Researchers have reportedly found that babies heard three times more words from moms than from dads, according to USA Today.
The results from the study, which was published in Pediatrics, reportedly suggests that dads could help with their infant's growth by contributing to the baby talk, according to researcher Betty Vohr, director of the neonatal follow-up clinic at Women's & Infants Hospital in Providence, R.I.
"We have our work to do in getting dads into this loop and telling them how important they are in terms of infant development," stated Vohr.
The recent study was conducted with 33 babies and their parents, according to the website Philly.com. Researchers reportedly outfitted the babies with special vests that recorded audio for up to 16 hours in a row.
They reportedly recorded audio with the vests when the babies were newborns, around 1 month old and then again at 7 months old. When analysts listened to the recordings, they reportedly found that babies were more responsive to the speech of adult females at 1 month and 7 months.
"It may be the pitch of the mother's voice or the proximity, or the caregiving or many characteristics of the environment. Mothers are typically the primary caregivers with the most direct interaction with their infant," stated Vohr.
It was reportedly found that "fathers responded to infants about 27 to 30 percent of the time and mothers 88 percent to 94 percent of the time," according to Vohr.
Although researchers suspect that this response may be due to the fact that mothers are more directly involved with the care of the infant through feeding and/or changing, that doesn't mean that a father is less important in his role as a parent.
"Fathers are incredibly important. It's an opportunity to empower dads to let them know how important it is to talk to their babies. Just like mothers, fathers love their babies very much," stated Dana Suskind, a professor of surgery at the University of Chicago and director of an intervention program called The Thirty Million Words Initiative.
