University of Notre Dame Family Interactions Study
Dear La Leche League mothers and fathers:
As you know for many years I have been studying mother-infant nighttime care practices and documenting the scientific benefits of breastfeeding and sleeping close to baby! Indeed, many of my La Leche League friends through the years have generously shared they time by staying over night in my sleep lab here on campus, to help me achieve my goals of validating mother infant cosleeping, and father -infant cosleeping. One of my long-time collaborators and co-authors (and the former director of my sleep lab!), Dr. Lee Gettler is conducting a new study here at Notre Dame, and I wonder if I could ask some of our new mothers and fathers if they might consider participating in this novel and very exciting research project that helps to break new ground, especially when it comes to dads' biology and its relationship to moms'!
Along with colleagues in Psychology, Dr. Gettler's new study looks at family systems, like how mothers and dads and their babies interrelate behaviorally within each other. Dr. Gettler is the world's leading scholar on fathers' biology and he is now trying to understand how parents and their babies potentially affect each other's hormonal physiology through their interactions and day-to-day relationships.
This new research is a very important study and it potentially can provide for the first time a glimpse into the ways social, emotional including hormonal factors all mutually influence each other to make families stronger.
If you think you might be able to participate could you please contact Dr. Gettler's study coordinator Mrs. Mairin Amato (Wilkie), LSW, at 574.631.8987 or mamato@nd.edu.
Yours Sincerely,
Jim
James J. McKenna, Ph.D
Edmund P.Joyce C.S.C. Chaired Professor in Anthropology
Director, Mother-Baby Behavioral Sleep Laboratory
Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science
Department of Anthropology
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, Indiana 46556
574 631 3816
