I want to introduce you to four fathers.
Ota is a member of the Aka tribe, who reside deep in the lush forests of the Democratic Republic of Congo. They are a hunter-gatherer tribe who hunt for small forest animals using nets. Net hunting is a whole-family endeavour, with children accompanying their mothers and fathers in their treks through the forest. Because the family is always together, Ota shares the care of his children equally with their mother and he is just as likely to sing to, comfort, feed or bathe them as she is. Indeed, he is more likely to share his bed with their children than his wife and he may even offer a crying baby his nipple to suckle until mum is available to breastfeed.
Next, meet Mike. Mike is a commercial lawyer from Boston in the United States. He works long hours and rarely sees his children during the working week, but he is driven to earn a high wage so that his children can benefit from a private education and live in a nice part of the city. He is a member of the local country club and at the weekends he takes his younger children to swimming club while his eldest son often joins him on the golf course with his work colleagues.
Next, there’s Sigis. He is a father from the Kipsigis tribe in the highlands of Kenya. The Kipsigis are farmers whose predominant crop is tea. Sigis sees his main role as being the family breadwinner and spends little time with his younger children. However, when his sons reach late childhood, he begins to teach them about the farm so that they will be able to take over its running when they are adults. From adolescence onwards, he likes to spend the majority of his leisure time with his sons, leaving his adolescent daughters to his wife.
Finally, meet James. James lives in Somerset in south-west England. He is the primary carer of his three children. His wife, a successful PR executive, works in Bristol and often travels abroad, so he is the main source of practical care and emotional support for his kids. James is responsible for taking his two eldest children to and from school and carrying out the domestic chores. He is a dab hand at juggling the ballet, football and frequent play dates that make up his children’s post-school itinerary, as well as providing tea and homework support and being an enthusiastic member of the school’s Parent Teacher Association. Now that his youngest is in pre-school four mornings a week, he is trying to build up a copywriting business from home.
Four different fathers from four very different regions of the world, with four very different ways of fulfilling the fathering role. Who would you say was doing the better job?
In this chapter, I want to explore what drives the diversity of fathering around the world. I want to introduce you to the many different ways of being a dad, which hopefully will achieve two goals. Firstly, I hope to provide reassurance to those of you who might be embarking on this journey that there is no ‘right way’ to be an involved dad and, secondly, to show you that you may approach your role in a variety of different ways, but for all of you there is an underlying shared goal that ultimately moulds your approach: the powerful drive to ensure your children’s survival. As dads, you might have your differences, but ultimately you are all members of the same club.
As a dad, you are free from the biological bounds of pregnancy, birth and breastfeeding, but it should be clear from previous chapters that the role you eventually adopt within your family is not quite as free a choice for you as it would at first appear. There is an element of your behaviour that is driven by evolutionary history and biology and a part that is shaped by the social, cultural and political milieu you inhabit. If we consider that modern dads can live in societies whose systems differ as markedly as monogamy and polygamy, whose politics can lean from the far right to the far left, whose inheritance systems could be patriarchal, matriarchal or egalitarian and whose economy can be founded on the principles of capitalism, communism, barter or self-sufficiency, it is hardly surprising that the dads of the world inhabit their role in a seemingly infinite number of ways. But if we add to this the influences of history, religion and politics, combined with individual differences in upbringing and genetics, it is no surprise that there are so many different ways for you to fulfil your role.
The flexibility that underpins a father’s role is critical for human survival because, restricted by the high energetic and physical demands of pregnancy, childbirth and breastfeeding, the role of human mothers is tightly prescribed. In contrast, the role of a father can quickly respond to even the tiniest shift in the social, economic or physical environment that might threaten his family’s survival. And this means that the role of a father can differ markedly not only between cultures but within families, between neighbours and even within the lifetime of one man. This has two consequences. Firstly, that while taking inspiration from other fathers – your own dad, your next-door neighbour, David Beckham – it is a good idea not to compare yourself to others to too much of an extent, as it is very likely that the factors influencing survival in your children’s lives differ to those of your role models. Secondly, dads in apparently very similar environments can come up with starkly different ways of solving the survival puzzle, because the other elements in their life differ. So, in answer to the question I posed at the start of this chapter, it is not about who does it best but about the fascinating ways all dads arrive at different solutions to the same conundrum.
