Parental care status and sexual risk behavior in five nationally-representative surveys of sub-Saharan African nations

Background About 10% of children worldwide do not live with either of their biological parents, and although some of these children are orphans, many have living parents. While research shows that orphaned children in Sub-Saharan Africa tend to engage in more sexual risk behaviors than their peers, possibly due to decreased parental oversight and support, it is unclear if these effects also apply to children separated from their living parents. Exploring the question of whether living without parents, regardless of whether they are deceased, is linked to greater sexual risk-taking, this study is the first, to our knowledge, to examine correlates of parental care status in a multi-country, nationally-representative analysis. Methods This study was a secondary analysis of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Violence Against Children Surveys from Kenya, Malawi, Tanzania, Nigeria, and Zambia. We conducted logistic regressions on N = 6770 surveys of youth aged 13 to 17 years to determine if living with their biological parents predicted the odds of engaging in risky sexual behavior, controlling for demographic factors including orphanhood. Post-hoc regressions examined specific risk behaviors. Results Compared to those living with both parents, youth not living with either parent had heightened odds of engaging in any sexual risk behavior, even when controlling for orphanhood (OR = 2.56, 95% CI: [1.96, 3.33]). Non-parental care predicted heightened odds of non-condom use (OR = 3.35, 95% CI: [2.38, 4.72]), early sexual debut (OR = 1.80, 95% CI: [1.31, 2.46]), and more sexual partners (β = .60, p < .001). Conclusions This study extends prior research linking orphanhood and sexual risk behavior, lending credence to the idea that it is not parental death, but rather parental absence, that leads to sexual risk in youth. Public health programming in Sub-Saharan Africa should consider targeting not only “orphaned youth,” but all children separated from their parents.

Genetic and Social Transmission of Parental Sex Roles in Zebra Finch Families

Parental care plays a central, reinforcing role in the evolution of sex roles and its development is often reported to be driven by genetic, rather than environmental effects. Based on these studies, however, genetic inheritance does not account fully for the often-significant phenotypic variability observed within species, a variation that we hypothesized may be explained by social effects from parents. Following a full cross-fostering design, here we aimed at disentangling genetic and social parental effects in the ontogeny of parental behaviours. Clutches of eggs were swapped, and we monitored parental behaviours in two consecutive generations of a captive population of the socially monogamous, biparental zebra finch (Taeniopygia guttata). Using nest box cameras, parental behaviour was recorded for 3 h in two reproductive stages: on day 8 of incubation and day 10 post-hatching. These fostered birds, after becoming fully matured, received a pair randomly and we observed parental care of this second generation too, following the same protocol. We then compared various parental behaviours (such as time spent incubating, or number of nest attendances during offspring provisioning) in the second generation to those of their genetic and social parents. Based on the results of our experiment, both genetic and social effects can contribute to intergenerational transmission of specific parental behaviours, with various weights. However, the strongest and most consistent effect that we found is that of the current mate; a social effect that can manifest both in negative and positive directions, depending on the behavioural trait. Our study suggests context-specific and sexually different genetic, social and non-social environmental effects in the ontogeny of parental sex roles and outline the importance of parental negotiation in explaining individual variation of parental behaviour in biparental species.

Terrestrial reproduction and parental care drive rapid evolution in the trade-off between offspring size and number across amphibians

The trade-off between offspring size and number is central to life history strategies. Both the evolutionary gain of parental care or more favorable habitats for offspring development are predicted to result in fewer, larger offspring. However, despite much research, it remains unclear whether and how different forms of care and habitats drive the evolution of the trade-off. Using data for over 800 amphibian species, we demonstrate that, after controlling for allometry, amphibians with direct development and those that lay eggs in terrestrial environments have larger eggs and smaller clutches, while different care behaviors and adaptations vary in their effects on the trade-off. Specifically, among the 11 care forms we considered at the egg, tadpole and juvenile stage, egg brooding, male egg attendance, and female egg attendance increase egg size; female tadpole attendance and tadpole feeding decrease egg size, while egg brooding, tadpole feeding, male tadpole attendance, and male tadpole transport decrease clutch size. Unlike egg size that shows exceptionally high rates of phenotypic change in just 19 branches of the amphibian phylogeny, clutch size has evolved at exceptionally high rates in 135 branches, indicating episodes of strong selection; egg and tadpole environment, direct development, egg brooding, tadpole feeding, male tadpole attendance, and tadpole transport explain 80% of these events. By explicitly considering diversity in parental care and offspring habitat by stage of offspring development, this study demonstrates that more favorable conditions for offspring development promote the evolution of larger offspring in smaller broods and reveals that the diversity of parental care forms influences the trade-off in more nuanced ways than previously appreciated.

