Dad brains: How fatherhood rewires the male mind
bbc.com> And the men that had spent longer looking after babies showed the largest drops in testosterone. Those that shared a bed with their infants also had lower levels.
Dad here. Maybe…it’s the lack of sleep? Involved fathers tend to have less sleep.
Parents also tend to gain weight, and higher BMI is associated with a decline in T.
Yes being a parent would tend to correlate to a drop in physical activities and sports
Do BBC have low T?
I'm not going to google that to find out what you meant.
It’s a bbc article you gross person
Yes, chronically disturbed sleep is the obvious confounder and is well known to drop T and explains the observed small changes a lot better.
If human babies actually evolved to be the terrors they are in order to lower fathers testosterone levels/chill them out that would be wild.
Or, just gonna put this out there... you have successfully fathered a child. A drop-off in T seems normal -- you've done your job and now you care for that child and lose the drive to father a significant number more. You accomplished your biological purpose and slowly slide on into death over the next number of decades. So it is. We are not immortals and the phases of life should not be avoided out of selfish vanity. Easy to say online, eh? :)
Several of the studies described changes in hormones before the child was born.
Extra time commitment, and therefor missing some sleep, can start before the baby is born.
Reminds me of when I would stay up late ironing my wife's maternity BDUs.
With or without starch? Please tell me you were taking care of boots as well!
I don't recall using starch on the BDUs, I might have polished the boots once or twice, but that was just over twenty years ago, so who knows.
If you cosleep with your 8 month pregnant wife she might not be sleeping well and by proximity you may not be sleeping well.
> Several of the studies described changes in hormones before the child was born.
For me, sleep dropped off right after I got the "I'm pregnant" phone call. I'd only known this girl for [time it takes a baby to be detected] days.
Given this is "BBC Future" let me guess, barely above significance and n=16?
I'm unfamiliar with the subject. What's the problem with BBC Future?
On the right line. Lower sleep, higher coping (bad diet, alcohol etc) would lead to T destruction. Not surprised BBC didn't connect the dots here.
Evolutionarily this makes sense. Lower testosterone means less carousing, and better fatherhood.
As a father of 3 daughters now approaching 50 with my oldest now 24 … I will say that I believe some of this is true. Perhaps it is just the life altering effect of raising children or maybe is biological as well. You can definitely pickup on whether another male is a father or not.
"As a father of 3 daughters now approaching 50 with my oldest now 24…"
You and I are akin (I waited a decade longer to start a family though.)
I definitely see my life as divided between before and after having had kids. I mean that's pretty obvious—and you can find any other big event in life and make that claim. But for me there has been nothing more dramatic to have redirected my own life.
To the point that (and this might not sound fair to people without kids) my life before kids seems in a way rather shallow, hedonist. I feel as though that was the demarcation for when I first cared for someone more than I do myself.
Photos of my time before becoming a father: I look at them and wonder who that guy was. What the hell was he doing with his life? Purposefulness came with fatherhood. A full identity change. To the point that when they left the nest, I was suddenly overwhelmed with purposelessness.
> I was suddenly overwhelmed with purposelessness
My kids are young enough that I don’t need to worry about it yet, but I can totally see how I might have the same issue. Beyond just myself, my partner is just as invested in the kids and I can foresee needing to rediscover ourselves together. Do you have any advice, tips, or insights for new empty nesters?
No, unfortunately this has been extremely difficult in my life. With raising children you have a shared goal and in although its hard it makes life simpler in you have something meaningful to focus on. Without kids we have had to face our own emotional issues and dynamics and this has not been easy.
Not really. I can say though that it is true—my wife and I suddenly can enjoy just the two of us gong out to dinner on a Friday night again.
It's hard trying to remember what it was we did before the kids. In some ways it doesn't matter though—we're both a lot older and we probably would not do many of the same things.
We've also at this point spent decades together, working together on the family. It's nice to just work on an electronics project. And I think my wife is happy to go knit or make a quilt. So we do out own things—just across the room from each other.
My first child is still 16 months old, and I already feel like this.
> Perhaps it is just the life altering effect of raising children or maybe is biological as well.
If not biological, where else would this effect manifest?
Arguably it could be things like "become parent -> become poor -> become stressed".
But suppose we say they're rich, and so they don't get stressed via that path. So maybe we can't say that parenting causes stress. (Okay, it absolutely does but bare with me.)
Suppose they're really rich, and they pay for night nannies, then suddenly you're a parent and not even tired. So now we can't say parenting causes tiredness.
Perhaps there are some things that "intrinsically" switch on in the father's brain, detached from the rest of the world?
If so, are we believe that a one-night stand, that leads to a baby, unbeknownst to the father, results in biological changes 9 months later?
My point is, the effects are all predictably biological adaptation in response to the environment, in the same way that if I go to the gym, I will become fitter. The article presents it as unexpected or mystical. What else are they expecting happens with big life changes?