Recall the Aché fathers from Chapter Three? Like the Aka man above, they gain resources via the process of hunting and gathering but unlike the hands-on Aka man, they have very little to do with the direct care of their children. In their war-torn society, ensuring survival is as basic as protecting the very life of your family on a day-to-day basis. In contrast, the life of the Aka, deep within the rainforest, with plentiful food and few threats, is one of comparative egalitarian bliss. Aka fathers are the most hands-on dads in the world, spending on average 47 per cent of their day in physical contact with their children. So, one type of subsistence economy but two very different fathering styles. They differ because the social environment in which they live is so starkly different and, as a consequence, the actions that ensure the survival of the children in each society are very different. Without an immediate threat to life, the Aka man can spend his days on family hunting trips, co-parenting and ensuring the critical survival skills of hunting are passed on to his children – the skills of which his children will learn equally from him and his wife. In contrast, without the active physical protection of their multiple fathers, the children of the Aché would be under grave risk of not surviving into adulthood. Two dads, one shared goal, but two very different methods of achieving it.
Developmental scientist Robert LeVine of Harvard University argues that it is just this element of environmental risk that is the underlying cause of much of the global and local variability in fathering behaviour. Ultimately, all fathers are concerned with the survival and future success of their offspring. However, depending upon the environment, the features of the father’s input that increase the likelihood of this survival may vary. In Robert’s own words, fathers make ‘adjustments, consciously or unconsciously, to adapt to aspects of the environment that threaten or facilitate attainment of their parental goals’. And as environments fluctuate and differ between societies, so fathering differs. In environments with high levels of risk, be this warfare, predation or disease, a father’s key role is to ensure his child’s physical survival and health: the first tier of the hierarchy. Where physical survival is less at risk, but economic poverty may be an issue, the next tier argues that, safe in the knowledge his child will survive, a father should then be concerned with ensuring his child develops the appropriate skills to ensure his economic survival during adulthood. Finally, where economic survival is relatively assured, a father should then concern himself with his child’s social, intellectual and cultural development. So, LeVine argues that in societies that exist on the edge of survival, such as the hunter-gatherer or domestic farmer, both parents invest hugely in nurturing their child in the first years of their life to try to get him or her through that vulnerable period when the risk of death is high. In contrast, families in industrialized nations are aware that their input must be adapted towards a child with a future. Parents must be prepared to commit time and economic resources to their child. The cliché of the middle-class parent taking great pains to stimulate their child intellectually and socially and ensure they make the most of educational opportunities is widespread and the butt of many jokes. But behind it is a serious and survival-critical mission: to prepare the child to survive and thrive in the competitive social and economic environment in which they will mature.
So, now for the ultimate test: how can LeVine’s model help us to understand the different ways dads fulfil their role? Let’s take another look at Ota, Mike, Sigis and James and their very different approaches to fathering. Both Ota and Sigis live within comparatively benign physical environments; there are relatively low rates of warfare and disease. But their economic reality is considerably harsher, with Ota’s family experiencing a hand-to-mouth existence, requiring daily hunting trips to provide food for the family, and Sigis being under pressure to produce sufficient tea at a competitive price for the commercial market from a farm that is in an increasingly tough physical environment. In their daily lives, both focus largely on the preoccupations of the second tier of LaVine’s model, those related to ensuring their children learn the subsistence skills that will enable them to be economically secure as adults. Hence Ota’s children will learn as they observe and participate in the family net hunt, whereas Sigis’ sons will be the focus of his teachings in a society that is largely dominated by men.
