Looking into the T drop in fatherhood, the original study seems to account for self reports of 'sleep quality' but I wonder if sleep deprivation is not still a confounder in this finding.
Annedoctally as a recent father of a 6 month old, I would likely self report a good sleep quality in a questionnaire. However, objectively I know I sleep about 5 hours 30min yesterday evening, which would be sufficient sleep 'deprivation' to impact T production.
Also I think parents in general will also have strong bias to not want to acknowledge their own child as a 'nuissance' in a survey/questionnaire.
My key point is that it would be important to reproduce this finding with actual sleep tracking instead of self-reporting sleep quality, to confirm if this is indeed linked with a bonding/interaction mechanism with a child or an unfortunate secondary effect of sleep deprivation.
> Annedoctally as a recent father of a 6 month old, I would likely self report a good sleep quality in a questionnaire. However, objectively I know I sleep about 5 hours 30min yesterday evening, which would be sufficient sleep 'deprivation' to impact T production.
When our 9 month old started to sleep through the night (at around 4-5 months), we'd get between 5-6 hours of sleep, which after the interrupted sleep of the previous 4 months, felt like a full night's sleep but this is sleep deprivation territory, specially given the fact that it was 7 days a week.
I know I could only survive on this little sleep because I wasn't exercising.
> Also I think parents in general will also have strong bias to not want to acknowledge their own child as a 'nuissance' in a survey/questionnaire.
I think this is one of the biggest taboos in Western society:
Anything about a newborn/small child must be 100% positive
This is absolute bullshit
I can see the downsides of having a child without loving him (in my case) any less
> When our 9 month old started to sleep through the night (at around 4-5 months), we'd get between 5-6 hours of sleep, which after the interrupted sleep of the previous 4 months, felt like a full night's sleep but this is sleep deprivation territory, specially given the fact that it was 7 days a week.
Assuming you have the space for it, I never understood couples that insist on both parents being woken up every night by a newborn. Much better for everyone involved to trade off nightly so that the other person can get a full nights rest.
I'm 99% certain that no baby cares that only one parent is being disturbed.
Logically this makes sense but it can be tricky to implement successfully for everyone. For breast-fed infants, it may be the case that mom has to be more frequently involved in the overnight care. It makes sense for dad to get as much sleep as possible in this case, but that can lead to resentment and other issues.
My wife and I traded off as you indicated but that was no picnic, either. We found it easier to split wake-ups during a night so that each of us could get a manageable amount of sleep, vs one person waking up every couple hours all night long. No matter how you slice the time up, nobody is going to 'well-rested' when there are only two people taking care of an infant.
> Logically this makes sense but it can be tricky to implement successfully for everyone. For breast-fed infants, it may be the case that mom has to be more frequently involved in the overnight care. It makes sense for dad to get as much sleep as possible in this case, but that can lead to resentment and other issues.
Embracing marriage as a team sport goes a long way to avoiding petty resentment. It's also standard practice for the resting parent to ensure there is plenty of coffee after the non-resting parent's final 37 minute power nap.
> Embracing marriage as a team sport goes a long way to avoiding petty resentment.
Fully in agreement. Good communication and empathy in marriage are paramount to successfully raising kids. I'm just saying even the most understanding people can hit a breaking point after long enough without sleep, especially without a lot of external help.
Yes. And post-partum anxiety and depression as well as chronic sleep deprivation go a long way to engendering petty resentment, as well as other insecurities that could be mitigated by the presence of the other spouse at night.
I have a leg up working from home though - I just take the baby at the start of the day for several hours so my wife gets another good sleep cycle or two in, which makes my wife a lot more open to me sleeping in a different room.
My snoring contributes to that too though - my baby sleeps better without me in the room!
If you're ever talking with friends who have kids (particularly young kids)(particularly newborns like you're talking about here) you might do better by phrasing this as a question instead of a fact. ("Hey, assuming you have the space for it, why not trade off nightly?")
Nicest response you'll get from what you said is a polite nod and then they change the topic, the most useful would be a polite but pointed jest about how you obviously don't have kids, and at worst you'll do lasting damage to a friendship.
Trust me, nobody who's getting this little sleep wants to be told how to do it better (unless they've asked you, specifically, for your advice on this,specifically) :)
Bah! A life of parsing words and walking on eggshells is no fun. Speak your mind and give people the benefit of the doubt. In my experience they appreciate it.
