House of Eratosthenes

Testosterone is responsible for everything from facial hair and Adam’s apples to a deepened voice, muscle development and a strong libido in men. Apparently men don’t need the hormone so much after becoming parents, though! Researchers at Northwestern University have found that levels of testosterone drop significantly after men become fathers.

As reported in the UK’s Daily Mail, those with newborns and those who spend more time doing child care had the biggest drops in testosterone levels:

For those with a child under one month old, the decline was around 50 per cent, but it remained consistently lower than their childless counterparts ‘until their offspring is at least a year or two old’.

The men who reported caring for their child for between one and three hours per day saw the greatest decline, which the authors said was not accounted for by stress or sleep deprivation.

While this might sound like bad news, the researchers think it’s a good sign. In an interview with Time, the study’s lead author, biological anthropologist Lee Gettler said, “… it means that men are apparently hard-wired to respond biologically to fatherhood. It’s a fresh perspective, given that the conventional wisdom describes traditional societies as those in which men are hunter-gatherers, while women on the home front forage for berries and care for kids … Humans wouldn’t have been as successful if fathers weren’t helping.”

Way to go, dads!

They missed the point. Didn’t even follow the evidence. Didn’t even implement sound logic.

How does it necessarily follow that, if a man should maintain his level of testosterone after becoming a father, he has to be a bad father? And the “traditional” and “conventional” wisdom, how did that come about? Did we make up all the stories about men being hunters & gatherers? What about the fathers back in the agrarian era, having kids…and then having a bunch more? Evidence of testosterone post-fatherhood. What happened?

My answer: It’s cultural. Culture impacts the mind, and the mind impacts the body. In the twenty-first century, there is very little cultural acceptance of real man-hood, especially post-fatherhood. Having a child nowadays means immersing oneself in a whole different world, chock full of preening snotty lectures about learning disabilities, colorful plastic toys jammed up your ass when you sit on the couch, a whole bunch of movies every single year all about what clumsy idiots the small-dee dad is and how we all need to help mom work him over so he doesn’t go to the office and do any of that work stuff. Dads are supposed to “be there” for their kids…which lately, is morphing into a weird definition of spending all their waking hours being around their kids. Go to the park, as if you’re a grandpa instead of a dad. Buy ice cream. And never, ever, ever allow your voice to descend in pitch below 440 Mhz. Not when there are kids around. Speaking anywhere below alto is worse than using the fuck-word.

Not sure who made that rule, but a rule it is. Walk around Folsom with me on a Saturday morning. Watch these grown men moan & whine non-threateningly at their kids.

Yes I think there’s something to the research. I assume they actually measured the hormones, and if they did and it produced the results they’re talking about, I’m not one bit surprised.

I just think the research is worthless if they didn’t take history into account — it didn’t begin yesterday morning. Things are different. And it’s an indictment…this is not good…because, news flash, there are other ways to stop a man from screwing around on his wife other than turning him into a woman. Appeal to basic human decency comes to mind, y’know? Once he’s made kids with her, a real man shouldn’t want to.

In fact I would go further: The lesson to be gleaned from this study is that human are unique, after all. We possess the intelligence necessary to use free will to decide if we want to accept humanity. Birds and beasts are “wired” to mate for life, or to scatter their seed around with wild abandon. It is, mostly, decided by their species. They have “wiring.” Humans don’t. We can breed with one partner throughout our entire lives, or we can breed like cattle. Or fruit flies. We ate of the apple and lost our innocence, so it’s all up to us, and the decisions we make speak to our character or lack thereof. That is our unique covenant.

We can debate whether or not it’s “scientific” to go cheering on such a trend in one direction or another. But I would hope we all agree that a researcher who says, it’s a good thing when a member of any species stops trying to be what it naturally is, shouldn’t be in research. This team has crossed that line, and is no longer “researching” into what is happening to hormonal levels after parenthood. They aren’t even researchers, they’re advocates.

Watch these grown men moan & whine non-threateningly at their kids.

Not me. My kids know when I’ve got the “quit fucking around” look on my face. I don’t use those words, of course, as I don’t want my sub-10 year old kids using the word fuck.

Oh, and when the tone in my voice promises DOOM, it’s not kidding. Fortunately, my kids understand that as well.

I’m not opposed to some societal changes. In fact, I like changing diapers, taking my kids to the park and buying them ice cream. But my kids know that the reason we have a home, food, clothes and toys is because daddy works two jobs (one of them is part-time). Dad is also the spider killer, the lawn custodian, the electrician and the computer repairman. I have many hats. But none of those hats is the stupid father one because that particular style does not fit on my pointy head.

