Vasopressin and parental expressed emotion in the transition to fatherhood

Abstract

In the last decades, parenting researchers increasingly focused on the role of fathers in child development. However, it is still largely unknown which factors contribute to fathers' beliefs about their child, which may be crucial in the transition to fatherhood. In the current randomized within-subject experiment, the effect of nasal administration of vasopressin (AVP) on both Five Minute Speech Sample-based (FMSS) expressed emotion and emotional content or prosody was explored in 25 prospectivefathers. Moreover, we explored how the transition to fatherhood affected these FMSSbased parameters, using prenatal and early postnatal measurements. Analyses revealed that FMSS-based expressed emotion and emotional content were correlated, but not affected by prenatal AVP administration. However,child's birth was associated with an increase in positivity and a decrease in emotional prosody, suggesting that the child's birth is more influential with regard to paternal thoughts and feelings than prenatal AVP administration.

Exploring the hormonal and neural correlates of paternal protective behavior to their infants

“…The research visit was located either in the Leiden University Medical Centre or at the participant's home, depending on possible MRI contraindications (e.g., diabetes, metallic foreign objects in participant's body) and preference of the participant. The assessment consisted of the following measures: Behavioral measurements, including a 10‐min Free play (Witte et al., 2019 ), a handgrip force paradigm (Alyousefi‐Van Dijk et al., 2019 ), and the Five Minute Speech Sample (Lotz et al., 2020 ); Saliva and hair sampling for hormonal measurements; and questionnaires about, for example, health, medication, and current mental state. When the assessment took place in the LUMC, the Auditory Startling Task (AST, Witte et al., 2019 ) was performed and neural measurements were conducted with (f)MRI and DTI.…”