Australian study finds women with troubled relationship with their mother may struggle to bond with their own children
Women who have trouble bonding with their mothers are more likely to suffer from low levels of the hormone oxytocin after they give birth, leaving them struggling to bond with their own children, landmark Australian research has found.
It is the first time a link has been made between oxytocin, bonding and separation anxiety, a condition where people constantly check on their loved ones and worry something bad might happen to them.
In research led by the University of NSW, blood samples were taken from more than 100 pregnant women at Liverpool hospital.
Those who reported troubled maternal relationships showed a clear deficit in oxytocin, the trust and bonding hormone, compared with those who reported close childhood ties with their mother.
“The immediate postpartum results show that what you experienced from parenting – these formative experiences – are critical in wiring your response to the oxytocin hormone,” study lead author Professor Valsamma Eapen said.
“We believe that separation anxiety from loved ones during pregnancy might serve as a red flag to identify women who have insecure attachment and negative interpersonal styles, and we need to focus on these issues as an essential component of the anxiety or depression management.”
They could be targeted with early psychological interventions, perhaps in conjunction with oxytocin treatment, she said.
Eapen, who is also the university’s chair of infant, child and adolescent psychiatry, said the next phase of research would follow up the babies of the women studied to see how these factors influenced their attachment style and behaviour.
The study was published in the journal PLOS ONE.
Professor Philip Boyce, head of the perinatal psychiatry clinical research unit at Westmead Hospital in NSW, said animal studies had shown oxytocin was very closely related to how animals related to their offspring.
But researchers were increasingly examining how it affected human relationships, he said.
“There has been work looking at using oxytocin to improve relationships, for example in people with autism who may have trouble forming social relationships,” he said.
“There have also been some interesting experiments done on couples who argue a lot to see if oxytocin treatment can improve their relationships.”