One other thought in this ADD comment: my wife is my biggest fan, building me up to the kids and pretty much anyone else who will listen. While she will admit- as will I- that I can be a bit absentminded, she would put the beatdown on anyone who told her I was an idiot.
- Physics Geek | 09/13/2011 @ 08:46
From the Shoebox blog, which provided the following one sentence link to the story:

Men with kids have lower testosterone levels. Less money, too. It’s a real win-win.

THAT made me laugh.
- bpenni | 09/13/2011 @ 11:24
“Humans wouldn’t have been as successful if fathers weren’t helping.”

OR, if our friendly researcher were actually a scientist,
“Humans may have been twice as successful if fathers didn’t like their kids so much”

Sheesh
- tgoon | 09/13/2011 @ 12:26
The suggestion that testosterone is unwanted or harmful really rips me. I can just see milk toast, butterfly chasing wimps nodding in solemn agreement with the study’s assessment that less testosterone is “good” for the family or society. It’s another case of liberals defining everyone by the worst examples they know.

American Society has advanced across a forbidding ocean, shed the chains of tyrannical rule, conquered a continental wilderness , fought through a civil war, delivered Western Civilization from the hands of dictators THRICE and just liberated two middle eastern nations from the same. Guess what, it wasn’t under estrogen’s influence that the hard work was done.

Busting your hump day in, day out, planning for your families future, having the strength to take on whatever that noise was in the middle of the night… I could use some more testosterone myself.

Stand tall brothers. Don’t back down and don’t apologize! It’s good to be a man. And real men seek to be good.
- Whitehawk | 09/13/2011 @ 16:57
I don’t see the big deal. Hormone levels fluctuate. It’s just a bit of data.
- luly | 09/13/2011 @ 17:36
It’s not the data, it’s what they did with it.

Socially: There is more than the mere suggestion here, that men endanger families by simply being what they are. Put aside the question of whether this is even accurate; just consider how reprehensible it would be to put out a study that says women become significantly less womanly after giving birth, and with a little peach fuzz on the upper lip they make better mothers. Way to go, moms! What a WTF moment that would be…well…why is it any more acceptable here?

Scientifically: They have the proper controls for the experiment to figure out what happens to a subject after the event of fatherhood. I’m assuming that they do…but as I indicated, they’re lacking the controls to figure out if this is a recent phenomenon or not. Given what’s been presented here, the logical conclusion is not quite so much that it’s natural for a man to shed his manhood after fatherhood, but that our modern-day culture has converted fatherhood into an emasculating exercise. If that is the case, it isn’t good, and the damage has set in for awhile if it’s starting to show up in the hormonal measurements.

There is another consideration here: Perhaps fatherhood, nowadays, is occurring later in the man’s life and what the eggheads are actually capturing, without realizing it, is the well documented phenomenon of men waiting longer to marry. Quite simply, there are far fewer upsides to it. You change the rules of any game so that the occupant of a certain role is guaranteed to be evil, criticized, demonized at every turn…and that role is going to tend to go unfilled.
- mkfreeberg | 09/13/2011 @ 17:53
I have fathered 17 children.

My two “children,” the product of my legal ex-wife, were born during the interim of my bulling around. My “children” have no knowledge of their 15 half-brothers and -sisters.

I hope that my testosterone will, eventually, decline. So far, I show no propensity for doing so.

Well, somebody had to point it out.
.
- TMI | 09/13/2011 @ 21:39
Yes, men are demonized at every turn. It makes me mad, too. And have you seen women on tv and in the movies lately? Basically one type gets represented, the most aggressive, masculine females are the ideal (surrounded, of course, by wimpy guys.) Too bad for those of us who like men, like raising kids, like marriage, like all the varied and interesting work involved in running a home.
- luly | 09/13/2011 @ 21:49
I’m pretty sure my T-count was down when I was married. Wasn’t getting much. You know, that’ll have a pretty damn direct impact on your hormonal readings; body will stop producing what isn’t being used.

I’m convinced the poor blokes are depressed. I know from arguing on the internetz that there are a lot of people who will refuse to consider this, or anything else that might possibly cast the male in a sympathetic light. It’s an automatic non-starter for them. And I think many in this group are married women, the kind I promised myself I’d never consider marrying again.

I’ve kept that promise and it’s worked out very well.
- mkfreeberg | 09/13/2011 @ 22:43
[…] House of Eratoshenes wrote on this the other day and linked to a column on the study with an interview with the author who said this: Lee Gettler said, “… it means that men are apparently hard-wired to respond biologically to fatherhood. It’s a fresh perspective, given that the conventional wisdom describes traditional societies as those in which men are hunter-gatherers, while women on the home front forage for berries and care for kids … Humans wouldn’t have been as successful if fathers weren’t helping.” […]
- Hormones and Parenthood « | 09/15/2011 @ 06:05

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Testosterone and FatherhoodTuesday, September 13th, 2011

Testosterone and Fatherhood
Tuesday, September 13th, 2011