From used diapers to dirty clothes, the smells of parenthood aren’t always the most pleasant.
But now, a strange new German study has found that parents actually prefer the smell of their own children.
Researchers at the Technical University of Dresden found that parents not only rated their children as smelling better, but they could also distinguish their smell from that of other children.
Scientists found that parents could successfully detect the smell of clothes their own children wore a third of the time.
However, perhaps unsurprisingly, dads found their children’s smell significantly less pleasant when they reached puberty.
Researchers have discovered that parents not only prefer the smell of their own children, but can also distinguish them by smell alone (file image)
It has long been known that smells play a very important role in human relationships.
The chemicals in sweat that determine body odor communicate information about your immune system, your health, and your emotions.
Among parents, this connection based on smell is especially important as it helps strengthen a loving relationship.
Studies have shown that our own children’s smell tends to be perceived as pleasant and activates parts of the brain associated with pleasure and reward.
For this new study, researchers recruited 56 parents and 73 of their biological children to participate in the study.
The children were asked to shower with an unscented body wash before bed and were given clean, unworn shirts to sleep in that night.
Dads found that their own child smells 22 percent more pleasant on average, but as these graphs show, that preference drops dramatically as the child reaches puberty. This effect is especially pronounced in daughters (left).
In the morning, parents collected the shirts and sent them to researchers, who used them to create body odor samples.
Each parent was then asked to rate the smells based on pleasantness, sweetness, intensity, attractiveness, and how much they wanted to smell it again.
Finally, parents were asked to identify which of the odor samples belonged to their child.
The researchers found that parents were able to recognize their children’s smell more accurately when they were younger: They guessed correctly 37 percent of the time for babies and 33 percent of the time for babies. prepubescent children.
This may seem quite low, but it is significantly higher than the success rate of 17 percent that would be expected if the parents would guess randomly.
Pades were able to recognize their children for smell about 33 percent of the time (the blue segments show correct conjectures) at all ages, except at the beginning of puberty.
In the article, published in Physiology & Behavior, the researchers write: “Like mothers, they (fathers) were able to recognize the body odor of their own children throughout the entire period of development, with the exception of early puberty. “.
The researchers also measured the similarity of proteins in the immune systems of the parent-child pair that influence sweat composition.
However, they found no correlation between the similarity of the immune system and the ability of parents to recognize their children in the smell.
Dads also rated their own children’s smell as significantly more pleasant than other children’s.
On average, children rated their own child as smelling 22.8 percent more pleasant than other children.
Scientists believe that the smell of a parent’s own child activates parts of the brain associated with pleasure and reward, which helps promote a loving relationship (file image)
The researchers argue that it is likely that pleasant feelings associated with the smell of their own child play an important role in the way they could recognize their offspring.
Additionally, the pleasant perception of a baby’s smell has been linked to positive feelings that help promote parent-child bonding.
It has also been shown that the smell of our own children reduces feelings of stress in parents.
However, like the ability to distinguish the smell of their children, this preference virtually disappeared when the children reached puberty, especially among daughters.
Researchers believe this may be an evolutionary “barrier” against incest between fathers and daughters.
The researchers show that the preference parents had for their own child (blue bar) compared to other children (bars of other colors) decreases at puberty (far right graph) as a barrier against incest.
The researchers write: “The decrease was associated with more advanced pubertal stages only in the daughters, which supports the hypothesis of the prevention of incest mediated by the smell in pairs of parents and children of the opposite sex.”
The researchers point out that there is a similar effect between mothers and their children, which supports the idea that body smell can serve as a barrier against incest.
However, they also point out that hormonal changes during puberty could also be affecting the way parents perceive the smell of their children, so the reaction may not be related to sexual attraction.
