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> 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.

Parents also tend to gain weight, and higher BMI is associated with a decline in T.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3809034/

Yes, chronically disturbed sleep is the obvious confounder and is well known to drop T and explains the observed small changes a lot better.
Or, just gonna put this out there... you have successfully fathered a child. A drop-off in T seems normal -- you've done your job and now you care for that child and lose the drive to father a significant number more. You accomplished your biological purpose and slowly slide on into death over the next number of decades. So it is. We are not immortals and the phases of life should not be avoided out of selfish vanity. Easy to say online, eh? :)
Several of the studies described changes in hormones before the child was born.
On the right line. Lower sleep, higher coping (bad diet, alcohol etc) would lead to T destruction. Not surprised BBC didn't connect the dots here.
Evolutionarily this makes sense. Lower testosterone means less carousing, and better fatherhood.
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.
"As a father of 3 daughters now approaching 50 with my oldest now 24…"

You and I are akin (I waited a decade longer to start a family though.)

I definitely see my life as divided between before and after having had kids. I mean that's pretty obvious—and you can find any other big event in life and make that claim. But for me there has been nothing more dramatic to have redirected my own life.

To the point that (and this might not sound fair to people without kids) my life before kids seems in a way rather shallow, hedonist. I feel as though that was the demarcation for when I first cared for someone more than I do myself.

Photos of my time before becoming a father: I look at them and wonder who that guy was. What the hell was he doing with his life? Purposefulness came with fatherhood. A full identity change. To the point that when they left the nest, I was suddenly overwhelmed with purposelessness.

> Perhaps it is just the life altering effect of raising children or maybe is biological as well.

If not biological, where else would this effect manifest?

Arguably it could be things like "become parent -> become poor -> become stressed".

But suppose we say they're rich, and so they don't get stressed via that path. So maybe we can't say that parenting causes stress. (Okay, it absolutely does but bare with me.)

Suppose they're really rich, and they pay for night nannies, then suddenly you're a parent and not even tired. So now we can't say parenting causes tiredness.

Perhaps there are some things that "intrinsically" switch on in the father's brain, detached from the rest of the world?

If so, are we believe that a one-night stand, that leads to a baby, unbeknownst to the father, results in biological changes 9 months later?

My point is, the effects are all predictably biological adaptation in response to the environment, in the same way that if I go to the gym, I will become fitter. The article presents it as unexpected or mystical. What else are they expecting happens with big life changes?

(Sorry if it sounds like I'm grouchy, I am tired and my child is not napping when he should be.)

> 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 kids of my own, so I put a lot of time in with my niece.

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.
> You can definitely pickup on whether another male is a father or not.

Hah, yep. There's a quality of patience and looking out for small children that nearly 100% of other dads I meet have, but probably only ~30% of men without kids.

And maybe even less than that, since the ones who are willing to hang out with me in my fatherly state are a self-selecting bunch.

  You can definitely pickup on whether another male is a father or not.
Dad bod, dad jokes, and complaining about the kids are always a sure giveaway :-).
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 order to keep my energy levels sufficiently high and mental health in check.

I now feel much better than I did in years. Albeit still heavily sleep deprived most days. Recent bloodwork shows that my T levels nearly doubled (compared to before becoming a dad) from average to slightly off-the-charts high.

Take it as you will, but for me fatherhood forced me to reevaluate how I spend my time very carefully, forcing me to take care of myself more so I can take care of my family sufficiently too.

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.

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.
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. Just specifically that belief has changed for me: its fun to make kids because having them is self reinforcing and wonderful and intrinsically motivational.

Perhaps I'm a data point.

I also have been surprised by how fun fatherhood is.

When kids are days, weeks, months old, they're constantly experiencing new things. That's the first tree she ever saw! It's amazing to experience the world through them.

When they're a couple years old, you see them learning and connecting and developing a unique personality. I love it when my two year old picks up on things that I missed, or teaches me something. And it's kind of awesome to be someone's superhero for however long this lasts.

I don't know how it goes after this but so far the trend has been that they get more fun as they grow...

  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.

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.
Yeah, that never happened for me. Before and after, I felt pretty much the same. Now she's an adult and it's weird.
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 worse caregiver, and that it needs to be reigned in by some adaptation. The whole thing is definitely framed for a certain world view, it’s definitely not the only interpretation.

There's some interesting research on the effect of T in mice which has been challenging traditional assumptions of its role in males: https://news.emory.edu/stories/2022/08/esc_testosterone_anim...