Your experience is wrong. People don't appreciate it, and are likely working to avoid you.
"Walking on eggshells" is a similar dog whistle to "political correctness".
Consider instead thinking about it as "having empathy that other people have a different life, priorities, and experiences than yourself, and adapt your patterns to not make premature judgements or conclusions".
"Speaking your mind" is overrated. Your mind isn't that important or interesting. (Not attacking YOU here - this applies to everyone, myself included)
There are situations where you are correct but I think your brush is too broad. Sometimes unsolicited advice is welcome but there is an art that some people have when giving it.
I'm not a parent so my knowledge here is pretty scarce, but what I've understood from friends that have kids, is that when a baby wakes up, both parents wake up due to instinct (i.e. is the baby ok?).
So I wonder if what you suggest would require some accomodation. E.g. have the 'on-call' parent sleep in the same room as the baby, and the other one can sleep in another room with the door closed.
Is this what you mean by saying that both parent need not be waken up? or are there some other methods that would help out with this?
> So I wonder if what you suggest would require some accomodation. E.g. have the 'on-call' parent sleep in the same room as the baby, and the other one can sleep in another room with the door closed.
> Is this what you mean by saying that both parent need not be waken up? or are there some other methods that would help out with this?
That's what I meant by "Assuming you have the space for it...". If the baby is in a separate room and there's space for a bed or mattress, whoever is "on-call" stays there and the other parent gets an uninterrupted nights sleep. Or the reverse and the "resting" parent goes and sleeps on the couch. 7-8 hours uninterrupted on a couch wins over repeated interruptions on a bed.
Same system works if you have a grandma visiting to take over for a night. There's no merit badge given out for everyone being equally sleep deprived. It's just worse for everyone, including the baby.
If the mother is directly breast feeding then likely she's going to be taking the heavier end of this load. If the baby is formula fed or she's pumping, there's more leeway to switch off.
I think early on with a new baby, both parents wake up more due to novelty than instinct. When you're used to not having a crying child in the middle of the night, suddenly having one takes some adjustment.
Since my wife nursed the kids, our arrangement was that she would be up with babies at night almost every time, and I would be up with them in the morning when they decided that 5am was time to be up for the day. Over time, I stopped waking up to baby cries at night, but I am now hyper-attuned to child noises from 5-7am.
I'm not even sure you need the door closed or a large house. Particularly when sleep-deprived, I think you'll start sleeping right through it, as soon as you adjust to the fact that someone is closer to the problem, and managing it to the best of their ability. Your brain is great at figuring out what needs to wake you and what you can sleep through.
I sleep right through my wife's alarms going off, and her phone is merely on the other side of the bed.
She, in turn, sleeps through my phone's alarm and my annoying klaxon on the dresser. Obviously this doesn't happen on the first night or five, but you get used to it.
I don’t have kids but my wife and I have discussed having an explicit shift rotation where one of us stays home with the baby during the day while the other works, sleeps in the early evening when the working parent gets home, and gets up at night when the working parent goes to bed. I always wonder if it would actually work.
My wife and I did that for 2 years. It works, but like everything, there are trade offs.
It's great that you know your child is being raised by you and your partner. You aren't offloading the child to a babysitter and trusting daycare to raise them with your principles or just to your level of care.
The downside is crossing paths with your spouse in a 5 minute handoff. Rushed dinners to cram in as much adult interaction as you can before you do bedtime or rush to work. There are times when you meet up at a McDonalds to eat and trade cars.
I don't think we would have done it differently, but there were definitely periods of loneliness that both of us felt.
I haven't noticed the "anything about a newborn/small child must be 100% positive" in my group of friends, especially my work colleagues. I've been pretty straight forward about how hard the whole thing has been, especially adding a second child to the mix before the first one was 2 yo. I wouldn't recommend having a second child to anyone unless they really, really wanted it. It's hard af. Logarithmically harder than one.
Maybe the only constant is that every child is different. We had two close together, and it became a net positive about two years in, when they could keep each other occupied much of the time.
And they'll have a built-in best friend. We talk about our personal perspective, but what do you wish your parents did for you?
That's assuming things go well. My two older siblings are, uh, let's just say they're not very close and dealing with them growing up was an experience in and of itself.
