Parenting News

June 11, 2025

Top Headlines

May 30, 2025 — Singing to your infant can significantly boost the baby's mood, according to a recent study. Around the world and across cultures, singing to babies seems to come instinctively to caregivers. Now, new findings support that singing is an easy, safe, ...

Significant Declines in Maternal Mental Health Across US

May 27, 2025 — A new study reveals a concerning decline in self-reported mental health among mothers in the United States between 2016 and 2023. The study also found modest but measurable declines in self-reported physical health during the same ...

Study Quantifies the Sleep Loss and Disruption Experienced by New Mothers

May 27, 2025 — Becoming a new mother brings more than just joyful chaos it delivers a profound and persistent sleep shock. A new study reveals that first-time moms lose not just total sleep, but crucial uninterrupted sleep, especially in the first week postpartum. ...

Mother's Warmth in Childhood Influences Teen Health by Shaping Perceptions of Social Safety

May 28, 2025 — Parental warmth and affection in early childhood can have life-long physical and mental health benefits for children, and new research points to an important underlying process: children's sense of ...

Unconditional Cash Transfers Following Childbirth Increases Breastfeeding

May 27, 2025 — The U.S. is facing a maternal health crisis with higher rates of maternal mortality than any other high-income country. Social and economic factors, including income, are recognized determinants of maternal morbidity and mortality. In addition, more ...

Recessive Genes Are Subject to Darwinian Selection

May 15, 2025 — As a group, carriers of recessive disorders are slightly less healthy and have a reduced chance of having offspring. This disadvantage is greatest for carriers of a recessive gene for intellectual disability, and reflected in a shorter school career ...

New Study Raises Concerns About the Safety of Long-Term ADHD Medication Treatment in Children

May 14, 2025 — A recent study reveals that the average duration of ADHD medication for children and adolescents is more than three years. However, reliable, controlled data on the safety of marketed ADHD medicines ...

Postpartum Depression and Bonding: Long-Term Effects on School-Age Children

May 14, 2025 — Postpartum maternal mental health and mother-to-infant bonding are well-established as critical factors in a child's psychosocial development. However, few studies have explored the combined impact of postpartum maternal depression and early bonding ...

New Survey Shows Privacy and Safety Tops List of Parental Concerns About Screen Time

May 13, 2025 — As kids spend more time on screens, a new national survey conducted by Ipsos on behalf of The Kids Mental Health Foundation, founded by Nationwide Children's Hospital, identifies parents' greatest ...

Evidence of Mother-Offspring Attachment Types in Wild Chimpanzees

May 12, 2025 — A team of researchers has identified distinct mother-offspring attachment types in wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus). Drawing parallels with human psychology, the study provides compelling evidence that wild chimpanzee infants, like human ...

Losing a Parent May Increase Children's Risk of Being Bullied

May 7, 2025 — A new study surveyed 21,000 children in China and found that the association between parental bereavement and school bullying varied by sex of the child and deceased parent, age when the death occurred, and geographical area. Adolescents in rural ...

Parent Coaching Sparks Major Communication Growth in Infants With Social and Communication Delays

May 6, 2025 — A study found that targeted coaching for caregivers of infants as young as 8 months significantly enhances babies' communication and cognitive ...

Latest Headlines

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Increased Risk of Psychopathology Found in Offspring of People With Schizophrenia or Bipolar Disorder

May 21, 2025 — A new study confirms that children of people with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder have a higher risk of developing psychopathology compared to ...

Neighborhood Stress May Impact Kids' Brains -- And Increase Depression Risk

May 5, 2025 — Children who grow up in disadvantaged neighborhoods -- areas with higher levels of crime and deprivation, and lower access to community resources -- are at risk of developing depression, and new ...

Spanking and Other Physical Discipline Lead to Exclusively Negative Outcomes for Children in Low And Middle-Income Countries

May 5, 2025 — Physically punishing children in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) has exclusively negative outcomes -- including poor health, lower academic ...

By 15 Months, Infants Begin to Learn New Words for Objects, Even Those They've Never Seen

Apr. 23, 2025 — A new study by developmental scientists offers the first evidence that infants as young as 15 months can identify an object they have learned about ...

Father's Mental Health Can Impact Children for Years

Apr. 19, 2025 — Five-year-olds exposed to paternal depression are more likely to have behavioral issues in grade school, researchers ...

Screen Time Surprise Under Grandparents' Care

Apr. 18, 2025 — New research has found that nearly half of the time American children spend with their grandparents involves interacting with or watching media on a screen. How that screen time is managed can ...

Nurturing Now, Thriving Later: The Lasting Power of Affectionate Mothering

Apr. 16, 2025 — Affectionate mothering in childhood may have a lasting impact on important personality traits, potentially influencing life outcomes such as educational achievement, economic success, and health and ...

Primate Mothers Display Different Bereavement Response to Humans

Apr. 15, 2025 — Macaque mothers experience a short period of physical restlessness after the death of an infant, but do not show typical human signs of grief, such as lethargy and appetite loss, finds a new study by ...

Gestational Diabetes Linked to ADHD in Children

Apr. 14, 2025 — A new study has found children born to mothers who experienced gestational diabetes (GDM) during pregnancy are more likely to develop attention-deficient hyperactive disorder (ADHD) and externalizing ...

