The truth about fatherhood! How being a hands-on dad changes a man’s brain…. and why
If you’re reading this as a mother of a newborn — sleep-deprived, frazzled and overwhelmed as the primary carer — you might wish you’d been born a dwarf hamster from Siberia.
There, the males look after the mothers-to-be during pregnancy, nuzzle in close during labour, help deliver the baby and cut the cord, before transferring precious newborns to the family nest — and, best of all, they pause to tidy up any ragged edges on the nest walls. All very well, you might think, but what does a small Russian rodent have to do with the everyday experience of human motherhood?
More than you might think, according to a book from the distinguished primatologist and evolutionary anthropologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy.
Father Time: A Natural History Of Men And Babies draws on a wealth of research to prove that male nurturing goes back millennia, and that men in prolonged intimate contact with babies exhibit biological responses nearly identical to those in the bodies and brains of mothers.
Yet well into the 20th century, care was split on gendered lines believing that Darwinian rules applied: females nurture babies, men compete for status and mates. So, men didn’t attend births or look after newborns.
Hrdy notes that male Russian dwarf hamsters (pictured) care for the females during pregnancy
This was true of even Hrdy’s own experience — growing up in wealthy Texas in the 1940s she was cared for by a succession of female nannies and her father took no part in her care.
Yet the scientist in her was piqued by seeing the difference by the time her daughter gave birth in 2014, and she found herself ‘watching a man totally immersed in nurturing a baby and doing so by choice’ — Hrdy’s son-in-law, David.
This led her to investigate whether paternal care of a newborn was really as unusual as she’d assumed.
The result in this detailed book reveals that much of what we assume about who can care for newborns is not borne out by anthropology, neuroscience and endocrinology. In short: sorry, boys, there’s no biological reason why you shouldn’t take an equal part in childcare.
Beyond that, it has thought-provoking questions for governments: if our behaviour is not determined by our biology, what does that mean for how we organise society, particularly around childcare or parental leave?
Hrdy, whose earlier books have done much to reset the agenda on women and evolution, builds on the work of such scientists as Katherine Wynne-Edwards and Anne Storey.
The cover of anthropologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy’s A Natural History Of Men And Babies
They found that fathers-to-be who had gone to childbirth classes had raised prolactin levels (a hormone responsible for producing milk) before their partner gave birth.
Then, after becoming fathers, their testosterone levels plummeted, reducing competition and promoting nurturing — effectively an evolutionary response suggesting they were, in fact, ‘hardwired to take care of their kids’.
Other research suggests that the brain structure of men who have become fathers can change — think daddy brain as well as mummy brain — or that fathers can recognise their babies by scent alone just as accurately as mothers do, or that dads can respond just as fast as mothers when babies cry.
Meanwhile, our closest primate relatives reveal a more complex story than has previously been told in a male-focused anthropology.
Much of the attention has centred on chimpanzees where males are often aggressive towards babies. However, Hrdy points out that is not true of all species. Bonobos, our other closest relatives, have a much more equal relationship between males and females.
And in marmosets, social selection favouring tolerant and helpful males appears to have outweighed sexual selection favouring aggressive ones. Which may give the old-fashioned man who refuses to change a nappy pause for thought.
For as Hrdy muses, a future Darwinian notion of female choice might mean that women who want careers may select a mate who shows off his willingness to undertake childcare rather than his Rolex or sports car.
Hrdy’s research delves back into analysis that has been overlooked, perhaps because it didn’t fit the dominant narrative.
For example, back in the 1990s, a key study of Central African foragers, the Akas, found that the fathers spent nearly 50 per cent of each 24-hour period within arm’s reach of their infants, actually holding one- to four-month-old babies as much as22 per cent of the time.
Sarah Blaffer Hrdy’s books have done much to reset the agenda on women and evolution
Hrdy’s book draws on a wealth of research to prove that male nurturing goes back millennia
Forget dads paying lip service to ‘quality time’, here’s an example of them spending hours in relaxed proximity to their children and, the researchers found, they were emotionally attuned to their infants.
Hrdy’s enthusiasm for her subject — at 77 she’s still eager to discover more — and her beautiful prose makes this book a fascinating read.
She is clear that some of her conclusions remain theoretical — with science traditionally uninterested in looking at men as potential caregivers, this is still a developing field. But she makes a convincing and persuasive argument.
And as she says of all the evidence she amasses, a woman who gave birth in the 20th century ‘might well respond with an expletive and an exasperated, “Why didn’t we know this sooner?” ’
Father Time: A Natural History of Men and Babies by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, published by Princeton, is available on the Mail Bookshop (books.mailshop.co.uk) for £25.