TY - JOUR
T1 - Exploring the links between early life and young adulthood social experiences and men's later life psychobiology as fathers
AU - Sarma, Mallika S.
AU - Kuo, Patty X.
AU - Bechayda, Sonny Agustin
AU - Kuzawa, Christopher W.
AU - Gettler, Lee T.
N1 - Funding Information:
Work supported by: Wenner Gren Foundation (Gr. 7356 ; Gr. 8186 ), National Science Foundation ( BCS-0542182 ; BCS-0962212 ), The Interdisciplinary Obesity Center ( RR20649 ), and The Center for Environmental Health and Susceptibility ( ES10126 ; project 7-2004-E). LTG was supported by the Wenner-Gren Foundation's Hunt Postdoctoral Writing Fellowship, and MSS was supported by a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. The funding sources played no role in the conduct of the research or the preparation of this article.
Funding Information:
Work supported by: Wenner Gren Foundation (Gr. 7356; Gr. 8186), National Science Foundation (BCS-0542182; BCS-0962212), The Interdisciplinary Obesity Center (RR20649), and The Center for Environmental Health and Susceptibility (ES10126; project 7-2004-E). LTG was supported by the Wenner-Gren Foundation's Hunt Postdoctoral Writing Fellowship, and MSS was supported by a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. The funding sources played no role in the conduct of the research or the preparation of this article.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018
PY - 2018/9/1
Y1 - 2018/9/1
N2 - Early life cues of environmental harshness and unpredictability have been hypothesized to influence within-species variation in the timing of life history transitions and the dynamics of reproductive strategies, such as investments in mating and parenting. It is also believed that adolesence is an influential developmental period for male reproductive strategies, with those who achieve greater social and sexual success during that period maintaining faster life history strategies into adulthood. If correct, such early life and post-pubertal experiences could also help shape the psychobiological pathways that mediate reproductive strategies, including the well documented physiological shifts that occur when some men become parents. Drawing on a large sample of Filipino men (n = 417), we evaluate whether men who experienced cues of harshness or unpredictability in childhood or have earlier ages at sexual debut have elevated testosterone (T) as fathers. We also test whether males who experienced a combination of early life experiences of harshness or unpredictability and had earlier ages of sexual debut during adolescence had the most elevated T as fathers. We found that fathers who experienced early life harshness and who engaged in sex at an earlier age had elevated waking T. Among men transitioning to fatherhood across the 4.5-year follow-up period of this study, those who experienced unpredictability and who engaged in sex at an earlier age showed attenuated declines in waking T between baseline and follow-up. Complementing these findings, we found that fathers who first engaged in sex at later ages had greater acute declines in T when they played with their toddlers. We suggest that these patterns could reflect programming effects of sociosexual experiences during the years following the marked biological transitions that accompany puberty, which occur along with the better-studied effects of earlier life exposures to stressors. Overall, our results support the hypothesis that early life circumstances and social and sexual experiences, from early life to young adulthood, help calibrate physiological axes as key mechanisms coordinating dynamic life history strategies.
AB - Early life cues of environmental harshness and unpredictability have been hypothesized to influence within-species variation in the timing of life history transitions and the dynamics of reproductive strategies, such as investments in mating and parenting. It is also believed that adolesence is an influential developmental period for male reproductive strategies, with those who achieve greater social and sexual success during that period maintaining faster life history strategies into adulthood. If correct, such early life and post-pubertal experiences could also help shape the psychobiological pathways that mediate reproductive strategies, including the well documented physiological shifts that occur when some men become parents. Drawing on a large sample of Filipino men (n = 417), we evaluate whether men who experienced cues of harshness or unpredictability in childhood or have earlier ages at sexual debut have elevated testosterone (T) as fathers. We also test whether males who experienced a combination of early life experiences of harshness or unpredictability and had earlier ages of sexual debut during adolescence had the most elevated T as fathers. We found that fathers who experienced early life harshness and who engaged in sex at an earlier age had elevated waking T. Among men transitioning to fatherhood across the 4.5-year follow-up period of this study, those who experienced unpredictability and who engaged in sex at an earlier age showed attenuated declines in waking T between baseline and follow-up. Complementing these findings, we found that fathers who first engaged in sex at later ages had greater acute declines in T when they played with their toddlers. We suggest that these patterns could reflect programming effects of sociosexual experiences during the years following the marked biological transitions that accompany puberty, which occur along with the better-studied effects of earlier life exposures to stressors. Overall, our results support the hypothesis that early life circumstances and social and sexual experiences, from early life to young adulthood, help calibrate physiological axes as key mechanisms coordinating dynamic life history strategies.
KW - Acute reactivity
KW - Developmental plasticity
KW - Fatherhood
KW - Life history theory
KW - Testosterone
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U2 - 10.1016/j.physbeh.2017.11.029
DO - 10.1016/j.physbeh.2017.11.029
M3 - Article
C2 - 29197496
AN - SCOPUS:85045952769
VL - 193
SP - 82
EP - 89
JO - Physiology and Behavior
JF - Physiology and Behavior
SN - 0031-9384
ER -