"A recently published study suggests that exposure to social stress not only impairs a mother's ability to care for her children but can also negatively impact her daughter's ability to provide maternal care to future offspring.
"Researchers at the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University conducted a transgenerational study with female rats, examining the behavioral and physiological changes in mothers exposed to chronic social stress early in life as a model for postpartum depression and anxiety....
"The chronic social stress model used in this study provides insight into how social stress affects both human and animal behavior in the areas of maternal care, anxiety and lactation, and provides a wealth of observations," said Lindsay M. Carini, the study's lead author....
"This work builds off earlier Tufts research in the area of reproductive biology, which includes initial findings on the effects of chronic social stress on maternal behavior which was published in Stress by Nephew and Professor of Biomedical Sciences Robert Bridges, Nephew's postdoctoral mentor at TCSVM."
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-10-postpartum-depression-spans.html
Carini, et al. (2013). "Effects of early life social stress on endocrinology, maternal behavior, and lactation in rats." Hormones and Behavior. Abstract
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