Dad brains: How fatherhood rewires the male mind

roody15

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.

Lucent

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

nickburns

By the time Gettler looked into this field, it was already an established fact that fathers had lower testosterone that [sic] men without kids. I'm sure this typo will be promptly corrected. But it does offer some sense into how thoroughly this article was proofread prior to publication.

wj

I swear my hearing got more sensitive with kids. Also, some commercials hit differently.

nailer

> 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).

ineedaj0b

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.

andy99

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.

varun_chopra

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.

syntaxing

> 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.

gedy

It makes sense as a layman - less testosterone means less fighting, aggressive behavior, chasing other mates, etc. Ensures more success for your offspring.

JumpinJack_Cash

It's the equivalent of castrating yourself! Never! The only problems is that if the boys are falling for it you cannot save them so you need new boys to hangout with but it's not the same because you don't go back to where you were both kids

ourmandave

We also naturally learn phrases, like "uh, don't tell mom."

senectus1

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.

jvanderbot

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.

periodjet

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).

farfatched

"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.

brigandish

> "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.

narvidas

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.

ozozozd

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.