Understanding the Evolutionary Basis of Parental Stress Response

CrowdScience listener Leo gets stressed when his young children start screaming at the same time in the middle of the night. He wants to know why we haven’t evolved to deal with the stress more effectively. The challenges of bringing up a family are nothing new and we don’t face the same dangers as our ancestors, so why do we still react as if it’s a life-threatening emergency? Caroline Steel finds out what stress is for, what it does to us and whether we have in fact evolved to manage it.

Contributors:

Tashfia Ahmed, biomedical engineer, post-doctoral researcher, City University, London Anne-Kathrin Gellner, neurologist and psychiatrist, Bonn University James Rilling, anthropologist and neuroscientist, Department of Psychology and Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Sciences, Emory University Gunter Wagner, evolutionary biologist, Vienna University

Presenter: Caroline Steel Producer: Jo Glanville Editor: Richard Collings Production Co-ordinator: Jonathan Harris Studio Manager: Jackie Margerum

(Image: Frustrated father holds baby in his arms. Credit: Jamie Grill / Getty Images)