Child Odors and Parenting: A Survey Examination of the Role of Odor in Child-Rearing

Abstract

Parental caregiving is critical for the survival of our young and continuation of our species. In humans, visual and auditory signals from offspring have been shown to be potent facilitators of parenting. However, whether odors emitted by our young also influence human parenting remains unclear. To explore this, we conducted a series of questionnaire surveys targeting parents with children under 6 years old. First, we collected episodes on experiencing odors/sniffing various parts of a child’s body (n = 507). The prevalence of experiencing events described in those episodes was examined in a separate survey (n = 384). Based on those results, the Child Odor in Parenting scale (COPs) was developed, and subsequently used in the main survey (n = 888). We found COPs to have adequate content validity, concurrent validity, and reliability. Responses to the COPs demonstrated that parents, especially mothers with infants, are aware of odors from their offspring, and actively seek them in daily child-rearing. The factor structure and content of the COPs items indicated that child odors have both affective and instrumental roles. Affective experiences induce loving feeling and affectionate sniffing, while instrumental experiences pertain to specific hygienic needs. The head was the most frequent source of affective experiences, and the child’s bottom of instrumental. Each was experienced by more than 90% of the mothers with a child below 1 year of age. Affective experiences significantly declined as the child grew older, possibly associated with the decline of physical proximity between parents and child. This age-related decline was not prominent for instrumental experiences, except for the bottom, which significantly declined after 3 years of age. The present findings suggest that child odors play roles in human parenting, and that their nature and significance change during the course of a child’s development.

Children’s Body Odors: Hints to the Development Status

“…Pleasantness was related to prepubertal classification, which is in line with previous findings on positive evaluation of infant's body odor (Fleming et al, 1993;Okamoto et al, 2016;Croy et al, 2017Croy et al, , 2019. Moreover, pleasantness perception of an infant's odor is an important cue mediating parental care as it facilitates affectionate love (Okamoto et al, 2016). This affective component of body odor declines with age (Okamoto et al, 2016;Croy et al, 2017), which is supported by our results demonstrating that pleasantness drives pre-but not postpubertal classification.…”

“…As our study points out, perceptual assessment was a strong predictor for age classification across all mothers. Pleasantness was related to prepubertal classification, which is in line with previous findings on positive evaluation of infant's body odor (Fleming et al, 1993;Okamoto et al, 2016;Croy et al, 2017Croy et al, , 2019. Moreover, pleasantness perception of an infant's odor is an important cue mediating parental care as it facilitates affectionate love (Okamoto et al, 2016).…”

“…Moreover, pleasantness perception of an infant's odor is an important cue mediating parental care as it facilitates affectionate love (Okamoto et al, 2016). This affective component of body odor declines with age (Okamoto et al, 2016;Croy et al, 2017), which is supported by our results demonstrating that pleasantness drives pre-but not postpubertal classification. The latter was predicted by higher body odor intensity, which has been associated with less positive perception (Doty et al, 1978).…”

Sampling, identification and sensory evaluation of odors of a newborn baby’s head and amniotic fluid

“…They can memorize and be attracted to odors of their mother and mother-related odors such as the odors of milk and amniotic fluid 11–17 . At the same time, mothers and/or other adults may be aware of odors emitted by babies, and actively seek the smell of such odors in daily child-rearing 18,19 .…”

“…In addition, we carried out a sensory evaluation study with young adults, using an artificial mixture of 14 major components of volatile substances emitted by the neonate head within an hour of birth, 13 components from the head of babies 2 or 3 days postpartum, and 10 components from amniotic fluid obtained at the time of birth. Considering the psychological and/or physiological effects of the odor of amniotic fluid and neonates, which are probably among the earliest cues to promote mother-infant communication 10,18,19,29,38,39 , the combination of chemical analysis combined with sensory evaluation reported here is a potentially important contribution to research on early mother-infant bonding and communication.…”