Although interest in the neurobiology of parent–infant bonding is a century old,
neuroimaging of the human parental brain is recent. After summarizing current comparative …

Parents know the transformative nature of having and caring for a child. Among many
mammals, giving birth leads from an aversion to infant stimuli to irresistible attraction. Here …

Humans are an unusually prosocial species, who engage in social behaviors that include
altruism—whereby an individual engages in costly or risky acts to improve the welfare of …

In recent decades, human sociocultural changes have increased the numbers of fathers that
are involved in direct caregiving in Western societies. This trend has led to a resurgence of …

This article is part of a Special Issue “Parental Care”. Research on the neurobiology of
attachment, pioneered by scholars in the generation that followed the discovery of social …

Multiple lines of research indicate that fathers often treat boys and girls differently in ways
that impact child outcomes. The complex picture that has emerged, however, is obscured by …

Millions of women worldwide use oral contraceptives ('the pill'; OCs), often starting at a
pubertal age when their brains are in a crucial developmental stage. Research into the …

Allomothering, the caregiving to offspring by adults other than the biological mother
including fathers and other group members, has characterized human societies throughout …

Males of many species must allocate limited energy budgets between mating and parenting
effort. The Challenge Hypothesis provides a framework for understanding these life-history …

Highlights•Paternal care is associated with hormonal changes in rodents, primates and
humans.•Paternal behavior depends on similar neural systems as maternal …