In contrast, both Mike and James live in physically and economically secure environments. For them, the risk to their children lurks within the hugely complex social world in which they will have to operate as adults. For many people, success within this environment isn’t simply linked to how hard you work but what school you went to, who you play golf with and what car you drive. The two key factors that will open doors for you are who you associate with – who you know and what circles you move in – and money. Mike may not be there for every bath time or sports day, but he knows that by earning the money to send his children to the right school and allowing his eldest son to observe his social and business interactions on the golf course, he is giving his children the best foundation from which to set out on a successful life course. All those hours at the country club will ensure they know the right people and develop the correct behaviours to be accepted into their circle. Likewise, James is not his family’s main breadwinner, but he is supporting his children’s academic and social learning by ferrying them to after-school clubs, being an active PTA member and braving the world of homework. For both our Western dads, their behaviour acknowledges that within their environments the greatest risk to their children lies in their inability to navigate our complex and stratified social world. Strikingly, if you ask a father what worries them in relation to their children, they do not focus on what is taken for granted but what is at risk. For Ota and Sigis, this is economic survival; for Mike and James, it is the worry that their children won’t achieve their social and intellectual potential. If you are a dad, then you can test out LeVine’s model for yourself. Answer these two questions: What is your main role within your family? And what would you say is the greatest risk to your children? Consider your answers.
Beyond the theory, there are a number of academic studies that support the link between the presence of a father and the survival of his children. In their contemporary study of father presence and infant mortality in the state of Georgia in the US, epidemiologists James Gaudino, Bill Jenkins and Roger Rochat used birth and death certificate records to understand the link between father involvement and survival. They compared the death rate among babies whose fathers were listed on their birth certificates – they took this as an indication of their involvement – to those whose birth certificate did not name a father. It is important to know that within this state, married mothers have the option as to whether or not to list the father while unmarried mothers must gain the written consent of the dad to do so. Regardless of the socio-economic background of the mother and the general health of the baby, babies whose fathers were not named on their birth certificate were 2.5 times more likely to die in their first year of life. That is quite some statistic. Gaudino and his team concluded that the data seemed to support the notion that fathers had a vital role to play in their children’s health.
Why does it matter that we can find a link between the presence of a dad and a child’s chance of survival in the data? Because the story of the evolution of fatherhood that we encountered in Chapter One relies on the absolute need for fathers to turn away from a world characterized by the drive to find ever more partners, and settle for a life of domestic and familial bliss to ensure the survival of their children and, indeed, our species. Secondly, the possibility that no link will exist between child mortality and dads investing in their children has been used to suggest that dads aren’t actually all that important – an argument that you might have realized I strongly disagree with. A case in point is the 2008 study ‘Who keeps children alive?’ by sociologist Rebecca Sear and anthropologist Ruth Mace. They collected data from forty-five historical and contemporary populations about who carried out childcare and the rate of child mortality within that society. As our evolutionary story would predict, in all societies the data supported the idea that mum couldn’t raise her children without help from at least one relative. But this person was most likely to be her mum, the children’s maternal grandmother, rather than their dad. Indeed, dad only had a positive impact on child survival in one third of the societies. This rather argues against the idea that dads are essential to the survival of their children. But I’m not about to panic and rewrite Chapter One quite yet, because many of the studies Rebecca and Ruth used involved children of less than five years of age and, as will become clear, many dads in the West really step into their role during late childhood and adolescence, particularly when the time comes to teach their children. It’s that all-important role in preparing children to step into the big wide world again. Rebecca and Ruth’s study did not cover this period. Second, as is clear from Robert LeVine’s model, ensuring physical survival is really only critical to those dads who live in environments that cause them to sit on the first tier of the parenting hierarchy. If you are a dad in the West, then your motivations and activities will be different: social and economic survival are key. And sometimes that can mean being content to operate dad’s free taxi service rather than bravely protecting your children from the invading hordes.
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The role of a parent is made up of countless tasks, just ask Simon.
I’m not aiming to be an ideal dad, because I feel I need to straddle two roles. I really feel I need to be really nurturing and really available, and [also to be] teaching and setting boundaries and all that stuff. I want them both to be powerful and brave and all those things. I always say to them the most important thing to be is kind.