I have a third child, and getting outnumbered was even harder still. But I do recommend getting the children as close together as possible, because the longer you wait between them, the more years the sleep deprivation lasts.
Agreed, but weirdly our experience was that three was easier than two. We truely had to let go of the idea that we could do everything the 'right way' and as a result became more relaxed and confident parents as a result.
Anecdotally our third child is the least anxious and most confident out of the three. We were clearer about the stuff that really didn't need sweating over - we had no choice!
We've three children as well and like you, our third is definitely the most outgoing and confident. She also acts like a "glue" for her older siblings, (boy and girl).
It actually gets easier the more children you have, not more difficult.
I can see the social media aspect of presenting the perfect child persona, but it is BS.
Going to three is exponentially harder. With two, one parent can usually manage both or worse each can manage one kid. Go to three and parents are outnumbered. And generally only two kids ever get along at one time, so there always the outlier. Even numbers are best it seems.
And moving to five children is another level. :) Parenting is what you do not a side project. Also the effects of parenting are more like keeping a good culture going and showing what are healthy ways of relating so that children can relate well to each other and enjoy being part of the family.
yeah, as a non-parent (ha!), my main exposure to parenting is my friends on social media. I don't talk to my parent friends about kid stuff much, because I don't care, and they don't care to tell yet another person.
I'm sure parent-to-parent IRL, people are a lot more negative (read:realistic) about their experiences.
My last child moves out (to college) next week. We'll see. It's been pretty cool raising them, and now that they are young men it's fun and hilarious to get them all together.
For a few years it was very stressful, and life always revolved around them (I was pretty active in their life). I expect that it'll be pretty different. Maybe I'll get some T back!
Being a dad, whilst rewarding in its own rights, can also be hard AF. Throw in a diagnosis of ASD+ADHD with therapies etc that must be managed, and the pressures just sky rocketed.
Managing his behaviour feels like an everlasting uphill battle. So much energy is drained, especially during meltdowns, causing frictions in the whole family.
So in order to be able to look after him I also need to look after myself. Getting enough sleep, some decompression time, looking after my body and still performing well at work is an everlasting struggle.
I don't expect people not in my situation to understand. At least I'm lucky in that it's "high functioning" we're talking about, even as much as a lot of people take objection to that term. But I know with effort he has every opportunity to thrive.
Nonetheless, in a market where as an engineer you need to stay on top of new stuff constantly ... yep, it's tough. We do it because we must.
Edit: Some additional thoughts.
As difficult as it sometimes is, being a parent is also a source of great joy. The responsibilities truly grow you as a person, and you kind of learn to cope. It's not something that's all at once either, I mean, you take it day by day, and you just learn.
As for work, for me it has helped that I'm truly passionate about what I'm doing, so have enjoyed learning about the new tech. I'm not saying I've got the same amount of talent, but it's amazing what persistence and a lot of deep dives into e.g Pluralsight can offer. As I grow older I'm more aware of my limitations, and picking the right horses (not just one) is über important.
Picking the right employer is equally important; being up front about the situation can yield amazing results.
Some people grow. Others dump almost everything on their spouse and a deep resentment grows in the marriage. You envy the good times they have and the stories they have, but not their life as there is obviously a lot a pain at home. Kudos to you, it sounds like you are doing it right. Hang in there.
Thanks, much appreciated. I've made lots of mistakes but keep trying to improve. Setting expectations for my new employer that I share the load for son's appointments, and finding one that accepted this, was probably relationship-saving decision making as such.
We have it good in software in that we can work remotely, and flexible hours. Sure it comes at a certain cost ("always on") but for myself the benefits certainly outweigh drawbacks.
The people hit hardest by this are women. Society places much, much higher expectations on the wrt motherhood than it does for fathers.
I know a huge number of women who love their kids but deeply mourn their lost independence and career opportunity they might have had without them, to say nothing of the profound physical impact of carrying a pregnancy. Women understand these issues really well, they just don’t feel comfortable talking about them with many men.
Just as society places much higher expectation that mothers will take care the child, society also places a much higher expectation that fathers will continue to go to work. Fathers with interrupted 5hrs of combined sleep are expected to do the exact same workload and work performance as they did had when they got uninterrupted 8 or 9hrs of sleep.
