NYT: Exploring a Hormone for Caring

The lack of emotional care given to infants in some Romanian and Russian orphanages has provided researchers an opportunity to study the hormonal basis of the mother-child bond.

Researchers led by Seth D. Pollak of the University of Wisconsin have found that these children, even three and a half years after adoption into Wisconsin families, produce two critical hormones in a different pattern from children with traditional upbringings.

.......

Dr. Pollak and his colleagues have looked at how the two hormones are involved in shaping the bonds between mother and child. In normally raised children aged about 4½ years, they found, oxytocin levels rise after half an hour of physical interaction with their mothers.

But the previously neglected children in their study did not show this oxytocin jump, Dr. Pollak and his colleagues write in today's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The hormone levels were measured from samples of the children's urine.

Dr. Pollak believes that oxytocin acts through the brain's reward system and gives infants a positive feeling about social interactions. The finding that the adopted children in the study apparently get less of an oxytocin reward could explain why some children from Eastern Europe, as they grow older, have difficulty forming social relationships.






http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/22/health/22horm.html?ex=1133326800&en=fa131998fe541754&ei=5065&partner=MYWAY

Rush on oxytocin might be a good thing.




Cher

Those poor babies were probably emotionally scarred for life. The families who adoped them are likely in for a long hard road. :(

Essentially, they take them back to the infant stage, and the parents spend a lot of time holding, rocking and singing to them. All things you do mainly with babies. The children seem to improve.

It must be a very hard road for all involved. Caring for children is such a difficult task. The reward is the loving bond you develop with your child. To not have that, and to continue to toil day after day to meet their needs must be painful. Some people are saints.