Protection of orphans and children left without parental care from violence and abuse: legal grounds and psychological assistance

The paper deals with the problem of abuse and violence against minors, among which the authors distinguish a special category: orphans and children left without parental care. Approaches to the definition and forms of violence and ill-treatment of minors are described. The psychological causes and consequences of violence and ill-treatment are analyzed. Technologies for providing psychological assistance to child victims of violence and abuse are offered. A significant part of the work is devoted to the consideration of the features of interdepartmental interaction on prevention and timely detection of signs and consequences of abuse and violence against children. The result of such an analysis was the development of a model regulation describing the procedural and legal issues of coordinating such interaction between specialists from different departments in order to protect the interests of minors. The work is addressed to psychologists, teachers, specialists of organizations for children.

Raising People With Special Needs

All social communities strive to take care of the development, upbringing, and education of children deprived of parental care. The reasons for denial of parental care for children are known in theory and practice: death of parents due to war, natural death of one or both parents, loss of parents due to accident, illness, inability to care for the child, abandonment of children by parents, and other reasons. These children are included in the category of children without parental care and become a subject of social care. If they feel a lack of natural parental care, they can go on the crime route and start dealing with crime. Crime is a complex social phenomenon that, because of its dangers and the consequences it leaves for the individual and the social community, is studied from various aspects.

Prolactin action is necessary for parental behavior in male mice

Parental care is critical for successful reproduction in mammals. In comparison to maternal care, the neuroendocrine mechanisms supporting paternal care are less well-studied. Laboratory mice show a mating-induced suppression of infanticide (normally observed in virgins) and onset of paternal behavior. Using this model, we sought to investigate whether the hormone prolactin plays a role in paternal behavior, as it does for maternal behavior. First, using c-fos immunoreactivity in Prlr-IRES-Cre-tdtomato reporter mouse sires, we show that the circuitry activated during paternal interactions contains prolactin-responsive neurons, including the medial preoptic area, bed nucleus of the stria terminalis, and medial amygdala. To evaluate whether prolactin action is required for the establishment and display of paternal behavior, we conditionally deleted the prolactin receptor (Prlr) from 3 distinct cell types: glutamatergic, GABAergic, and CaMKIIα-expressing forebrain neurons. Prlr-deletion from CaMKIIα-expressing forebrain neurons, but not from glutamatergic or GABAergic cells, resulted in a profound effect on paternal behavior, as none of these males completed the pup retrieval task. Finally, although sires do not show an acute increase in circulating prolactin levels in response to pups, pharmacological blockade of prolactin-release at the time of pup exposure resulted in failure to retrieve pups, similar to when the Prlr was deleted from CaMKIIα neurons, with prolactin administration rescuing this behavior. Taken together, our data show that paternal behavior in sires is dependent on basal levels of circulating prolactin acting at the Prlr on CaMKIIα-expressing neurons. These new data in male mice demonstrate that prolactin has a similar action in both sexes to promote parental care.

Delayed timing of breeding attempts, but not time lost to nest construction, reduces the annual reproductive output of the Eastern Phoebe (Sayornis phoebe)

For many birds, nest construction is a costly aspect of parental care, trading finite energetic resources between parental care and self-maintenance. For multi-brooded organisms with short breeding seasons, such as migratory passerines, repeated nest construction could be especially costly if the activity delays the onset of breeding attempts. Earlier studies on passerines that reuse nests between breeding seasons suggested that time lost to initial nest construction reduces seasonal reproductive output. However, costs associated with building new nests between breeding attempts, within the same breeding season, have largely been ignored. Here, we experimentally removed first nests, after fledging or failing, of Eastern Phoebes ( Sayornis phoebe), to evaluate how the annual onset of breeding and nest construction between breeding attempts affected parental investment into second attempts. We found that first egg laying date negatively predicted the probability of second breeding attempts, but experimental treatment (first nest removal vs. control) did not. Neither first egg laying date nor treatment statistically influenced any of the reproductive traits in second breeding attempts (clutch size, nestling body condition, and nestling growth rate). We conclude that in this species, second breeding attempts are limited by the initial onset of seasonal reproduction, and not by time lost to nest construction between breeding attempts.