(Sorry if it sounds like I'm grouchy, I am tired and my child is not napping when he should be.)
> You can definitely pickup on whether another male is a father or not.
Fathers constantly think I also am a father when in shared spaces with them.
“So how old is your daughter?”
> niece
“Oh I’m sorry”
They always apologise, like I’d be offended.
I think they confuse me for the dad because we look so alike, but it’s because me and my sister are almost clones, and my niece is just a clone of my sister :)
I can’t have kids of my own, so I put a lot of time in with my niece.
Still vastly better than:“So how old is your daughter?” > niece“So how old is your daughter?” > wife
Some of that is because the other male is whining about something that's really bothering him, but, as a parent, things tend not to affect you as much unless it's directly related to your kid.
> You can definitely pickup on whether another male is a father or not.
Hah, yep. There's a quality of patience and looking out for small children that nearly 100% of other dads I meet have, but probably only ~30% of men without kids.
And maybe even less than that, since the ones who are willing to hang out with me in my fatherly state are a self-selecting bunch.
Ha ha, I never thought babies were "cute" until I had one of my own. Now I can't stop to smile, wave when a baby is pushed by in a stroller (to the embarrassment of my wife for some reason).
Dad bod, dad jokes, and complaining about the kids are always a sure giveaway :-).You can definitely pickup on whether another male is a father or not.
Just a personal anecdotal datapoint, but relevant and possibly interesting nonetheless.
I work full time and even by modern standards I'm what most would call a heavily-involved father. I have an 18month old.
After my daughter was born, due to the amount of stress and lack of sleep I very soon realised I had to return to doing regular resistance training, clean diet and cut other things like drinking alcohol. In order to keep my energy levels sufficiently high and mental health in check.
I now feel much better than I did in years. Albeit still heavily sleep deprived most days. Recent bloodwork shows that my T levels nearly doubled (compared to before becoming a dad) from average to slightly off-the-charts high.
Take it as you will, but for me fatherhood forced me to reevaluate how I spend my time very carefully, forcing me to take care of myself more so I can take care of my family sufficiently too.
I get that. I quit smoking when my first child was born.
I think my devil-may-care attitude toward longevity changed when I realized I had a long-term investment cradled in my arms. And I wanted to live long enough to see her leave the nest at least.
If you need external input to improve yourself then I'm wondering if you are ready to be a father. I might sound rude, but it is not my intention. I don't know how else to put it. It is still better than people who never learn this either way.
When we only have ourselves to care about, I think it is easier to be irresponsible about our health. It is only ourselves who suffer the consequences. That kind of "solitary-ism" or ego can swing either way: you care so much for yourself that you focus on your health, or instead focus on enjoying those things life has to offer like food and wine (often at the expense of health).
Unlike my and many other's parents, I waited until I was older, more mature and planned beginning a family. Nonetheless, I suspect none of us were truly prepared for what that would mean—especially in the life-changing ways it manifest in.
So if some of us were not focused on our own health before going into fatherhood, I am not surprised. No doubt there are others that had checked off that box but started a family with much slimmer finances than I thought necessary to begin fatherhood.
In the end I suspect it is easy to Monday-morning quarterback my introduction to fatherhood and determine where I could have done better. At the same time, and I am considering my own upbringing, I could have done much, much worse. And yet most of us make it to adulthood with more or less healthy minds and bodies.
Awful comment either way. That’s one you keep to yourself
That's so interesting, isn't it?
What this person could've take away here was that: - Contrary to what the article states, parenthood in males can sometimes even boost testosterone through external factors. - Or that resitance training and diet is a great way to deal with daily stress.
What instead they took away was that improving oneself for family somehow makes you unfit to be a parent.
A rather dark interpretation. Sincerely hope they are OK and well.
Not to the direct thesis of the article, but I want to share one absolute 180 I had after having kids.
Before kiddos I took the apriori belief that it would kinda suck. The belief was unassailable because I thought, evolutionarily, if it was fun to have kids it wouldn't be fun to make them - otherwise we'd endure unfun "making" because we know the having would be fun.
I know now how stupid that was on many levels. Just specifically that belief has changed for me: its fun to make kids because having them is self reinforcing and wonderful and intrinsically motivational.
Perhaps I'm a data point.
I also have been surprised by how fun fatherhood is.
When kids are days, weeks, months old, they're constantly experiencing new things. That's the first tree she ever saw! It's amazing to experience the world through them.
When they're a couple years old, you see them learning and connecting and developing a unique personality. I love it when my two year old picks up on things that I missed, or teaches me something. And it's kind of awesome to be someone's superhero for however long this lasts.
I don't know how it goes after this but so far the trend has been that they get more fun as they grow...
> I also have been surprised by how fun fatherhood is.
