INTRODUCTION
adversities
Two important components of human parental caregiving are sensitivity for rewarding signals from children, which is highly relevant for communication and bonding, and empathic responses to needs of children. A key modulator of sensitivity for social reward and empathy is the neuromodulatory peptide oxytocin (OXT) (Bethlehem et al., Empathy refers to the capacity to automatically read, understand, and react to feelings and intentions of others based on their bodily signals. As such, empathy is an ability crucial for communication as well as formation and maintenance of the parent–infant bond (Bos, Furthermore, the effects of OXT do not only vary depending on task selection but are also strongly determined by context and individual characteristics (Bartz et al., In addition to early childhood adversities, OXT effects have been shown to be sex dependent, for example, amygdala reactivity to fearful faces after OXT was found to be enhanced in women, but decreased in men (Domes et al., With OXT being crucial for caregiving responses, it is central to understand the effects of early stress on the OXT system and functional consequences on underlying mechanisms of caregiving responses. Based on the social salience theory of oxytocin (Bartz et al., 