Children’s Body Odors: Hints to the Development Status

Abstract

Mothers can recognize their own children by body odor. Besides signaling familiarity, children's body odors may provide other information relevant to maternal caregiving behavior, such as the child's developmental status. Thus, we explored whether mothers are able to classify body odors on pre-vs. postpubertal status above chance levels. In total, 164 mothers were presented with body odor samples of their own and four unfamiliar, sex-matched children who varied in age (range 0-18 years). Pubertal status was measured by (a) determining the child's steroid hormone level and (b) parental assessment of the child's developmental stage using the Pubertal Development Scale. Mothers classified developmental status with an accuracy of about 64%. Maternal assessments were biased toward pre-puberty. Classification was predicted by perceptual evaluation of the body odor (i.e. intensity and pleasantness) and by the child's developmental stage, but not by hormones. In specific, mothers with pubertal-aged children classified body odors using the child's developmental status, whereas mothers with younger children only classified body odors using perceptual information (i.e. intensity and pleasantness). Our data suggests that body odors convey developmental cues, but how this developmental information is manifested in body odor remains unclear.

Human olfactory dysfunction: causes and consequences

“…In particular, olfaction contributes to intimate relationships—body odours signal kinship (Porter 1998 ), transport information on genetic similarity (Milinski, Croy, Hummel, and Boehm 2013 ) or developmental status. This is relevant within the mother–child relationship (Schäfer, Sorokowska, Sauter, Schmidt, and Croy 2020a , b ; Schäfer, Sorokowska, Weidner, and Croy 2020a , b ). Bonding difficulties are associated with the inability to recognize the own baby’s odour, and mothers with impaired bonding do not perceived their own child’s odour as pleasant as healthy mothers (Croy, Mohr, Weidner, Hummel, and Junge-Hoffmeister ( 2019 )).…”

Temporal relation between pubertal development and peer victimization in a prospective sample of US adolescents

“…Secondly, it is equally plausible that puberty-related body odor changes may act as a chemosignal (a form of social communication in mammalian species) to peers that could increase aggressive behaviors (Pause, 2012). In line with the idea that chemosignals may subtly influence social behavior in humans, one study found that mothers could smell when their child was in pre-or late-puberty, and that puberty status corresponded with salivary testosterone levels (Schäfer et al, 2020), which is one androgen expressed alongside DHEA in sweat glands (Mostafa et al, 2012). Future studies should systematically examine if changes in body odor, or chemosignals, are perceptible by peers and an underlying factor in peer victimization.…”

The scent of cuteness—neural signatures of infant body odors

“…Previous research indicates that infantile body odors act in a fashion similar to the visual Kindchenschema: body odor composition changes over developmental stages ( Grumbach, 2002 ); body odor evaluation depends on the developmental status of the sender ( Schäfer et al ., 2020b ); and infantile odors are perceived as more positive than body odors of post-pubertal children ( Weisfeld et al ., 2003 ; Schäfer et al ., 2020a ).…”