Same here. My son is approaching two, and he's a blast. He can be tiring, he can be a big ol’ mess, but he's never boring.
He's healthy and he eats well and he's a good sleeper, so he doesn't give us much to worry about. He charms everyone he meets, he explores everything, and every day is just a fireworks show of new delights and discoveries. I go on a business trip for 2-3 days and I come back to him doing new things.
Looking forward to the second kiddo!
There's all sorts of fun and exciting milestones ahead, but in my experience around 18mos - 4yrs is sort of a sweet spot. Enjoy it while it lasts!
And you were right. Subjectively, having and raising kids is fun. Objectively, it's not fun at all, but your mind convinces you that it is otherwise no-one would do it. This has been extensively studied across different demographics, cultures, age groups, evaluation methods used, etc, and the result is robust, i.e. consistent across all of them. Starting at a baseline life satisfaction level, it drops drastically when the baby arrives, slowly recovers a bit, then there's another big drop at age three, another recovery when they start school (but still not back to the baseline again), a huge drop as they become teenagers, and finally recovery back to the baseline when they leave home.Before kiddos I took the apriori belief that it would kinda suck. The belief was unassailable because I thought, evolutionarily, if it was fun to have kids it wouldn't be fun to make them - otherwise we'd endure unfun "making" because we know the having would be fun.One thing I'm not aware of any work on is how the perception goes when the parents know about this in advance, a bit like being told how the magic trick works before it's shown to you.
So, what is "objective" fun. (Vs enjoying your subjective experience). Having kids is not "objectively fun" even though its "subjectively fun" because "my brain convinced me I'm having fun?"
Pull at that thread and you'll land on the central mistake I made with my prior beliefs, and also a ton of things like, you know, stoic philosophy, cognitive behavioral therapy, and mindfulness. etc etc. The subjective is all you have.
What you just told me contradicts the studies. Return to baseline happiness with some temporary dips does not match "you're not having fun stop believing you are".
It means "all the enormous and sudden life changes and things you give up to have kids are a momentary blip in the radar, made up for by the pleasure of having kids".
The "temporary dip" is the entire time you have the children, let's say 20 years or so, and it's a pretty serious drop, not just a small blip. I'm not telling anyone to stop believing, it's just nature's way of making sure that we keep procreating and at the same time a very interesting phenomenon to observe. Nothing wrong with it.Return to baseline happiness with some temporary dips does not match "you're not having fun stop believing you are".Oh a 20 year dip is new to me.
Here's a few cherry picked studies[1] there's a _bump_ in happiness that regresses to pre-kiddo levels permanently.
[2] Happy people with money have more kids, and people who have kids after 30 and with non-poverty wages are happier.
1. https://www.demogr.mpg.de/papers/working/wp-2012-013.pdf
2. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5505668/
3. bonus: A heavily biased study showing overall increases https://ifstudies.org/blog/life-with-kids-is-better-analyzin...
There's a decent book on the baseline phenomenon called Happiness Hypothesis: Largely speaking you'll return to baseline levels of subjective wellbeing, but recall that fufillment is not subjective wellbeing.
Of course if you read The Atlantic (the same magazine that tells you to throw your kids art away and never get married, they'll say the opposite [4]
4. https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2021/11/does-havi...
You wont be convinced. That's ok. I think we'll just disagree here. But, if you let these articles direct your life, or if I were to let them direct mine, we'd be fools.
This whole thread is honestly hilarious. "No sir, you are not happy, you are not fufilled, here is the data, sir"
Ah I wish I could agree. I've found having kids to be a major challenge. Maybe I just need to wait for them to get a little older.
I also agree.
"Making kids" is fun, duh.
Raising kids, however, can be very challenging in all sorts of ways. Physically, mentally, socially, etc. I became aware of just how much sleep deprivation affected me and for the sake of myself & my family I just sacrificed everything else to ensure I got good quality sleep. Fortunately, I was helped in this and I made damn sure everyone was supported when I was awake.
Me too. I'm an active father, love my daughter and don't regret our choice. But damn I would never opt to go through this again and can't wait until she's a little older. I see parents having orderly lunches in restaurants with their older children and it just seems like the most beautiful and civilized thing in the world.
The whole experience is too much noise and not enough signal to me.
This is a trend, perhaps with most parents, but definitely with fathers and especially with the sorts of hyper focused, contemplative, creativity/engineering-minded fathers who might hang out on hacker news. At least in my anecdotal experience.
What I've found is that as my 2.5 year old gets older it gets easier and easier for me. The ratio of cool shared experiences to frustrating noise gets higher and higher.
We've just had another child, still very much a newborn, and now that I have something for contrast I see how much harder that was. To some degree the frustration and grind of very young kids had faded into the background of my memory.
The older kid helps though as a concrete vision of what we're moving towards.
Yeah, this is highly dependent on the child and parent. Some kids just require attention, are more stubborn, or are just terrible sleepers and that's definitely gonna take a greater toil on the parents.
