Has your brain changed since you became a Dad?
Kelly Lambert, chair of the psychology department at Randolph-Macon College, has been studying the male California deer mouse. She found that Poppa Mouse takes care of the babies — hanging with them, grooming them and keeping a close eye on them — whenever he's not out shopping for cheese. (Read more about the study, here.)
Her study suggests that there is such a thing as a "Daddy Brain"; that the male brain is biochemically altered by becoming a father, changes already well documented in females — mice and human mommies, alike.
So, for Father's Day, we asked some Dads we know:
Has becoming a father changed your brain?
Their answers, below.
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ALSO IN THIS ISSUE:
Happy Meals
Looking for a place to take Dad for lunch on Father's day?
Freelance writer and Maplewood mom Judie Hurtado begins her family-friendly restaurant review column for The MotherHood with a visit to Rockin' Joe's Cafe on Main Street in Millburn. Read her new column, here.
Enjoy, and Happy Father's Day!
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Brain Drops Keep Falling On My Head
by Brett Rodgers
Daddy2
by Clain and Bryan DiPalma-Thomson
Dog Brain Afternoon
by Gregg Valentine
Happy Meals: The Family-Friendly
Restaurant Review
by Judie Hurtado
Mother (Unlike Any Other)
by Michael Lally
The Fit Parent: Defining Fatherhood
by Tim Reynolds
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2 comments:
nice blog
Hi, there, responding to "Did My Brain Change after Fatherhood?":
I'm the author of "The Daddy Brain" article, and I appreciated and enjoyed the thoughtful and heartfelt columns. Clain, I felt distressed that you felt excluded, although I do understand why you feel that way. The article posits the dominant paradigm of a male/female couple.
In my book, The Chemistry of Connection, which includes the research on which this article is based, I said explicitly that mother is a role and that anyone, including a gay man, can mother. Similarly, anyone can father, when we define fathering as a role. Please blame, in part, the limited space in a magazine article.
But you both raise an interesting and important question about whether there is a difference in a family where there are two males, two "fathers." In the case of this article, I am not talking about caregiving roles but about what happens physiologically when someone becomes a father.
The physical -- and hormonal -- changes a woman goes through during pregnancy are incontrovertible. Obviously, even a man who is the biological father does not experience the same changes. Nor would adoptive parents of any flavor, nor the female partner of a woman who gave birth to their child.
The point of my article, and what I think is really important, is that men who become fathers also go through hormonal changes that seem to be triggered by being close to the baby. Indeed, as Bryan wrote, we all have this in our DNA -- but men and women who don't bear a child come to it in a different way.
You both seem to have read the article as implying that men are not generally nurturing, or not as nurturing as women. I don't think that's what the science shows. But male nurturing, influenced as it is by vasopressin, may tend to have a different flavor.
I was a 1970s feminist who believed that all gender differences were the result of socialization and expectations. In researching the book, which is heavily noted and based on scientific studies, I learned that, uncomfortable as it makes me, there are definite differences in the biologies of men and women that are expressed in behavior. In fact, estrogen and testosterone are neurotransmitters, as well as hormones. (I am always careful to add that there's a wide range of variation in individuals, so that any particular man may have less testosterone than any randomly chosen woman.)
Having suffered this myself when I was younger, I'm well aware of how this can be twisted to blame people for not being masculine or feminine enough, or not playing their appointed gender roles. On the other hand, I think it can also be liberating. For example, it may be a disservice to our boy children and grown men to demand that they become as much like women as possible.
In any case, you sound like lovely fathers, no matter how you define that.
best regards,
Susan Kuchinskas
hugthemonkey.com
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