Child development can be greatly influenced by prenatal and postnatal experiences. Recent primate studies have shown that prenatal stress can exacerbate behavioral outcomes. Competing demands can cause mothers to become psychologically unavailable to infants, which can disrupt normal development. Further exploration of the influence of maternal stress on infant behavior can shed light on both human and non-human primate development. This naturalistic observational study examined the relationship between maternal stress and infant behavioral outcomes in a group of green monkeys (Chlorocebus sabaeus). Pearson correlation coefficients were computed to determine the relationship between maternal stress and infant behavior. There was a positive correlation between maternal stress and infant social interactions with other animals, r(2)=.95, p=.049. A trend towards a positive relationship was found between maternal stress and infant proximity with other animals, r(2)=.81, p=.19. These results indicate that infants of mothers who demonstrate higher levels of stress tend to engage in higher levels of social behavior with other group members. This suggests that some maternal stress may be beneficial to the development of infant social behavior.
