Guess you don’t know for absolutely sure until you study it: Mother’s Voice Calms Stress.
Once stressed, one third of the girls were comforted in person by their mothers – specifically with hugs, an arm around the shoulders and the like. One third were left to watch an emotionally neutral 75-minute video. The rest were handed a telephone. It was mom on the line, and the effect was dramatic.
“The children who got to interact with their mothers had virtually the same hormonal response, whether they interacted in person or over the phone,” Seltzer says.
The girls’ levels of oxytocin, often called the “love hormone” and strongly associated with emotional bonding, rose significantly and the stress-marking cortisol washed away.