Father With Alzheimer's? You May Be More at Risk of Brain Changes

Apr. 9, 2025 — While some studies have suggested that having a mother with Alzheimer's disease may put you more at risk of developing the disease, a new study finds that having a father with the disease may be tied ...

Early Education Impacts Teenage Behavior

Apr. 8, 2025 — Researchers explored the long-term effects of preschool expansion in Japan in the 1960s, revealing significant reductions in risky behaviors amongst teenagers. By analyzing regional differences in ...

Childhood Experiences Shape the Brain's White Matter With Cognitive Effects Seen Years Later

Apr. 7, 2025 — Investigators have linked difficult early life experiences with reduced quality and quantity of the white matter communication highways throughout the adolescent brain. This reduced connectivity is ...

Perceiving One's Own Body: Babies Sense Their Heartbeat and Breathing

Apr. 7, 2025 — Body signals such as heartbeat and breathing accompany us constantly, often unnoticed as background noise of our perception. Even in the earliest years of life, these signals are important as they ...

Using Everyday Products During Pregnancy Can Affect Newborn's Metabolism, Study Finds

Apr. 2, 2025 — A newly published study found that a mother's exposure to phthalates during pregnancy can affect their newborn's metabolism and brain development. These widely used plasticizers are ...

An Immune Cell May Explain How Maternal Inflammation Causes Neurodevelopmental Disorder

Apr. 1, 2025 — A research group has uncovered a potential mechanism linking maternal inflammation to delayed neurodevelopment in infants. The research suggests the role of CD11c-positive microglia -- immune cells ...

My Robot Therapist: The Ethics of AI Mental Health Chatbots for Kids

Mar. 31, 2025 — AI mental health apps may offer a cheap and accessible way to fill the gaps in the overstretched U.S. mental health care system, but ethics experts warn that we need to be thoughtful about how we use ...

How Family Background Can Help Lead to Athletic Success

Mar. 20, 2025 — Americans have long believed that sports are one area in society that offers kids from all backgrounds the chance to succeed to the best of their abilities. But new research suggests that this belief ...

Why Don't We Remember Being a Baby? New Study Provides Clues

Mar. 20, 2025 — Though we learn so much during our first years of life, we can't, as adults, remember specific events from that time. Researchers have long believed we don't hold onto these experiences ...

Oxytocin System of Breastfeeding Affected in Mothers With Postnatal Depression

Mar. 14, 2025 — The oxytocin system -- which helps release breast milk and strengthens the bond between mother and baby -- may be affected during breastfeeding in mothers experiencing postnatal ...

Children Who Lack Fish in Their Diets Are Less Sociable and Kind, Study Finds

Mar. 11, 2025 — Children who consumed the least amounts of seafood at 7-years-old were likely to be less 'prosocial' at ages 7 and 9 years than those who regularly consumed seafood, according to a new ...

Good Parenting Helps, but Has Limits Under Major Deprivation

Mar. 11, 2025 — Parenting skills can make a big difference in fostering a newborn's language acquisition and cognition, but there may be a limit to how far parenting can go to make up the challenges to ...

Study Pinpoints the Impact of Prenatal Stress Across 27 Weeks of Pregnancy

Mar. 10, 2025 — Researchers found new insights on the timing of prenatal stress and its effect on infant stress reactivity and temperament -- including differences between ...

What's in a Label? It's Different for Boys Vs. Girls, New Study of Parents Finds

Mar. 10, 2025 — Research has shown that adults instinctively think of men when asked to think of a person -- they describe the most 'typical' person they can imagine as male and assume storybook characters ...

Improving School Readiness for Children With Low Birth Weight

Mar. 7, 2025 — School readiness not only impacts kids' academic success, but also their long-term economic and health outcomes. Unfortunately, research reveals a concerning gap in school readiness for children ...

Prenatal Maternal Stressors Linked to Higher Blood Pressure During First Year After Birth, Study Shows

Mar. 4, 2025 — Psychosocial stress during pregnancy could lead to higher blood pressure during the first year postpartum according to new ...

Researchers Uncover Blood Metabolites That May Influence Early Childhood Development

Feb. 28, 2025 — Researchers have identified small molecules in the blood that may impact early childhood development, showing how dietary exposures, early life experiences, and gut health can influence a ...

How Many Languages Can You Learn at the Same Time? -- Ghanaian Babies Grow Up Speaking Two to Six Languages

Feb. 28, 2025 — Africa is a multilingual continent and many adults speak several languages fluently. An empirical study by a psycholinguist now shows that the roots of this multilingualism can be found in infancy: ...

Improving Relationships Between Dads and Daughters... It's a Walk in the Park

Feb. 27, 2025 — A simple walk in the park could hold the key to unlocking a close and loving relationship between fathers and daughters, a new study has ...

How Parenthood May Help Keep Your Brain Young

Feb. 26, 2025 — Researchers find that parents show patterns of brain connectivity that oppose age-related ...

Screening and Treating Maternal Psychological Health Key to Improving Cardiovascular Health

Feb. 25, 2025 — Identifying and treating risk factors for depression, anxiety and other psychological health conditions during pregnancy and postpartum may improve short- and long-term health outcomes for both ...