Simon, dad to Daisy (six) and Bill (five)
Some tasks are very practical and immediate; preparing food, changing nappies, providing a comforting hug or being a source of entertainment. Others are a bit less hands-on; ensuring there is food on the table, a fire in the hearth and a secure home. And some will only bear fruit a long way in the future; building social networks to get that crucial work experience gig or saving money for college fees. To help define the sorts of tasks an individual dad or mum may carry out, we can make the distinction between direct and indirect parental care. So, caretaking, teaching and carrying a child are classed as direct care – care that involves you being hands-on and in close physical proximity to your child. Indirect care – such as protection, provisioning and building social alliances – occurs at a distance from your child but is, nevertheless, as vital to their survival as the more hands-on aspects of direct care. Until very recently, there was a distinct sexual division of parenting roles in the West; dads provided indirect care while mums did the direct care. But with the rise of the idea of the involved father in the 1980s, this demarcation began to blur. The ideal father was now one who did both – direct and indirect. He not only had to provide the food for the table, but prepare it, feed it to his child and wash the resultant debris off said child in the bath. As we will see, fathers providing direct care is a wonderful and overwhelmingly positive state of being for all members of the family and our society, but it has lured fathers into the trap, already experienced by women, of not only believing they can have it all but that indirect care – being an ‘old-fashioned dad’ – is somehow a lesser form of parenting. This can mean that for those dads where economic necessity dictates that their balance between work and home life is skewed strongly towards work, the reality of their fathering experience may be a sense of failure and guilt that they are not doing a ‘proper’ job.
[I want to be] protector, teacher, carer, all of that really. Just make sure he is safe and, well, happy and enjoying things. Showing him the world. Even before he was born, I was looking forward to teaching him things, showing him things and just being there for him.
David, dad to Harry (six months)
When I talk to expectant fathers about what role they would like to adopt following the birth of their child, the vast majority will wish, like David, to be a co-parent. To be equally as responsible as their partner for, and adept at, the direct care of their child. They want to be equal caretakers, nurturers, comforters and teachers. Following birth this is still their hope, but for many it is a difficult goal to reach – they have not bet on the vagaries of biology, society and politics. Unless we make a dramatic advance in fertility technology, it is the case that men cannot give birth. Nor can they breastfeed. So, regardless of the wishes of the parents, for all but a very few exceptions it is the mother who will be the primary carer of the child for the initial weeks of its life. This means that not only will she provide the majority of direct care, but that she is incapable of providing the key form of indirect care – money. Meaning that dad is generally the one who has to head back to work soon after baby is born. Despite political parties falling over each other to promote their family-friendly policies and everyone from TV celebrities to actors to sportsmen being drafted in to promote the idea that real men care for their children, the statistics tell a different story. Within the UK, in the period 2011 to 2012 only 0.6 per cent of new fathers made use of Additional Paternity Leave to share their wife’s maternity leave and, while doubling in the decade since 1993, today only 229,000 British fathers are stay-at-home carers compared to 2.05 million women. Within the US, census data shows that in the year 2014, 2 million men were stay-at-home parents, which is twice as many as were reported in the 1989 census and a considerably higher number than the six – yes, that’s six men in an entire country – who defined themselves as stay-at-home dads in the 1970 census.
My work with dads suggests that these woefully low take-up rates are not a sign of a lack of intent on dads’ part to be involved but a consequence of the impossibility of successfully navigating two hurdles that stand in the way of fathers: government policies rendered unworkable by a lack of financial backing and the still-clear pay gap between men and women, which means that, financially, many couples cannot afford for dad to stay at home and mum return to work.
Men can now share paternity leave, I think it’s three months off, but it’s only at statutory maternity pay so it’s rubbish pay anyway. You’re not really encouraged to do it if you’re going to get such low pay. I mean, a lot of men are the breadwinners, so why would they want to take such low money when women get so many months off at half pay or full pay, depending on the company? I think the government pay lip service to it but aren’t really bothered. I would have been really interested in doing it but not for that money, not when times are this tough.
