Becoming a mother is a life-changing event, bringing out hormones and natural tendencies in a woman that help prepare her during the nine months until the child is born. Nature has ensured that women are ready when the baby finally arrives, kicking and screaming, through a progression of hormones that flow through her body and her brain during gestation. But what about the men?
“Parenthood is exactly the kind of event that you might expect to harness the brain’s natural neuroplasticity to help prepare individuals for the adventure that awaits,” says Kayt Sukel, author of “Dirty Minds: How Our Brains Influence Love, Sex and Relationships.” “Given the sheer number of physical changes that a woman goes through, you’d expect that some major rewiring might be happening in the brain. But work in animal models suggests that dad’s brains are getting a bit of a reorganization, too.”
Changes In Daddy’s Brain
Research shows that indeed, a few days after birth, changes occur in the brains of both daddy and baby, depending on whether daddy sticks around. According to research, not only do men get better at hearing a baby’s cry as the due date of their child approaches, but a baby’s smile activates the same circuits in the brain that are involved with falling in love.
“In a sense, you can place the changes on a continuum or curve, with the virgin male on the far left and the mother on the far right,” says Dr. Craig Kinsley, professor of psychology and coordinator of neuroscience at the University of Richmond. “The father would shift his place on the curve several portions to the right, never quite catching up to the maternal female, however.”
Kinsley says it’s helpful to think in terms of parental requirements. In the mammal, the female gets pregnant and bears the primary burden of internal fertilization, pregnancy, lactation and, eventually and for a long time, infant care. The male’s role, for all intents and purposes, ends at fertilization, if he so desires.
“A father who remains to care for his young increases the likelihood of successful reproduction and a maximization of his reproductive fitness. Behaviors change in good, investing fathers. In mice, which are biparental — that is, both parents caring for young — the males show some changes, in brain and behavior, similar to the mothers, shifting that curve to the right. So in species where fathers do more than have sex and then abandon their young to the mother, marked changes are apparent.”
In a study published in Nature Neuroscience, male mice were observed after the birth of their newborn pups. It was found that in the days that followed, a neurogenesis — spontaneous formation of additional neurons — occurred, but only if the mouse father stayed with his pups. If he was removed from his offspring the day of the birth, nothing happened. The study showed these new brain cells to be formed in the olfactory bulb — to be specifically tuned to the smell of his pups — and in the hippocampus, the brain’s memory center.
But it isn’t just after the birth of the baby that daddy’s brain starts changing. “During his partner’s pregnancy, the male brain begins to release more of the hormone prolactin and to gradually suppress the hormone testosterone,” says Dr. Louann Brizendine, a neuropsychiatrist, professor, and author of “The Female Brain” and “The Male Brain.” “Evolutionary biologists believe this happens because it is critical to the survival of human infants that the male parent be prepared to protect and nurture the helpless offspring and support the new mother, instead of chasing new females to mate with as in most other mammals.”
Prolactin is the same hormone that is responsible for milk production in the breasts of new mothers. “There have been a few studies over the past five years that suggest prolactin has a role in the paternal brain, too,” says Sukel, quoting professor Ruth Feldman from Bar Ilan University’s research, which looked at a number of different neurochemicals that may change in response to fatherhood. Feldman found that higher prolactin levels are linked to exploratory play. The higher the prolactin, the more dads will help their babies explore and play.
Another important hormone is oxytocin, which is released in the brain in response to social and skin-to-skin contact. The higher it is, the more emotionally a father appeared to be bonding with the baby.
Finally, there’s vasopressin, which is possibly the only hormone that plays a bigger part in dad than it does in mom, promoting paternal behaviors and bringing out the protective instinct in a father.
“The hypothesis is that the brain is readying itself for the challenges and rewards of offspring,” Sukel says. “By increasing these connections and receptors, dad is primed not only to help care for kids, but also to better bond with them.”
The Father-Child Bond
Once a child is conceived, the role of a father, medically speaking, is finished. The dad doesn’t need to be around to give birth or to feed the baby. Yet, increasingly, research proves that a father’s role is extremely important in a child’s life and that children raised solely by mothers tend to have behavioral problems as they grow up. “Many babies and children raised without a father in our modern world can grow up to be just fine; however, having an involved, committed father has been shown to increase the chances of a child’s educational success,” says Brizendine.
