Comparing paternal and maternal affective touch: a first step towards a contextual C-Tactile approach

INTRODUCTION. It has now been accepted that affective touch plays a major role in the healthy development of young infants and that an essential subclass of unmyelinated low-threshold mechano-sensitive skin fibres (i.e., C-Tactile afferents) that conduct affective information about affective touch – occupies a far-reaching role. However, a lot of research relies on retrospective, cross-sectional, and laboratory studies, focusing on either the infant, mother, or at the best the mother-infant dyad, hindering a proper understanding of the development of affective touch in early life related to the context, including that of both parents’—mother ànd father.

AIM of the study. In the current study we took a first step towards the role of touch in paternal care and compared the impact of paternal and maternal nurturing stroking touch on infants’ physiological self-regulation in terms of respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA).

MATERIAL and METHODs. We compared the impact of a 3-min stroking period with a pre-stroking baseline and post-stroking baseline of 25 (unrelated) mothers and 25 fathers (on their infants, aged 4–16 weeks). We registered infant electrocardiogram (ECG) and respiration to calculate infant RR-interval (RRI), respiration rate (fR) and RSA and analysed the stroking speed.

CONCLUSIONS. Infants showed a significant increase in RSA (mediated by heart rate and respiration) during and after stroking touch, no matter whether touch was delivered by fathers or mothers. These results show the need to examine how CT-sensitivity is built through the first months of life and in what extent the caregiving context may have an impact on that.