Growing up without a father could make children more aggressive and angry, scientists have warned.
Many studies have outlined the value of a mother, but few have clearly defined the importance of a father, until now.
New findings from the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (RI-MUHC) show that the absence of a father during critical growth periods, leads to impaired social and behavioural abilities in adults.
This research, which was conducted using mice, is the first study to link father absenteeism with social attributes and to correlate these with physical changes in the brain.
"Although we used mice, the findings are extremely relevant to humans," said senior author Dr Gabriella Gobbi, a researcher associate professor at the Faculty of Medicine at McGill University.
"We used California mice which, like in some human populations, are monogamous and raise their offspring together," said Gobbi.
"Because we can control their environment, we can equalise factors that differ between them," said first author, Francis Bambico, from Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) in Toronto.
"Mice studies in the laboratory may therefore be clearer to interpret than human ones, where it is impossible to control all the influences during development," said Bambico.
Gobbi and her colleagues compared the social behaviour and brain anatomy of mice that had been raised with both parents to those that had been raised only by their mothers.
Mice raised without a father had abnormal social interactions and were more aggressive than counterparts raised with both parents.
These effects were stronger for female offspring than for their brothers. Females raised without fathers also had a greater sensitivity to the stimulant drug, amphetamine.
"The behavioural deficits we observed are consistent with human studies of children raised without a father," said Gobbi.
"These children have been shown to have an increased risk for deviant behaviour and in particular, girls have been shown to be at risk for substance abuse. This suggests that these mice are a good model for understanding how these effects arise in humans," said Gobbi.
In pups deprived of fathers, Gobbi's team also identified defects in the mouse prefrontal cortex, a part of the brain that helps control social and cognitive activity, which is linked to the behavioural deficits.
"This is the first time research findings have shown that paternal deprivation during development affects the neurobiology of the offspring," said Gobbi.
The study was published in the journal Cerebral Cortex.