Colin, dad to Freya (six months)
Today’s dad may want to be involved, but he hasn’t relinquished his instinct to protect and provide, which means that taking a damaging financial risk to stay at home is, for dad, a risk to survival too far. On top of this, many men come up against an apparently immovable workplace culture that dictates that women have maternity leave and men, at the very most, take a couple of weeks of paternity leave and return to a working environment that has most likely been largely unaffected by their newly minted father status. Despite the term ‘family friendly’ implying that policies that allow for the accommodation of parenting within the working career should apply equally to men and women, for many men, broaching the subject of flexible working or shared parenting leave is still a daunting, uphill struggle. This means that for men like Dylan, their aspirations to be present quickly come up against the very hard reality of a deep-seated cultural antipathy towards hands-on dads:
Last week we were away on holiday for a week and I got to spend a load of time with Freddie and my wife, and it is amazing to see him grow in that space of time and how he changes. That was really great, but the problem – and this is the hard bit – is I work in London. I’m leaving the house at 6.30 in the morning before he is even awake and I get home at 7.15 at night when his bedtime is 7.30. So, I’m getting fifteen minutes a day with him. Being away with him has made me realize what I am missing, and it is hard because you want to see everything, but I’ve still got to pay the bills. So, reality kicks in . . . You want to do one thing but need to do the other.
Dylan, dad to Freddie (six months)
As a result, one of the key issues for Western fathers is juggling the twin demands of wanting to provide direct care but needing to provide indirect care. They have hit upon the dilemma that is all too familiar to the working mother: how do you balance work and home life sufficiently well to make sure you are at least doing a pretty decent job of both? For many men, the tension that can exist between their direct and indirect roles can come as a very unwelcome dose of reality very early on in their fatherhood journey. Rights to paternity leave vary widely around the world. One of the starkest representations of the gulf that still exists between maternity and paternity rights is the fact that only ninety-two of the world’s 196 countries have statutory paternity leave and in a half of these this is limited to three weeks or less. This is in contrast to the global right to maternity leave. It is hard not to view these statistics as evidence of society’s continuing belief that dads just aren’t that relevant in the childcare story.
Where paternity leave does exist and is adequately funded, it is overwhelmingly taken up by fathers. In the UK, where there is a statutory right to two weeks of leave, over 90 per cent of new fathers take some form of paternity leave, and my experience of interviewing dads is that it is not only a precious opportunity to come to terms with their new status and get to know the new member of the family but vital to keeping the family show on the road. Caring for a newborn is an exhausting mix of changing, feeding and cuddling and, if mum is breastfeeding, being stuck on the sofa every two to three hours with a baby that can take up to an hour to feed. As a consequence, dads are vital. They can lighten the load by being chief nappy-changer, cuddler, tea-maker and visitor-wrangler. And where mum has had a tough time at birth, they may even become their baby’s primary carer as she recovers. But because of this intense involvement during paternity leave, returning to work can be a severe and unwelcome shock. Take Reuben’s experience:
I wasn’t looking forward to [the return to work]. I could have stayed off for longer. I kind of dreaded coming back because it is such a stark change being at home all the time to being at work five days a week. I didn’t enjoy it, to be honest. But what it has made me determined to do is work more flexibly. It changed my outlook on work. It is not going to get in the way of seeing [my son] as much as possible.
Reuben, dad to Charlie (twenty months)
Dads go from complete submersion in baby world back to a workplace where it is likely their daily routine will be largely unchanged by the profound events in their home life. Indeed, it is one of the points of tension that I believe should be high-lighted to dads before their first birth, so that they can prepare emotionally and practically for this swift reality check and, if it is possible, ease this abrupt transition by using some holiday to enable a more staged return to work over several weeks. Unfortunately, the multitasking, hands-on celebrity dad is the exception, an exception cushioned by a considerable amount of money and, in all likelihood, unseen help. The question arises as to what the more regular dad battling with the twin demands of home and work – direct and indirect care – is supposed to do in these circumstances.
Sometimes, as much as I want to help and stuff, it’s not something I can really help with. Like the night-time feedings and when [my daughter] is crying and wants settling, it is Mummy that she wants. I don’t know whether I feel angrier and less useful . . . it can get a bit frustrating sometimes, but it is to be expected. I definitely hope in the future, if something bad happens or she needs someone to talk to, it won’t instantly be only Mum she can talk to. Kids have different relationships with their mum and their dad, I’m sure there is some scope for them both to be good relationships.
