The significance of mother's perfume for infants in the first weeks of their life

Abstract

Newborn babies are able, like the young of many animal species, to recognize their mothers' body odors and to orient towards them. The question arises whether infants can also use artificial odors applied to their mothers' bodies in the same way as animals can. In experiments, breast-feeding mothers perfumed their breasts for two weeks and their infants were tested in a choice test situation. At the age of one week the infants oriented their heads significantly more often to that side where they smelled their mothers' perfumes than to the side where they smelled a control odor. At the age of four weeks (mothers had stopped perfuming at two weeks) the infants did not prefer their mothers' perfumes any more.

All the infants showed the “tonic neck reflex,” i.e., they significantly preferred one side, mostly the right, for their head turning. Consequently, these two preferences sometimes caused a conflict of response for the infants in our experiments. The interplay of the preference for turning to the side of mother's perfume and turning to a special side, as well as the biological meaning of both, is discussed and compared with the findings of other authors.