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Dad brains: How fatherhood rewires the male mind

bbc.com

51–60 of 218 posts

Re: Dad brains: How fatherhood rewires the male mind

#51
post #11

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

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.

Re: Dad brains: How fatherhood rewires the male mind

#52
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.

Re: Dad brains: How fatherhood rewires the male mind

#53
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.

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.

Re: Dad brains: How fatherhood rewires the male mind

#54

> 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.

Yes, chronically disturbed sleep is the obvious confounder and is well known to drop T and explains the observed small changes a lot better.

Re: Dad brains: How fatherhood rewires the male mind

#55
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

As a father I can assure you you have no idea what you're talking about.

N = 1. now compare the number of single mothers (≈ children abandoned by their fathers) vs the number of single fathers (≈ children abandoned by their mothers).

for every helicopter dad there are ten guys who don't care about their offspring.

Re: Dad brains: How fatherhood rewires the male mind

#56
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…

[flagged]

But it’s ok for child men to spend time with children? That seems dangerous. Who would teach them about scissors? Furthermore, when does a child stop being a tiny child? And at that point can any adult male of the species interact with them or is there some kind of age to height progression where it becomes safe?

In very much more serious, but perhaps less kind thoughts, do you not get halfway through writing things like that without considering how fundamentally broken that thinking is? My heart seriously goes out to you, unless it’s not ok given I am pretty tall and you might be 12 or something so it may still be a few years before we can talk, but I may be dead by then and it feels like you could use a pal, lil buddy.

Re: Dad brains: How fatherhood rewires the male mind

#57
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a father I can assure you you have no idea what you're talking about.

I can't speak for the person you're responding to, but my default reaction to people who say things like this is that they probably don't have kids, and if they do, I wonder about the well-being of their family life. I don't mean that to be insulting at all. It seems completely incompatible with being a family- or community-involved person. And what's society without kids? Whether you're a parent or not, we need kids…

> I can't speak for the person you're responding to, but my default reaction to people who say things like this is that they probably don't have kids,...

I don't have kids and it still sounds nonsensical. As a man, my instinct isn't to run away from my child if I had one. If life keeps men and their children apart, that's a different matter altogether. But I have seen other men yearn to be with their little kids. My father did the same when I was young. Some of them are their kids' sole caregiver for the majority of the time because life keeps the mother away from the child. And in all instances, I see strong paternal affection and instincts at play. I'm baffled by an assertion otherwise.

Re: Dad brains: How fatherhood rewires the male mind

#58
post #31

> 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.

Several of the studies described changes in hormones before the child was born.

Given this is "BBC Future" let me guess, barely above significance and n=16?

Re: Dad brains: How fatherhood rewires the male mind

#59

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…

[deleted]

Re: Dad brains: How fatherhood rewires the male mind

#60

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…

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.

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