Talking about who got "hit hardest" is kind of pointless. Society expectation on fathers and mothers are formed from restricted gender roles. There are both women and men that feel extremely restricted from this. There is no objective "worse" fate to be either forced to go to work when you want to take care of the kids, or forced to take care of the kids when you want to go to work.
> There is no objective "worse" fate to be either forced to go to work when you want to take care of the kids, or forced to take care of the kids when you want to go to work.
Yes, but that’s not what grandparent was talking about. They were writing specifically about the expectation that parents unconditionally think their children are the best thing that ever happened to them. The burden of this specific expectation falls much more heavily on mothers.
You’re cherry picking and responding to the example. The broader point is this, and in my experience as a (male) parent it’s true:
> Talking about who got "hit hardest" is kind of pointless. Society expectation on fathers and mothers are formed from restricted gender roles. There are both women and men that feel extremely restricted from this.
A lot of this is stuff Americans have done to themselves. They all want a huge house in the suburbs with two huge gas-guzzling SUVs in the garage, so that necessitates both parents working to pay for all this largesse.
If Americans lived in dense cities with small living quarters and took public transit to work, they wouldn't need to spend so much money on housing and transportation, and they wouldn't feel the need to women to work full-time to keep up this lavish and unsustainable lifestyle.
I agree that lifestyle choices often require both spouses to work. However, it's not simply due to suburban American 'largesse'. I know plenty of people who live in France in comparatively tiny apartments or homes, who still feel the need for both spouses to work to make ends meet.
The frugal living needed to be a stay-at-home mom or dad tends to be rare regardless of location, but it's not impossible.
>I know plenty of people who live in France in comparatively tiny apartments or homes, who still feel the need for both spouses to work to make ends meet.
What kinds of careers do these people have? If they both have low-paying jobs, then that's unfortunately understandable. But the McMansion-and-2-SUV-owning Americans I derided earlier aren't people with low-paying jobs, those are people with high-paying jobs who frequently refuse to live below their means; if they lived in a small condo or townhouse and got efficient cars their living costs would be a fraction of what they pay now, and wouldn't need to work so much.
Even in Europe, lots of people have luxuries they don't really need, especially cars. Sure, people in towns, or who have jobs away from the train lines might feel the need to have a car, but there's plenty of people there who live in the city, where public transit is excellent, and they still have (frequently expensive) cars. It isn't just Americans who make lifestyle choices that require dual earners, but we epitomize it.
Gas guzzling SUVs are bad for the environment, but do not support your point. Gas is cheap in the US so 20,000 annual miles of driving at 20mpg is only ~$2500 for the year. Swapping them out for 40mpg hybrids only saves $1250 annually, which is negligible in the scheme of deciding on dual incomes.
>Gas guzzling SUVs are bad for the environment, but do not support your point.
For one, they're a sign that people are probably living beyond their means, buying things they don't need.
>Gas is cheap in the US so 20,000 annual miles of driving at 20mpg is only ~$2500 for the year.
That's a conservative mileage estimate. There's lots of commuters who drive quite a bit more than that. And gas is only cheap right now; earlier this decade it shot up to about $4/gallon for a while. I've seen this many times with Americans: gas hits a local minimum, so they all run out and buy enormous SUVs. Then gas prices go up, and they all whine about how much they're paying for gas, so they trade in their SUVs for smaller vehicles. Then gas prices go down again and they all run out and buy big SUVs again. It's idiotic.
>For one, they're a sign that people are probably living beyond their means, buying things they don't need.
Nope, buying an SUV indicates nothing about living beyond means. It’s better to have one SUV than two priuses. And again, 1-2k a year in gas is hardly a dent in car ownership costs.
$4 is super rare to never for most of the US and so is the super commuter stupid enough to drive an SUV for their super commute.
>Then gas prices go up, and they all whine about how much they're paying for gas, so they trade in their SUVs for smaller vehicles. Then gas prices go down again and they all run out and buy big SUVs again. It's idiotic.
That does sound stupid, good thing it’s now how anyone actually functions. Most popular SUVs today are the smaller ones that get twice what a Tahoe or whatever of 15 years ago would have gotten.
I suspect the issue is that your model is based on observed people in places with lower costs of gas and living and applying the costs of some big west coast metro to that lifestyle. That’s about the only idiotic thing going on here.