Nigel, dad to Poppy (six months)
For some dads, the gap between what they had expected fatherhood to be like – true co-parenting – and the reality is less of a negative than we might envisage. For them, slipping back into the more traditional roles of maternal caregiver and paternal provider feels comfortable and allows ample opportunities to bond by being ‘fun dad’. But for others, like Nigel, it can mean coming to terms with having to swiftly rethink their chosen fathering identity, having spent the nine months of pregnancy carefully honing it. If this is you, then the realization that you might not be able to be the equal parent that you wanted to be can lead to emotional upheaval. You might feel resentful that your partner gets to see the best bits of your baby during the day – the singing classes, soft play and toddler groups – while you get the grizzly, pre-bed version. Or you may feel guilty that your partner is left alone all day to deal with the challenges of a newborn while you still get your hour of uninterrupted lunch break and the welcome opportunity to stare mindlessly into space that it affords. For many of the dads I have studied, who come from all socio-economic backgrounds, the realization of the reality of twenty-first-century Western fatherhood results in change. And in a world of many competing demands on their time and attention, the thing that gives in many cases is work. In real terms, this can mean taking the risk of a financial and career hit – the less demanding job, more flexible hours, lack of promotion – to make sure you are present to teach and nurture your child:
My job doesn’t pay very well at all, it pays rubbish, but it allows me to be the father that I want [to be], because I know that if I have to go to work at six in the morning I will be back by three, and I can pick [my daughter] up from school. My plan has always been to be there for dinner and I always want to be there to help with homework in the evenings. They are the standards I have set for myself.
Mark, dad to Emily (four) and George (three)
As we will see in Chapter Ten, where we will look at dad’s influence on child development, in the physically benign but socially and intellectually challenging environment of the West, sacrificing your career to some extent has huge benefits for your child’s physical and emotional well-being. But some dads go further. Where money and culture allow, the shift in priorities that becoming a dad brings can lead them to be the first to exploit the opportunity to truly turn words into action and take on the mantle of that most twenty-first century of dad roles – the stay-at-home dad:
In March this year, Dawn went back to work and I was still setting up my business, and we needed one income coming in. So, the sensible thing was for me to look after Rosie full-time. From March until July I was the primary carer, which was fantastic. I loved it. I used to go to all the baby classes, go out with the mums and have picnics in the park. Generally, they were absolutely lovely. I think Dawn got a bit jealous sometimes when I would go off to the park with her friends!
Ben, dad to Rosie (eighteen months) and one on the way
* * *
Why should this gap between what you imagine fatherhood to be like and the reality matter? It matters because one of the key causes of poor mental health in new dads is precisely this gap between hope and reality. Combine this with the stress caused by trying to balance work and home life, coupled, in some cases, with the pressure of being the only wage-earner in a financially strapped household, and a new dad can find himself under significant, and possibly health-breaking, strain. And, as poor mental health affects not just the man, but his partner, his child and, ultimately, society, it is a gap with which we should all be concerned. As we will also see in Chapter Ten, children need their fathers to be as present as possible to help create a healthy developmental environment. While an absent wage-earning father can provide many indirect benefits that will ease a child’s life course, nothing can replace the impact that spending time – however brief – with your child has on your child’s psychological and behavioural development. The resolution to this tension is unlikely to be swift or straightforward; whether women can have it all is still an ongoing debate, decades on from the advent of feminism. But we do know that in those countries where the balance between work and home life is the most successful, it is often as a result of a combination of factors: carrot and stick from government, a well-funded policy and, most crucially, the voices of dads and mums clamouring for change.
It should be clear by now how incredibly flexible dads can be, ready to respond rapidly to changes in their child’s circumstances, all with the aim of ensuring their survival. But such behavioural flexibility cannot occur without a parallel change in the computer that drives it all: the brain. And luckily the paternal brain has proved itself to be just as flexible in responding to new experience as its owner. We have known for some time that becoming a mother leads to structural changes in the mother’s brain; areas that enhance her maternal skills see an increase in grey matter. But it is only very recently that a similar phenomenon has been recognized in new fathers.