Sure there's Bringing up Bébé, sleep training, etc. but sometimes you just get difficult kids at no fault of the parents. And some people are just okay with the chaos of children.
I've found the challenges, personally, are related to my lackadaisical prior life. Casual workouts after my job. Working whatever hours I wanted so I could take it easy at the job knowing I could just stay late. Completely open evenings and weekends so no need to plan ahead. Plenty of leisure time to tidy up while doing anything or nothing. Seeing friends several times a week so no need to make effort to reach out or block time.
I never learned to be busy. I thought working 60-70h and studying weekends was busy, but that was just laziness-compensation.
Now I know how and the pure joy of having kids can be appreciated. Getting used to that was hard.
So we sorted out that challenge. There are many more ahead.
Don't worry, you're not alone. I get depressed when I read stories from gushing fathers online. It isn't their fault, of course they're allowed to report how happy fatherhood makes them, but my experience has been very different to what others report.
Every day with children for the last 6 years has been filled with crying, screaming, meltdowns, barely eating any type of food, and what they do eat changes from day to do, exhausting endless requests, so little free time. As a couple, my wife and I barely cope and our marriage is just about clinging on because we're exhausted and scrappy all the time.
I just don't recognise the life that online dads seem to have. I wish I was like them.
It's a challenge though that, as I posted already, gives my life a purpose for something outside me.
Worst though (spoiler), it may have become an even a bigger challenge as they have become starting adults. In many ways they were so much easier in elementary school… <lé sigh>
Yeah, that never happened for me. Before and after, I felt pretty much the same. Now she's an adult and it's weird.
Saw this earlier today, I think it’s very flawed and ideological, unfortunately other posts mentioning this got flagged.
First there’s the idea that “nurturing” is somehow what kids need and better for them automatically, that whatever a stereotypical man does with kids is bad for them, and we need to be rewired by pheromones or whatever to be more sensitive. And as a corollary the idea that a high-T man somehow is a worse caregiver, and that it needs to be reigned in by some adaptation. The whole thing is definitely framed for a certain world view, it’s definitely not the only interpretation.
There's some interesting research on the effect of T in mice which has been challenging traditional assumptions of its role in males: https://news.emory.edu/stories/2022/08/esc_testosterone_anim...
It's worth noting though that the actions of the "stereotypical man" are strongly culturally informed, and not neccessarily indicative of whatever evolutionary pressures would've wired males brains whatever way they're wired for fatherhood. I don't think we have much direct evidence of ancient female and male parent roles (apart from being able to infer the obvious, like that females would've breastfed).
A lot of ancient cultures were collectivist if small. In some cases, matriarchal, in some cases, sex was "free" because the village owned the kids, and so establishing paternity was not as important because the burden was shared.
How do youvarrive at matruarchal while most male mammals display hormonal harem bloat? If nature blows you up into body building brute once you have a family, does that not indicate a clear pyramid of force and a violence monopoly?
PS: prediction power and testable.. could be science where it not for utopist airsuperiority
Males looking like body builders is not something observed in any non western nom modern culture.
Tribes tend to have thin men. They dont have big bulky muscles. Agricultural subsistence cultures tend to have thin men.
They can be violent all the same. Just that bulky look is modern male aesthetic.
accidental post
It seems pretty uncontroversial to say that kids need nurturing? What are we doing with them if we're not nurturing them?
The point of the article is that nurturing babies is one of those things that stereotypical men already do. Probably not as much as women, but it is a research result we could have guessed. Turns out that men care about the success of their children too, who knew.
> And as a corollary the idea that a high-T man somehow is a worse caregiver, and that it needs to be reigned in by some adaptation.
You're reading things that the article did not write. The article did make some political calls around more parental leave and a call for fathers to be more involved with their children, but that isn't any sort of knock against all the other hormones that humans have.
Sure people might believe that; lots of people believe a lot of wildly stupid things. But it isn't in the article. There isn't anything judgemental in observing that people's lifestyles can cause hormonal shifts.
What exactly are you proposing that kids need other than nurturing?
I didn't read the article but I'll stand in for the person you replied to and make my best guess at what he meant:
I think he's saying that a manly man might not be soft and cuddly with a small child like a traditional mother would. But that is not necessarily detrimental. For instance, a guy might not want to coo and caw, or change the pitch of his voice, or giggle, things that some men find weak. But (perhaps - I don't know anything about children) the child may still respond positively to a male who used his normal voice and interacted with them however he naturally felt.
Structure
In a newborn? Infant? I think not. Nurturing is vital in the early stages of life.
Structure in this context is probably ‘routine’, though how that plays into a male vs female role is anyone’s guess.
In what alternative world stereotypically traditional men provide routine to kids.
Moms provide structure in "stereotypical" families. Not dads. Moms force bed time, vegetables, homework, cleaning the room.