It's worth noting though that the actions of the "stereotypical man" are strongly culturally informed, and not neccessarily indicative of whatever evolutionary pressures would've wired males brains whatever way they're wired for fatherhood. I don't think we have much direct evidence of ancient female and male parent roles (apart from being able to infer the obvious, like that females would've breastfed).

Mom brain is also a thing. Large scale, consistent, structural changes in the postpartum brain that is uncorrelated with PPD. https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhab463
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/memetemplate/211147137/Oh-dear-dear-gorg..., LHS = my reaction to my baby, RHS = my reaction to other kids before my baby was born).

I think the article is spot on — the more time you spend with your baby and care for them, the more oxytocin you get and the more your testosterone drops (I cried when my baby first spoke — cooed, really — to me, for example, and that's just one instance).

Edit: I want to take this opportunity to say — fuck companies that don't give paternity leave. This is fucking hard to do alone, so be nice to your employees and offer paternity benefits. I'm in India, where paternity leave isn't required, so I was told to fuck off when I asked for time off.

We also naturally learn phrases, like "uh, don't tell mom."
I swear my hearing got more sensitive with kids. Also, some commercials hit differently.
one of the few super distinct differences not only in males but in parents: nearly all of them develop walking without noises and at some point do it baseline. super funny when you're with non-parents again and realize for the first time just how carelessly _loud_ they move around, whereas parents move near silent without even thinking. Guess thats the earned scars after trying to put a toddler asleep and for the sake of god not awake it again by stupid noise right away.
It makes sense as a layman - less testosterone means less fighting, aggressive behavior, chasing other mates, etc. Ensures more success for your offspring.
> 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.

51yr old father of two (18yr M 16yr F)... I know I'm a biased pool to draw from but my lived experience was noticing how my brain changed when my wife started showing she was pregnant.

I swear I actually noticed it. At times i felt the changes.. it felt similar to the buzz you get when playing a fast paced shootem up game. it wasn't quite a buzz though.

    By the time Gettler looked into this field, it was already an established fact that fathers had lower testosterone that [sic] men without kids.
I'm sure this typo will be promptly corrected. But it does offer some sense into how thoroughly this article was proofread prior to publication.
Starting from marriage, men are changing to the less manly direction. But there is a confounding factor: higher testosterone level or sensitivity causes specific distance from family care, so it stays high longer.

Personally, I experienced a 10% drop in my 1rep max in squat after each of my two children.

The lower T claim sounds like a pretty obvious adaptation to me.

High T = high risk appetite. Low T = low risk appetite.

If you have kids, your risk appetite should be relatively lower. Otherwise your offspring may have to grow up without you around.

Although I agree that the lack of sleep would have a huge impact as well.

I think this is very true. I slept in the same bed with the babies and I have seen huge changes in my behavior and even in my body shape over the last seven years with five children.
> that men have all the necessary biological wiring to be "every bit as protective and nurturing as the most committed mother

This seems like an overstatement - man can't give birth to babies (which involves transfer of the mothers biome to the baby) or feed babies (which typically involves lactation).

"X rewires the brain" posts feel a bit like "water is wet".

I expect many major and even minor life events rewire the brain. Isn't "rewiring" the process of learning and changing thoughts/behaviours?

In which model of behaviour is it surprising that reorienting your life towards dependence won't have measurable effects on the brain?

The research is no doubt useful to some, but the way it's presented in news as some sort of mystical phenomenon feels very middle ages.

is this science or just subjective feelings?
A list of things that no one would want on themselves
you have to control for the stress, lack of sleep etc.

do partners who purchase a puppy also have lower T in the following months if they are primary caregivers?

I wouldn’t trust these sourced studies - smells exactly like replication crisis findings.

Malcom Gladwell meticulously sourced the researchers when he was writing his books. He got everything right. It was all the researchers who lied.

> "It's an urgent societal priority that we shore up dads' opportunity to build those connections," says Saxbe.

I note that changing the presumption in family law that the mother is the better care giver, thus making it incredibly hard for fathers to win custody of their children, is not listed as one of them.

Weird that.

The modern female loves the “dad” archetype because it’s non-threatening across many domains. See: all modern entertainment media (which is produced by females and the feminine-minded). Expect it to increase in representation and popularity (which can already be observed by the sharp-witted).

My identity: trans woman (to ameliorate the stung feelings of identitarians, relativists, and/or feminists reading this).