Here’s a tip: if you find yourself in a scenario where you think people are wasting buckets of money for no particular reason on a massive scale, you’re probably wrong.
Not the same person, but it was not necessarily sexist. Not everyone is trained in the art of threading the line between offense and social justice. The same meaning could (possibly) have been written in SJW terms
Lack of exercise doesn't necessarily make it easier to survive sleep deprivation. It would be rather the opposite for most people since some moderate exercise tends to improve the quality of the limited sleep that you do get.
>I think this is one of the biggest taboos in Western society:
Anything about a newborn/small child must be 100% positive
This is absolute bullshit
I’m about to have a child in the next 2 weeks and that’s not my experience. Pretty much all my friends and family with kids have been telling me about the “fun” and “positive” sleeping experience I’m about to have. They keep saying how the Nth child was terrible or didn’t sleep etc.
I always view articles skeptically when they talk about testosterone as effecting behavior. Most modern studies tend to conclude that testosterone levels changes after changed behavior rather than before, and artificially lowering or increasing testosterone within human levels does not usually have any measurable effect on behavior.
For example, the article stated that there is a correlation between lower testosterone and more caregiving and baby-related household tasks. What would surprise me however is if the finding would stand if they made a second study which gave a supraphysiological dose of testosterone to even out the difference in testosterone. My prediction is that the same variation of caregiving and baby-related household tasks would remain.
A prime example of that there is a correlation between testosterone and voting for the winning team in politics and sports. Measure testosterone after an election and men who has higher testosterone will have a higher rate of having voted for the winning party. Obviously, before the election there is no such correlation, so we can fairly rational make the conclusion that having more testosterone does not make a person a better judge of who is going to win.
Indeed testosterone and behavior both affect each other. I have however several reasons why I am skeptical when people focus exclusively on testosterone as effecting behavior.
One larger reason, as given by a professor in neuroendocrinology, is that people and researchers alike tend to view behavior as soft science and hormones as hard science. There has been (and still are) a lot of resistance to the idea that behavior alone can cause biological changes in the body.
The second reason is that again and again, when people try to test a correlation between a hormone and behavior by supraphysiological doses, the predicted behavior does not occur.
The third reason is that the general role of sex hormones is to regulate the body in favor of reproductive success. The generally accepted theory to explain why testosterone goes up by having voted on the winning team, or by winning a competition, or by winning a physical fight, is that the individual perceive themselves as having gained social rank and thus the body adjust testosterone levels accordingly. Any behavior that does not have a clear link to reproductive success is unlikely to be regulated by a sex hormone.
I was wondering this too. Every new parent seems to report that they basically don't sleep for a year or two. That has got to account for a lot of the biological changes in parenthood. (Honestly, I'd really want to know about likelihood of dying in a car accident or other heavy machinery sleep-deprivation-induced-screwup.)
> Every new parent seems to report that they basically don't sleep for a year or two
I'm a new parent, and I'm pleased to say that our 5-week-old is sleeping really, really well. I was not expecting this after all the horror stories others told... I did, however, feel like I aged about 10 years in the first week as my other half had an emergency C-section and I had to do everything for both her and the baby.
Nothing like getting thrown in at the deep end! :D
It is the martyrdom story that is dumb. There are two of you there is absolutely zero reason for both not to have decent sleep.
First couple weeks sure after that.. get a second bed, couch whatever. Separation of concern works way better one takes care of the kids other takes care of $$.
I have 2 kids.. first one was terrible, she did not want to sleep more then 2-3 hours till she was 8 month or so. Wife dealt with it, fed her and took care of her at night, while I worked, cooked during the day, took kid out for walks etc
I am not an expert in this field and wonder if the _cause_ of the testosterone drop necessarily has to affect the outcome of bonding/nurturing behaviour? For example, maybe all or part of the testosterone drop _is_ due to the degraded sleep quality. If that drop then still results in them being more motivated to bond with their child and less motivated to find other partners, the effect seems to be the same - the man is then still better primed for parenthood.
It is hypothesized in evolutionary psychology that the testosterone drop is so that males will not be attracted to their daughters. I remember this from reading the "Evolution of Desire."
Correct. The same applies for post-partum depression which many attribute to an increase in new hormones in the women's body. But how much of this effect is attributable to simple sleep deprivation?
