A team of researchers from the University of Michigan have found that harsh parenting during infancy can impact children right into adolesence. The data, which originated from the Future of Families and Child Well-being Study, was collected between February 1998 and June 2021. The current study sample includes an analysis of 173 youths.“Harsh parenting in late childhood more specifically affected the corticolimbic circuit—a specific part of the brain that includes the amygdala and frontal cortex and is involved in processing and regulating emotion,” researches said.However, it’s not all bad news.The team also found that warm parenting — which they define as “responsiveness” — during middle childhood was associated with how the amygdala (a small part of the brain involved in emotion and processing threats) was differentially connected to other parts of the brain.Importantly, parenting warmth predicted reduced anxiety and depression 15 years later during the Covid-19 pandemic due to its effect