But also not to infants.
Ok, moms provide structure. Not sure why you need to highlight that. Important thing is that kids receive structure early in their lives.
The dilemma was nurturing by a hormonally-adapted male v. a “stereotypical” male, not nurturing v. non-nurturing.
Four things are needed. Stereotypically they're divided Dad: Protect and provide Mom: Nurture and nourish
You could do it differently, but that only works if you swap one, not share half half.
Both have been eroded. Kids are raised by strangers, our food is crap, you can't warn each other about dangers cause that's somehow an insult and a single income doesn't pay the bills.
The goal seems to be to set men and women against each other.
> Four things are needed. Stereotypically they're divided Dad: Protect and provide Mom: Nurture and nourish
> You could do it differently, but that only works if you swap one, not share half half.
I disagree. But I started nurturing early by planning and orchestrating all our births (home, birth center, birth center, twins/hospital) and her prenatal care.
Much later, my wife developed psych issues and in the end I was performing all roles to our 5 sons. But well before then I was deeply into nurturing our sons as infants, toddlers, PreK and grade schoolers. I changed most of the diapers (cloth! for sons 1 & 2.). I packed lunches, did cub scout leadership, cleaned up the wounds and encouraged them to go get more.
Compared to competent moms and dads, I wasn't substandard, insufficient or compromised in any way.
If I may attempt to clarify my stance. Stereotypically, on average, interpolate for your marriage and all that, if a man does a task/role, he has the ball. He doesn't share the ball. Doing X is my job? Aight, my job. No touchy. Mine. I've got this.
Wife starts doing X. Boom, clarity lost.
I know, I know, shades of grey and all that. But on average, divide it clearly and you know who is responsible for what.
You did all of it, while your wife was sick. Kudos man, tough job done well.
My point wasn't about the heaviness of the task, or about how well each could do it, but about clarity and role division.
> if a man does a task/role, he has the ball. He doesn't share the ball. Doing X is my job? Aight, my job. No touchy. Mine. I've got this.
> Wife starts doing X. Boom, clarity lost.
These seems to reflect a strong division of labor. And it has me wondering if that work might be ever divided on ideological grounds. Either of those would be the opposite of what works for me.
They're also the opposite of what I want. Which is a more seamless integration, one where we are fairly interchangeable - where either of us can do what reasonably needs doing.
Reality is the final judge. If you get the seamless integration to work well and it's what you want, go for it. If it doesn't, revert to the default setting. Vanilla grows on you, it really does
Who is the disciplinarian in the house? I get it, there does tend to be a "role" there (not clear which sex gets that one–it seems to be dependent on a lot of factors—perhaps who is the less patient being the top one).
It just seems odd that anyone would see "nurturing" as assigned to one or the other parent.
"The goal seems to be to set men and women against each other."
Is that not easy to disregard? I certainly feel like my wife and I disregarded it raising our kids.
If you've never bought into it, that the other sex is to blame, then I'm sure you teamed up quite smoothly.
But I've seen numerous examples, and in my own marriage we also had to figure this stuff out because as kids we had bought into a lot of (never quite spoken out loud but loudly hinted at) unhealthy messages...
I mean, how you clearly point out the immovable constraint and blow past it as if the whole thing is just a cultural fad is somewhat shocking.
Single income doesn’t pay the bills. Period. Everything else is downstream.
One could argue that your talking about the dangers of these downstream effects is insulting and classist. Who is gonna pay these bills? Do you think we prefer that strangers raise our kids?
If we had a trust fund, we would raise our kids ourselves, and backhand brag on forums about how it is the right way. Sadly, we don’t.
Where did I say anything about a cultural fad? Where did I mention "dangers of downstream effects"? Where did I claim that I think "we prefer strangers raise our kids"?
You're pulling your reply straight from the offended-rack
Thank You. This is exactly why I read comments on HN before clicking on news. I am not looking for confirmation bias, I just trust people here more than the BBC.
"I am not looking for confirmation bias…"
Then you'll enjoy all the contrarian opinions on both sides. Also here in HN comments.
Mom brain is also a thing. Large scale, consistent, structural changes in the postpartum brain that is uncorrelated with PPD. https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhab463
I find it very odd that the rest of the comments are sort of... not agreeing with the findings in the article.
I became a father recently (:D) and it's been an emotional rollercoaster for me. I had been frantically Googling my "symptoms" and asking around what's wrong with me, because it seems I've been quite sensitive since the birth of my baby.
One way to explain this is the Gordon Ramsay meme (https://imgflip.com/memetemplate/211147137/Oh-dear-dear-gorg..., LHS = my reaction to my baby, RHS = my reaction to other kids before my baby was born).
I think the article is spot on — the more time you spend with your baby and care for them, the more oxytocin you get and the more your testosterone drops (I cried when my baby first spoke — cooed, really — to me, for example, and that's just one instance).