There’s a definite difference. There’s some pretty normal post baby blues for many moms that is a mix of hormones + sleep. But post partum depression is a different animal entirely and takes a lot of support and good council.
You gotta wonder how much all of this is due to sleep deprivation. None of these things make any sense evolutionarily, either PP depression or fathers losing their testosterone. So how much is due to things that are a product of modern society, rather than biology?
Absolutely true, however the linked piece (not the study) seems to imply that there is some form of evolutionary mechanism which relates to the bonding experience with a newborn/toddler that somehow helps the father 'stay around' to raise a child.
I can see that there are mechanisms at play that favour the father to 'stay around'. But specifically for the Testosterone concentrations it seems to me that the cause could have nothing to do with an endocrine change triggered by bonding or nurturing.
I'm not sure I would describe this as a confounder in this context - if fatherhood results in sleep deprivation which results in testosterone levels dropping,
then fatherhood generally results in testosterone levels dropping.
I was hoping this would explain my weight gain but I suppose I have to accept that replacing daily workouts with 3 bowls of ice cream and magic shell may be the culprit.
I’ve piled on the weight since our second was born. I attribute it to the reasons mentioned here and also that I’ve not been cycling to work for the last several months. We bought a new home and don’t currently have a place to store my bike so it’s been languishing in my office. So I take the bus because owning two cars is prohibitively expensive here in Europe. The bus is slower than car and bike so I’m rushing out without breakfast and eating junk when I get to work. On the bust home I’ll often snack on more junk.
All that changes today as we’re finally getting a garden shed and I’ll be back in the saddle.
I am trying out to change my behaviour right, so I fast from 20:00 in the evening to 12:00 during the day and try to eat properly between 12 and 20.
So far it's much easier to cut out junk food because I think the whole morning about what I need to eat during lunch. I also need to figure out my relationship with the feeling of hunger, which the fast gives me the possibility to do.
Ended up being full after eating 3/4 of a hamburger last day. I generally eat two with ease.
always interesting to see the differences in commute times per vehicle. Where I am now, it's just over 7 miles to work, cycling is generally faster than the bus, bus is much faster than car (bus lane for > 50% of the journey).
It’s been interesting as my commute changed from 7km to 18km to 22km in the last year.
The 7km commute was a no brainer by bike. It took a leisurely 20 minutes where as the car would be much the same with lots of tedious traffic. Bus wasn’t an option on this route.
When I changed job my commute was 18km across the city. The car route involved a toll on a congested motorway or through stop start city congestion. The bus route required two buses with various degrees of waiting time made worse on the way home because of the one specific bus I needed that always appears unreliable. The car would take at least one hour bus would take up to two hours and the bike about 50 minutes.
Now that we’ve moved home I’m even further away but there’s a direct express bus that takes just 70 minutes. The car route is better, no toll and better connected, but is still an hour in traffic and the bike is about an hour.
Cycling is great because you arrive to work energised, but it’s tough to do everyday and still have energy for the kids at the weekend, so I’ll buy an ebike and cheat.
lots of ebikes around nowadays. I only get annoyed at them when they pass me going up the harder hills. And that's because I'm jealous of them, not actually annoyed!
our bike club members assure me that an ebike isn't all easy sailing. I believe them! With how heavy the ebikes can be, you can't just be sailing along on the battery, not putting in any effort, and expect to go very far.
When my son was born, he didn't sleep well, so I didn't either. My wife has a career and I was an equal partner in his care. It didn't help that I was working 80+ hours a week on something that was key to the success of the small company I worked for. Add in stress eating, and cutting out exercise due to perceived lack of time, and I gained 10-15lbs a year until my son was 4 or 5.
My son is 13 now, and its only in the last few years that I've really started to take care of myself. I've started exercising, stopped eating junk, and tried to make time for sleep. The result is I've lost 60lbs over the last few years, and am in better shape than I've been since highschool. However, I still don't sleep as well as I did before he was born.
My advice to new dads is: Take care of yourselves. Eat right. Don't cut out exercise to save time.
Honestly, you won’t. But until your kid is in full time school a 20-30 minute workout even everyday is eminently doable. Run around the local park, pull ups on a bar in the door way, press-ups, lots of exercises you can do to stave off muscular and skeletal atrophy which is what most of us at desk jobs literally suffer from due to chronic inactivity.
