially trace to early social environments, including caregiving styles and family relationships, which could have formative effects on testosterone production and parenting behaviors. Using data from a multidecade study in the Philippines (n = 966), we tested whether sons’ developmental experiences with their fathers predicted their adult testosterone profiles, including after they became fathers themselves. Sons had lower testosterone as parents if their own fathers lived with them and were involved in childcare during adolescence. We also found a contributing role for adolescent father–son relationships: sons had lower waking testosterone, before and after becoming fathers, if they credited their own fathers with their upbringing and resided with them as adolescents. These findings were not accounted for by the sons’ own parenting and partnering behaviors, which could influence their testosterone. These effects were limited to adolescence: sons’ infancy or childhood experiences did not predict their testosterone as fathers. Our findings link adolescent family experiences to adult testosterone, pointing to a potential pathway related to the intergenerational transmission of biological and behavioral components of reproductive strategies. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-9191637 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2022 |
publisher | National Academy of Sciences |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-91916372022-12-01 Evidence for an adolescent sensitive period to family experiences influencing adult male testosterone production Gettler, Lee T. Rosenbaum, Stacy Kuo, Patty X. Sarma, Mallika S. Bechayda, Sonny Agustin McDade, Thomas W. Kuzawa, Christopher W. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A Social Sciences Across vertebrates, testosterone is an important mediator of reproductive trade-offs, shaping how energy and time are devoted to parenting versus mating/competition. Based on early environments, organisms often calibrate adult hormone production to adjust reproductive strategies. For example, favorable early nutrition predicts higher adult male testosterone in humans, and animal models show that developmental social environments can affect adult testosterone. In humans, fathers’ testosterone often declines with caregiving, yet these patterns vary within and across populations. This may partially trace to early social environments, including caregiving styles and family relationships, which could have formative effects on testosterone production and parenting behaviors. Using data from a multidecade study in the Philippines (n = 966), we tested whether sons’ developmental experiences with their fathers predicted their adult testosterone profiles, including after they became fathers themselves. Sons had lower testosterone as parents if their own fathers lived with them and were involved in childcare during adolescence. We also found a contributing role for adolescent father–son relationships: sons had lower waking testosterone, before and after becoming fathers, if they credited their own fathers with their upbringing and resided with them as adolescents. These findings were not accounted for by the sons’ own parenting and partnering behaviors, which could influence their testosterone. These effects were limited to adolescence: sons’ infancy or childhood experiences did not predict their testosterone as fathers. Our findings link adolescent family experiences to adult testosterone, pointing to a potential pathway related to the intergenerational transmission of biological and behavioral components of reproductive strategies. National Academy of Sciences 2022-05-31 2022-06-07 /pmc/articles/PMC9191637/ /pubmed/35639692 http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2202874119 Text en Copyright © 2022 the Author(s). Published by PNAS. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/This article is distributed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License 4.0 (CC BY-NC-ND) (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) . |
spellingShingle | Social Sciences Gettler, Lee T. Rosenbaum, Stacy Kuo, Patty X. Sarma, Mallika S. Bechayda, Sonny Agustin McDade, Thomas W. Kuzawa, Christopher W. Evidence for an adolescent sensitive period to family experiences influencing adult male testosterone production |
title | Evidence for an adolescent sensitive period to family experiences influencing adult male testosterone production |
title_full | Evidence for an adolescent sensitive period to family experiences influencing adult male testosterone production |
title_fullStr | Evidence for an adolescent sensitive period to family experiences influencing adult male testosterone production |
title_full_unstemmed | Evidence for an adolescent sensitive period to family experiences influencing adult male testosterone production |
title_short | Evidence for an adolescent sensitive period to family experiences influencing adult male testosterone production |
title_sort | evidence for an adolescent sensitive period to family experiences influencing adult male testosterone production |
topic | Social Sciences |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9191637/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35639692 http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2202874119 |
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