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Dad brains: How fatherhood rewires the male mind

bbc.com

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Re: Dad brains: How fatherhood rewires the male mind

#151

Post by JKCalhoun »

theturtlemoves wrote: post #100
WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 wa…

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 a…

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.

Re: Dad brains: How fatherhood rewires the male mind

#152

Post by pseudohadamard »

theshackleford wrote: post #90
roody15 wrote: post #3

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.

> 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…

  “So how old is your daughter?”

  > niece
Still vastly better than:

  “So how old is your daughter?”

  > wife

Re: Dad brains: How fatherhood rewires the male mind

#153

Post by JKCalhoun »

vadepaysa wrote: post #52
andy99 wrote: post #16

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…

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.

Re: Dad brains: How fatherhood rewires the male mind

#154

Post by JKCalhoun »

narvidas wrote: post #92

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 orde…

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.

Re: Dad brains: How fatherhood rewires the male mind

#155

Post by strix_varius »

marcuschong wrote: post #126
dividefuel wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Re: Dad brains: How fatherhood rewires the male mind

#156

Post by silexia »

necovek wrote: post #116
gedy wrote: post #26

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.

Re: Dad brains: How fatherhood rewires the male mind

#157

Post by tasuki »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #141
tasuki wrote: post #138

> 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).

For sure the hardest! Kid is five now and life is ok again...

Re: Dad brains: How fatherhood rewires the male mind

#158

Post by JKCalhoun »

rrgok wrote: post #95
narvidas wrote: post #92

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 orde…

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.

Re: Dad brains: How fatherhood rewires the male mind

#159

Post by pseudohadamard »

jvanderbot wrote: post #50

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. Ju…

  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.
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.

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.

Re: Dad brains: How fatherhood rewires the male mind

#160

Post by tasuki »

strix_varius wrote: post #149
tasuki wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I think this is an unfair characterization. I also go on business trips - about six a year, one week each. That leaves 230 days of waking up, getting dressed, and walking to preschool. 322 nights of bath time and reading and tucking in. The occasional trip for work doesn't negate the steady state effort that fatherhood requires.

Yes of course, it's an unfair characterization, sorry for that.

Still, it's a way more leisurely experience from what my fatherhood looked like...

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