Edit: I want to take this opportunity to say — fuck companies that don't give paternity leave. This is fucking hard to do alone, so be nice to your employees and offer paternity benefits. I'm in India, where paternity leave isn't required, so I was told to fuck off when I asked for time off.
Maybe its being older already but I don’t feel super changed having a baby like people told me I would. I don’t do work or hobbies or socializing any differently. Everything else in my life didnt suddenly seem unimportant.
The one big difference is up to now I though crying babies were annoying and subconsiously somehow blamed parents. Now I see how foolish that was as babies are born knowing nothing and are just adorable little people trying their best to get their needs met and handle emotions.
Agree with this. I'm a little more sensitive to the idea of horrible things happening to small children (e.g. sad news stories), but for the most part I didn't find kids to be a major shift in my beliefs.
One health-check I used to anchor that type of feeling is if both parents feel the same way?
But I really felt it because my kid was a lousy eater, slept little (I believe those are related), and you ended up with continuous lack of sleep and energy and adopt patterns to be very quiet when kid is finally asleep.
Still, we mostly kept our hobbies until the second kid came, albeit some we did together (like team sports) slowed down. And things like travelling cross continents have stopped too (hard to travel, risky food...).
With the second you don't even have the benefit of being two parents and one kid so you can alternate the rest and activities (though the older one is by now more reasonable, but still a kiddo). Perhaps it was just uncertainty and lockdowns of Covid during early pregnancy (3 months when lockdowns started) and first year that caused a shift, instead of kids, but without kids, we'd probably pick up the pace more easily after.
I have friends who had an easy first kid and didn't have to change much, and the second tore them apart (literally, now separated), so I doubt there is one approach that always works.
At the same time, I like to say that it is good to have two mindsets in two parents (when both are available): eg. I have friends where mom is more relaxed and dad is all stressed up, and they are still a healthy family (so neither unhinged kids when neither parent cares, not overly sensitive kids when both are too invested).
You’re experiencing that because fatherhood is raising your estradiol aka estrogen.
I’m on testosterone and one of the side effects is your estrogen raises too, and boy I had no idea how much that hormone affects us. It gave me a new appreciation of what women sometimes feel when I think they’re overreacting.
the problem with most research about humans is that the variance is usually massive. The study could be true on average and that could still leave millions of men who the study doesn't end up applying to.
Famous story about the plane cockpit for average pilot ended up being bad for absolutely everyone comes to mind.
Probably you cannot average humans.
I remember how everyone told me that it would all change the moment I held the baby in my arms. And then I remember the moment I actually did. Nothing changed. Not then, not after.
We also naturally learn phrases, like "uh, don't tell mom."
Vegas protocol is hardwired!?
:exploding_head:
I see it now. Yes.
I swear my hearing got more sensitive with kids. Also, some commercials hit differently.
I can’t read news stories about something terrible that happened to a child since having kids.
I couldn't watch Black Mirror after having my son.
Neither do I and I don't have kids
I believe OP is discussing what changed upon having kids, not "things that you can only do if you are a parent".
Same here. I can still hear them breathing quite clearly in the next room, even with the bedroom doors partially closed. My hearing for noises further away got more sensitive, but those nearby less so. I put this down to an ancestral ability to listen for sabre-tooth tigers trying to sneak up in the grass.
one of the few super distinct differences not only in males but in parents: nearly all of them develop walking without noises and at some point do it baseline. super funny when you're with non-parents again and realize for the first time just how carelessly _loud_ they move around, whereas parents move near silent without even thinking. Guess thats the earned scars after trying to put a toddler asleep and for the sake of god not awake it again by stupid noise right away.
Learning to move quietly is definitely a skill. A baby just forces you to realize how needlessly loud you are.
When I was a kid my grandfather lived downstairs. He had Alzheimer's, slept at some pretty weird times, and could get pretty mad pretty fast.
I sneak up on everybody to this day.
Or how carelessly loud teenagers are! Oy!
It makes sense as a layman - less testosterone means less fighting, aggressive behavior, chasing other mates, etc. Ensures more success for your offspring.
Worse ability to fend off competition too?
Disagree, my desire and ability to defend my children has gone way up. My desire to go and conquer and carry off other women has gone down.
Your baseline T correlates with your ability to add and maintain muscle mass, not just your motivation to get into conflict.
> The more involved a father is with their baby's care, the deeper this transition becomes
My partner died when my child was a year and a half, so I'm more involved than basically any father, to the point that my experience is much closer to a mother's, a role in which my only solace is seeing myself struggle slightly less than many mothers.
It's reassuring to read an article confirming I'm screwed.
And yet…
Even (especially) in hindsight it will have been the greatest thing you did with your life. At least this has become clear to me (now 27 years a father).
