Lee T. Gettler, Stacy Rosenbaum, Patty X. Kuo, Mallika S. Sarma, Sonny Agustin Bechayda, Thomas W. McDade, Christopher W. Kuzawa
Across vertebrates, testosterone is an important mediator of reproductive trade-offs, shaping how energy and time are devoted to parenting versus mating/competition. Based on early environments, organisms often calibrate adult hormone production to adjust reproductive strategies. For example, favorable early nutrition predicts higher adult male testosterone in humans, and animal models show that developmental social environments can affect adult testosterone. In humans, fathers’ testosterone often declines with caregiving, yet these patterns vary within and across populations. This may partially trace to early social environments, including caregiving styles and family relationships, which could have formative effects on testosterone production and parenting behaviors. Using data from a multidecade study in the Philippines (n = 966), we tested whether sons’ developmental experiences with their fathers predicted their adult testosterone profiles, including after they became fathers themselves. Sons had lower testosterone as parents if their own fathers lived with them and were involved in childcare during adolescence. We also found a contributing role for adolescent father–son relationships: sons had lower waking testosterone, before and after becoming fathers, if they credited their own fathers with their upbringing and resided with them as adolescents. These findings were not accounted for by the sons’ own parenting and partnering behaviors, which could influence their testosterone. These effects were limited to adolescence: sons’ infancy or childhood experiences did not predict their testosterone as fathers. Our findings link adolescent family experiences to adult testosterone, pointing to a potential pathway related to the intergenerational transmission of biological and behavioral components of reproductive strategies. Copyright © 2022 the Author(s).
Department of Anthropology, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, 46556, IN, United States; Eck Institute for Global Health, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, 46556, IN, United States; William J. Shaw Center for Children and Families, University of Notre Dame, South Bend, 46635, IN, United States; Department of Anthropology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 48109, MI, United States; Department of Child, Youth, and Family Studies, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, 68588, NE, United States; Department of Otolaryngology, School of Medicine, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, 21218, MD, United States; University of San Carlos Office of Population Studies Foundation, Department of Anthropology, Sociology, and History, University of San Carlos, Metro Cebu, 6016, Philippines; Department of Anthropology, Northwestern University, Evanston, 60208, IL, United States; Institute for Policy Research, Northwestern University, Evanston, 60208, IL, United States
