In addition, their brains' responses to their tots' pictures differed from those of dads with sons, according to the findings, which were published May 22 in the journal Behavioral Neuroscience. "In most fields of research there's so much more research on men than on women, but this is one of the rare situations in which there's a lot more research on moms than on dads," lead researcher Jennifer Mascaro, PhD, an assistant professor in Family and Preventative Medicine at the Emory School of Medicine, told CBS News. In addition, regarding the finding that dads with daughters tend to use more body-related words, researchers noted that previous research has shown pre-adolescent girls are more likely than boys to report low self-esteem and body image issues. [8 Tried-and-True Tips for Talking to Preschoolers] 
 
 To observe real-world interactions between fathers and toddlers, the researchers recruited 52 men ages 21 to 55 who lived in Atlanta and had a 1- or 2-year-old son or daughter. Dads with daughters spent about 60 percent more time responding to their children than dads with sons. For the study, Mascaro and her team analyzed data on 52 fathers of toddlers (30 girls, 22 boys) in the Atlanta area who wore a small handheld computer device onto their belts for two days. The gadget recorded any sounds in 50-second intervals every nine minutes during the 48-hour period as well as nighttime interactions in the child’s room, where the device was left charging. "People behave incredibly natural" when wearing the recording device, since they never know when it's on or off, Mascaro said. So what we don't know here is whether the fathers drive the behaviors of their daughters and the sons or if the daughters and the sons drive the behavior of the fathers." When talking to their children, fathers of toddler daughters used more language related to sadness, using words such as "cry," "sad," "tears" and "lonely," as well as more language referencing the body, such as "belly," "foot" and "tummy," compared with fathers who had toddler sons. On the other hand, fathers with sons used more achievement-oriented words — such as "win," "proud" and "top" — and they engaged in more rough-and-tumble play, such as tickling or tossing around their sons, the findings revealed. The findings showed that fathers of little girls tended to be more responsive to their daughters' needs than fathers with toddler sons, and they spoke more openly to daughters about emotions, including sadness. And when the fathers were shown pictures of their children with different facial expressions, brain scans showed that the fathers had a stronger neural response in areas of the brain important for reward and emotional regulation to happy faces on their daughters than they did when the girls made other expressions. The brains of dads of sons, by contrast, had a more robust response to the boys' neutral expressions than to other expressions. Mascaro also calls for more research, saying the study could not determine if different brain responses meant fathers are somehow biologically hard-wired through genetics or evolution to treat sons differently than daughters, or if the dads were conforming to societal norms relating to gender. "A huge caveat is that we did not longitudinally study the toddlers whose dads were in the study so we can't tie any of these differences to outcomes," Mascaro said, "but there is a lot of research indicating that the quality and quantity of language that people use with children is important for cognitive outcomes."
– Dads play more with sons but are more open about emotions with daughters, according to a new parenting study published last month in Behavioral Neuroscience. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports researchers looked at 52 fathers of toddlers in the Atlanta area, recording their interactions with their children for random 50-second increments over two days. The results showed a bunch of differences in how dads interact with sons versus daughters. Dads sang more to daughters and talked more about sadness with them, according to Live Science. Dads spent three times longer playing with sons than daughters. And dads of daughters talked more about their child's body, whereas dads of sons used more words like "win" and "best." Researchers also gave the dads MRI brain scans while they looked at photos of their children. Dads of daughters had bigger reactions to their child looking happy; dads of sons had bigger responses to their child looking neutral. Researchers say it shows dads may pay less attention to their sons' emotional needs. But Alan Kazdin tells CBS News we shouldn't draw conclusions from the small study. For one thing, the professor of child psychiatry says it's unclear whether dads treat sons and daughters differently for societal reasons or if they're responding to differences in behavior between boys and girls. (An earlier study found gender stereotypes set in surprisingly early.)