Dad here. Maybe…it’s the lack of sleep? Involved fathers tend to have less sleep.

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 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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

    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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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