In 2014, developmental neuroscientist Pilyoung Kim, from the University of Denver, Colorado, recruited a group of sixteen biological dads and subjected them to MRI scans at two to four weeks following their child’s birth and again at twelve to sixteen weeks to explore whether new fatherhood led to any changes in brain structure. She wanted to know whether becoming a dad had any impact on the volumes of grey matter – the actual neurons or brain cells that generate the signals – and white matter – the axons or fibres that link the neurons – in the brain. What she found was that the areas at the centre of the brain involved in attachment, the expression of nurturing behaviour and the ability to interpret and react to infant behaviour, showed significant increase in size. Interestingly, it is these areas of the brain that not only show activation during father–infant interaction but carry one of the highest densities of oxytocin receptors, suggesting that an increase in size and activation is paralleled by an increase in neurochemical reward for the father as he forms his attachment to his child. Increases in grey matter volume were also seen in the outer layer of the brain, known as the neocortex. It is here that our higher cognitive functions sit and one area, the prefrontal cortex, plays a key role in complex decision-making – something that is essential for parenting a human child. Kim’s study shows us that as well as shifts in their hormone levels around the time of a child’s birth, human fathers exhibit a shift in their neural structure, in response to their new role and environmental conditions, akin to that seen in mothers.
Kim’s 2014 study was groundbreaking in showing us that fathers undergo just as significant an anatomical change as mums as they embark on the path of new parenthood. But in one of the most exciting fatherhood studies of recent years, Eyal Abraham, a neuroscientist from Bar-Ilan University in Israel, has built on Kim’s work by studying primary caretaking fathers – in this case, his participants were gay fathers – and revealing the neural flexibility that underpins their behaviour. Generally, in the more traditional parenting team where roles are split along gender lines, we see differences between mum and dad in the areas of the brain that are activated when interacting with their child; largely the pattern is emotional centres for mum and cognitive areas for dad. This difference underpins the difference in their roles within the family, and we’ll take a more in-depth look at this in Chapter Eight. But in his study, Abraham showed that the brains of primary caretaking gay dads saw activation in both areas of the brain and that a new neural pathway had developed to enable the two distinct areas – one at the very centre of the brain, the other on the surface – to communicate and synchronize behaviours. In this case, the flexibility of the human brain has been exploited to enable gay dads to fulfil both the mother’s and father’s roles, ensuring that the child still gets exposure to the ideal developmental environment. Whether the same is true for heterosexual primary caretaking fathers, where a mum may still be present to fulfil her role, is unclear, but what is astonishing about Abraham’s and Kim’s work is that they show us that dads are not only primed to instigate a swift behavioural response to environmental change but that evolution has seen fit for this fast response to be underpinned at the anatomical and physiological level as well.
If you are a dad, then you may be grappling with identifying what role to adopt in your child’s life, particularly in this period of rapid change in our perception of who a dad should be. However, what is almost definitely the case is that you are approaching fatherhood very differently to the dads of only fifty years ago. And here we see our own example of the flexibility of fathering here in the West. In the space of only one generation, dads in the West have changed beyond all recognition. You are in the birthing room, sharing night feeds, changing nappies, giving baths, puréeing food and singing songs. What has changed in your environment to precipitate such a rapid turnaround in style? The causes are threefold. Firstly, you now live in a globalized world and it is less likely that you live within easy reach of your parents, meaning that you have had to step into the caretaking role most often adopted by your extended family in past times. Secondly, childbirth has become highly medicalized and incredibly swift. Instead of a nice stay in hospital, you and your partner will find yourselves processing this amazing change in your lives while trying to recall that antenatal class where you practised changing a nappy on a plastic doll, a poor substitute for the wriggling, crying infant in front of you. And thirdly, we now understand how important it is to a child’s development to have their dad’s input, meaning that men are feeling empowered, albeit by a society that is a bit slow to respond, to be more hands-on with their children than ever before.
The environment of fathering in the West has changed drastically and fathers, exploiting that wonderful flexibility, have changed their behaviour to meet the challenge and continue to ensure their children’s survival and success. As we will see in Chapter Nine and Chapter Ten, this has had only positive consequences for children, as dads are more on hand to give their unique input and care. But while dads may share the same overarching goal, how each of you approaches fathering is a complex web of genetic and environmental factors that are unique to you. And that is the story of the next chapter.