I totally agree. I had an elliptical machine in a nook outside my home office that I walked by every day. I wish I'd have just given up 30 minutes a few times a week rather than eating a bowl of ice cream. Maybe I would have only gained 20lbs and not 60.
I would definitely recommend going for calisthenic training with an emphasis on isometrics around young kids, rather than weights(equipment and prep time) or intensive cardio(too much time-on-task). Holding a bridge, squat-and-reach, or a downward dog for 30 seconds while the kid crawls around is feasible, and a few rounds of that daily will do a huge amount of good.
You really don't need a gym. Get a pull up bar and some gymnast rings and just do what you can when the child naps. Even better add a bike trainer for cardio since you can't leave the house to run anymore either.
Caring for a toddler means being shackled to a creature that is entirely dependant on you, but there are still ways you can work in some self care while taking care of them.
My son is 10 months old. In the last month I've been able to start jogging, playing football (soccer), and I'm hoping in the next couple of weeks to restart Gymnastics and Olympic lifting training.
I don't know how much weight I've put on, but I certainly don't enjoy how I feel and look now.
Being able to exercise again has been a major milestone for me.
I find lack of sleep severely impacts my ability to stick to a diet, as well, as I find it far harder to resist temptations when I'm not rested. Combining reduced willpower with reduced amount of time to make proper meals is not great.
I also see this pattern. I've maintained at least some level of exercise throughout raising three kids, but somehow I have a strong desire to eat, and the willpower required to shed the weight is really all-consuming. When my last (of 3) goes to college next week I wonder if anything will change.
That's a big change, all the best for the next phase of your life!
Getting into a more regular exercise routine might be a good thing. Weightlifting works well for myself, alas it does nothing to curb the appetite. :) But it's a great way to relax the mind and get a break from everything. It helps produce testosterone as well, supposedly.
Yeah, weightlifting is the problem- it makes me hungry. I now do a four-day split: two days weights; two days core-conditioning. I've been pretty good about regular exercise all my life- with large (months) excepted for big change-of-life things like moving, having a kid, and so on. At the time if felt like I was falling behind if I wasn't exercising, but looking back it was only a small perturbation to my overall habits.
So if you find yourself likewise falling off the wagon, cut yourself some slack. You're playing the long game.
Now if I would just cut my serving sizes in half! :D
I'm in better shape than ever, and it’s thanks to free childcare at the YMCA. Getting a break from the children is the most motivation I've had to drag myself to the gym.
Hey, me too. Was certain it would be about getting fat. Thing for me is, I was not exercising before, same weight for 10 years and I’m not sleep deprived at all with our 3 months old. But I do eat out more, and have a tendency to not really care what I eat - food has become fuel. I’m kind of suprised by the whole thing. Not sure what to do because I wasnt doing anything before :)
I gained around 15kg, less sport more food, my daughter is now 1 year and I lost 18kg the last 5 months through diet and sport. That said it takes some discipline, you'll have to get used to a shedule together with your partner. All my private computer time is now past 20h when my daughter is asleep, training time is after work switching each day with my gf. Dont worry you'll get alon
Cut out sugar, bread, and liquids with empty calories. Eat meat, fruits, and veggies -- even frozen ones. You'll drop weight very fast switching to high meat and veg, and dump the carbs/sugars.
For those of you who are skinny and want to bulk up and don't mind eating somewhat bad food: Eat lots of sugary candy and junkfood like potatoe chips. I find it's the easiest way to get fat.
> Women become pregnant before they become mothers. Men become pregnant after they become fathers.
I heard this joke a while ago, and while cruel seems to have an element of truth to it by observation. Lack of sleep, lack of exercise, less time to make healthy meals seems to be a terrible combination for weight gain.
The experience itself is different. While for women it is more shocking and exciting, men still need to handle their partner and other responsibilities during this period and pretty much share that experience which, as article suggests, alters them both in some ways.
There probably are worse alternative, but I'd rather teach my kid to enjoy good food and see a meal as a time to socialize/relax rather than something to be optimized
Has there been any studies on adopting a baby? Does it yield the same results on men? If yes, then it might as well be a matter of social construct, where a new vulnerable addition to the group needs protection for example.
Another curious question, it would be interesting to see the impact of adopting a cat or a dog on men’s testosterone levels.
