Parenthood ‘inoculates’ adults against disgust, new study reveals
From nappy changes to nursing care, exposure to unpleasant substances is a daily reality for millions of people but how does the brain adapt?
From nappy changes to nursing care, exposure to unpleasant substances is a daily reality for millions of people but how does the brain adapt? New research from neuroscientists at the University of Bristol reveals that repeated, long-term exposure to bodily waste significantly reduces parents’ disgust responses, with effects that persist over time.
The findings, published in the Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, offer fresh insight into how caregiving reshapes the brain and could help inform strategies to support workers in professions where managing disgust is part of the job.
Many professions require regular contact with unpleasant substances, including bodily waste, making some roles difficult to recruit and retain staff. Researchers from the University of Bristol sought to better understand how disgust functions, with the aim of identifying ways to help people cope with it more effectively.
A natural test case for studying disgust is parenthood. Dr Edwin Dalmaijer, a cognitive neuroscientist in Bristol's School of Psychological Science and one of the study’s lead authors explained: “Disgust is a basic human emotion that helps protect us from harm. Most people recognise it as the strong ‘yuck’ feeling we get when we smell gone-off food, see something dirty, or think about bodily fluids. This reaction is not just about being picky, it evolved to keep us away from things that might make us sick.
“When we feel disgust, our bodies often respond automatically, for example by feeling nauseous, or wanting to move away quickly. While this reaction is powerful in the short term, it has long been debated whether repeated exposure over months or years can truly reduce disgust.
“Parenthood dramatically increases exposure to these substances, and people do not choose to become, or stop being, parents based on disgust. This makes it an ideal ‘natural experiment’ for studying how disgust changes over time.”
To test this, researchers analysed questionnaire responses and the actions, such as how much people looked away, from 99 parents and 50 non-parents. To ensure relevance, the study included parent-specific questions and child-related stimuli, such as images of soiled nappies.
As expected, non-parents showed strong avoidance of images depicting bodily waste. Parents, however, displayed a strikingly different pattern but only once their children had begun eating solid food.
Parents of weaning or weaned children showed little to no behavioural avoidance of soiled nappies or even general bodily effluvia. Their disgust response appeared noticeably reduced, suggesting that prolonged, unavoidable exposure had led to desensitisation. Importantly, this reduced disgust was not limited to child-related stimuli but generalised to other forms of bodily waste.
In contrast, parents whose youngest children were still exclusively milk-fed showed levels of disgust avoidance similar to those of non-parents, even if they had older children. This unexpected finding suggests that disgust may remain heightened during the earliest stage of infancy, when babies are particularly vulnerable to illness.
The researchers believe this pattern may reflect an evolutionary adaptive response. Heightened disgust during the milk-feeding stage could help reduce disease risk for young infants, while later desensitisation allows parents to care for their children when they are ill.
Dr Dalmaijer added: “Parents of young children are bombarded with grossness from day one, from dirty nappies to sick and snotty noses. Our findings provide strong evidence that long-term desensitisation to disgust does occur. After the sensitive early months of infancy, continuous exposure to children’s bodily effluvia appears to ‘inoculate’ parents against disgust, reshaping a deeply ingrained emotional response that is otherwise difficult to change.
“Parenthood doesn’t just change daily routines, it can fundamentally alter how humans experience disgust, with lasting effects that extend beyond childcare itself.”
The study was funded by the University of Bristol’s School of Psychological Science.
Paper
‘Parents develop long-term disgust habituation, but only after beginning to wean their children’ by Yifan Huang, Edwin S. Dalmaijer et al. in Scandinavian Journal of Psychology [open access].
. . . ENDS
Notes to editors
The link for the paper: doi/10.1111/sjop.70069
An image is available on request.
For further information or to arrange an interview with Dr Edwin Dalmaijer please contact Joanne Fryer [Mon to Weds], email joanne.fryer@bristol.ac.uk, mobile: +44 (0)7747 768805 or Caroline Clancy-Cottle [Weds to Fri], email caroline.clancy@bristol.ac.uk, mobile: +44 (0)7776 170238 in the University of Bristol News and Content Team.
Issued by the Research News and Content team at the University of Bristol
Journal
Scandinavian Journal of Psychology
Method of Research
Survey
Subject of Research
People
Article Title
Parents develop long-term disgust habituation, but only after beginning to wean their children’
Article Publication Date
6-Jan-2026
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