I have done a lot on life... Bootstrapped a mid eight figures business debt free, climbed Mt Rainier, tons of friends, etc.
Nothing in life remotely matters to me as much as my kids. I would trade everything above for any one of my kids.
For sure the hardest! Kid is five now and life is ok again...
51yr old father of two (18yr M 16yr F)... I know I'm a biased pool to draw from but my lived experience was noticing how my brain changed when my wife started showing she was pregnant.
I swear I actually noticed it. At times i felt the changes.. it felt similar to the buzz you get when playing a fast paced shootem up game. it wasn't quite a buzz though.
By the time Gettler looked into this field, it was already an established fact that fathers had lower testosterone that [sic] men without kids.
Positive sign that this article wasn't AI
Lol, I thought the same.
I knew a sub-editor. According to them, they were not to use a spellchecker because it would lead to them being sloppy when checking for mistakes.
I think about that every time I see a typo, and about that study showing that journalists aren’t the brightest[1].
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/journalists-brains-function-...
Starting from marriage, men are changing to the less manly direction. But there is a confounding factor: higher testosterone level or sensitivity causes specific distance from family care, so it stays high longer.
Personally, I experienced a 10% drop in my 1rep max in squat after each of my two children.
"Starting from marriage, men are changing to the less manly direction."
Ha ha, I started perhaps already farther on the Femine spectrum such that marriage pulled me more toward the "Masculine" end—feeling now obliged to "win the bread" for another.
(When it was just me I could indulge all my selfish, artistic whims…)
That behaviour was probably more due to psycho-social reasons that biological which regressed, but sure the net effect pushed you more to the one pole.
Yah. But did you skip leg day to take your lady to the hospital ?
At those two days I skipped it, but the rest I trained at the squat rack in my basement after every night feed of them.
Respect.
The lower T claim sounds like a pretty obvious adaptation to me.
High T = high risk appetite. Low T = low risk appetite.
If you have kids, your risk appetite should be relatively lower. Otherwise your offspring may have to grow up without you around.
Although I agree that the lack of sleep would have a huge impact as well.
I think this is very true. I slept in the same bed with the babies and I have seen huge changes in my behavior and even in my body shape over the last seven years with five children.
> that men have all the necessary biological wiring to be "every bit as protective and nurturing as the most committed mother
This seems like an overstatement - man can't give birth to babies (which involves transfer of the mothers biome to the baby) or feed babies (which typically involves lactation).
Neither of the quibbles you drew are what people usually class as protective or nurturing behavior? At least in the English-speaking world that’s later in a child’s life than birth.
I’d also note that the concern about feeding babies has been obsolete since the invention of formula.
Is it correlation or causation?
Testosterone also drops when you dont get enough sleep, which is a universal lifestyle change for parents.
Men and trans women actually can feed babies. It's just a matter of hormones. The line between genders is more blurry than you'd think.
Whatever scant liquids these males happen to squeeze out is insufficient for feeding, and is a risk to the infant.
It's literally been documented that it works. No need to be transphobic.
You're conflating nurturing and protection with birthing and nursing.
I also don't understand why this opinion is so controversial. Humans, including men are one of the rare species that nurture and protect babies (consciously and beyond symbiosis) of other individuals or even species, including wild animals. Why is it so surprising then that men are good at nurturing their own babies?
Sure, but "every bit as protective and nurturing as the most committed mother" is indeed an overstatement if you believe, as Donald Winnicott did, that there's something qualitatively advantageous about what a mother can provide, namely breastfeeding. Bottle-feeding, if done in an attuned, consistent, and emotionally present way, can support the same psychological processes as nursing does, but it is certainly less likely to unfold so favorably. Breastfeeding can make the integration of bodily and emotional attunement easier. Things can still go wrong, of course, but it is a unique situation.
The distinctive qualities of the mother's womb are not as easily studied, but on the other hand it's pretty obvious that there are functions provided by the mother and her womb that cannot easily be replicated (i.e. replicated by a father).
None of this to say that fathers cannot or do not nurture and protect. It's just that replicating certain things is difficult and we shouldn't be so sure of ourselves yet. It's like trying to grow a plant without sunlight: possible, but only very recently, and still apparently too challenging to do at absolute scale.
You are still ignoring the only distinction I made - the one between nurturing and nursing. I always understood them as having widely accepted distinct meanings, and the author of the article seems to follow it too.
You can either argue that their understanding of 'nurturing' is wrong, or that men can't nurture as well as women, without conflating the two. You can't have it both ways. Labeling it as an 'overstatement' after completely ignoring their definition of the terms is a disingenuous argument.
The author does not lay out their definition of nurturing explicitly. The most complete definition I can derive from the article is that nurturing is engaged caregiving marked by responsiveness and physical closeness that is supported by hormonal changes in the caregiver.
They have nothing to say about nursing other than that it involves oxytocin release (presumably an instance of nurturing).
In your short comment, you didn't make any attempt at determination beyond saying the names "nurturing and protection" and "birthing and nursing". OK, so what is the distinction? Are you claiming that birthing and nursing are mechanical acts that secure existence of the organism, but fail to secure some other thing that is called nurturing and protection? Or are birthing and nursing mere instances of a homogenous nurturing and a homogenous protection, and so one's quota for nurturing and protection are filled in the same way experience points fill up in a video game?
So it's the opposite: your OP and I are the only ones here making a concrete distinction between nursing and nurturing (although your OP didn't really say much, either).
Like I said, Donald Winnicott explores this question at length. Unfortunately he is not a good Marxist who historicizes these categories; he works squarely in post-war British society and so obviously has his limits. But he has the courage to criticize the emptiness of medical empiricism and the fear of determinateness of people like the article's author.
Here's Winnicott in The Child, the Family, and the Outside World:
> The infant who has had a thousand goes at the breast is evidently in a very different condition from the infant who has been fed an equal number of times by the bottle; the survival of the mother is more of a miracle in the first case than in the second. I am not suggesting that there is nothing that the mother who is feeding by bottle can do to meet the situation. Undoubtedly she gets played with by her infant, and she gets the playful bite, and it can be seen that when things are going well the infant almost feels the same as if there is breast feeding. Nevertheless there is a difference. In psychoanalysis, where there is time for a gathering together of all the early roots of the full-blown sexual experience of adults, the analyst gets very good evidence that in a satisfactory breast feed the actual fact of taking from part of the mother’s body provides a ‘blue-print’ for all types of experience in which instinct is involved.
Personally, this aligns with my own observations of my daughter. The sensuous conflict of breastfeeding is a negotiation of the psychic and physical line between self and other where everything is at stake and desires are understood and worked out at the level of the skin. It's practically impossible to make a bottle (or anyone/anything else!) fulfill this function.
Anyway, Winnicott goes on in great detail for chapters. Also relevant is a draft of a talk he gave titled This Feminism, which is probably more relevant to the underlying tensions in these comments:
> This is the most dangerous thing I have done in recent years. Naturally, I would not have actually chosen this title, but I am quite willing to take whatever risks are involved and to go ahead with the making of a personal statement. May I take it for granted that man and woman are not exactly the same as each other, and that each male has a female component, and each female has a male component? I must have some basis for building a description of the similarities and differences that exist between the sexes. I have left room here for an alternative lecture should I find that this audience does not agree to my making any such basic assumption. I pause, in case you claim that there are no differences.
Again, he's unfortunately not interested in how psychic development might be a historically limited category; he naturalizes "nurturing" (he doesn't use this word often, actually), but at least he acknowledges the concrete limitations of mother and fathers (and all the other characters) as they actually exist. And he does this without ever invoking the name of a hormone once.
> You're conflating nurturing and protection with birthing and nursing.
No I rather pointing out that essential parts of nurture and protection are nursing and birthing.
Nurturing involves feeding. Birthing provides protection through biome, as explained in the comment you’re replying to.
"X rewires the brain" posts feel a bit like "water is wet".
I expect many major and even minor life events rewire the brain. Isn't "rewiring" the process of learning and changing thoughts/behaviours?
In which model of behaviour is it surprising that reorienting your life towards dependence won't have measurable effects on the brain?
The research is no doubt useful to some, but the way it's presented in news as some sort of mystical phenomenon feels very middle ages.
is this science or just subjective feelings?
A list of things that no one would want on themselves
you have to control for the stress, lack of sleep etc.
do partners who purchase a puppy also have lower T in the following months if they are primary caregivers?
I wouldn’t trust these sourced studies - smells exactly like replication crisis findings.
Malcom Gladwell meticulously sourced the researchers when he was writing his books. He got everything right. It was all the researchers who lied.
> "It's an urgent societal priority that we shore up dads' opportunity to build those connections," says Saxbe.
I note that changing the presumption in family law that the mother is the better care giver, thus making it incredibly hard for fathers to win custody of their children, is not listed as one of them.
Weird that.
The modern female loves the “dad” archetype because it’s non-threatening across many domains. See: all modern entertainment media (which is produced by females and the feminine-minded). Expect it to increase in representation and popularity (which can already be observed by the sharp-witted).
My identity: trans woman (to ameliorate the stung feelings of identitarians, relativists, and/or feminists reading this).
This sounds like a criticism, but non-threatening seems like a really good thing.
Very interested to hear why you believe “non-threatening” to be a desirable property of the average male. Do you also believe this to be a desirable property for the average female? i.e. nobody threatens anyone else?
Why are you scare-quoting your own words and supposing it is only your interlocutor who is treating them abstractly? Just tell us what you mean. What do you mean by non-threatening? What domains?
Your phrasing is very strange. Nobody threatens anyone else does indeed sound ideal.