I'd guess the idea of this study is not that having a child of your own somehow directly alters your brain biologicaly, but the experience itself is just that intense. I find it much more interesting, the fact that most of the changes mother experiences might not be the "nature's wonder", but lasting, painful, traumatic and exciting experience itself that affects one's brain.
Edit: And that itself has much deeper relation to a biological child than to adopting one. Not that adopting isn't significant or emotional, it's simply not that varying level of experience.
> Another curious question, it would be interesting to see the impact of adopting a cat or a dog on men’s testosterone levels.
I would compare this analogy to the opposite and unfortunate experience like the death of a close one. Losing someone that's biologically linked to you can be really hard even if you weren't that emotionally attached to that person.
By comparing that to losing a friend outside of your family circle, which is also a very harsh experience, it seems that biological line would be an emotional line deeply attached to a person no matter what experience one has.
> And that itself has much deeper relation to a biological child than to adopting one. Not that adopting isn't significant or emotional, it's simply not that varying level of experience.
How do you know your child is actually biologically yours? Human fathers have no biological/natural means of identifying a child as theirs. So your hypothesis that having your own child va adopting is different does not stand.
The father - child bond is a mental construct and I see absolutely no reason why adopting is lesser than biologically fathering a child.
When conceiving children biologically, if you do not have reason to believe your partner has had sex with other men, the natural assumption is that the child is yours.
Also, family resemblances do exist. Their absence doesn't disprove parentage, but their presence is evidence for it.
When adopting, if you were not sexually active prior to adoption and have not donated sperm, you can be certain the child is not biologically yours. Even if you were active or a donor, you can still be very confident the kid is likely not yours.
I think adoption is a wonderful thing and I am not trying to undercut it, but it seems entirely possible to me that those differences could impact the bond between a father and child.
Exactly. Stating that an adoption is same as having a child of your own, is going against all empirical evidence that a person has great emotional changes upon finding out about your own biological relation to someone. Maybe it is entirely psychological, but idea of a biological relation affects a person a great deal.
I think most of the confusion here is coming from the idea that psychology can't be related to biology. However, I firmly believe that biology is the base of the psychology and you cannot alter psychology without altering the biology itself.
If i recall correctly, men who are bonded (via sex of course given the huge oxytocin releases) to their childrens mother and who saw the mother throughout pregnancy and were sure there was no cheating have a higher affinity to that child and this can be measured hormonally. Its not 100 percent but probably good enough for natural selection. Also marriage and pair bonding is rather common among our closely related primate brethren
Edit: also the testosterone stuff is mostly a myth in the sense that, while testosterone of new fathers drops, it also recovers some months after the baby is born and older. So you get some months of baby snuggles and then you're back with your old libido. Also, men with kids are way more attractive to women (including their wives) anyway.
I explicitly stated that experience of biologically delivering a child is affecting both of parents, NOT on a biological basis but strictly on the level of THE experience itself. I could have been clearer by stating "biologically delivered child by mother", instead of the "biological child", but I have not, in any sense, reffered to a biological child-father connection being relevant to anything.
What may have confused you is that I stated that the idea of being biologically related to someone, has a mental effect that creates some emotional attachment - yes, due to the biological relation as a social construct. That was an additional idea to compare it to adopted cat/dog/child analogy.
Trivial option: if cohabitating with the mother, I could see pregnancy having effects (via pheromones, or just behavior) that would be completely skipped over by adoption. Obviously it's not strictly a "does this child have 50% of my DNA" thing, but it does differentiate between biologically having a child and adopting.
Typical non-paternity rate among people with self-reported high-confidence in paternity are around 2%. (That’s much higher than I’d have thought, but lower than the commonly cited 10% figure, which is driven by a selection bias in who takes paternity tests in the overall case.)
> Another curious question, it would be interesting to see the impact of adopting a cat or a dog on men’s testosterone levels.
Very interesting idea though. But all of this fathering thing is related with continue one's bloodline I guess. Humans are very motivated to maintain their lineage. Adopting pets may be related with another topic.
> But all of this fathering thing is related with continue one's bloodline I guess.
Can I safely assume you haven't adopted any children? I'm a parent of two adopted kids (now mostly grown). If you think what motivates me is any different than what motivates other fathers, you would be terribly mistaken.
And here is my turn to speak without knowing: I imagine that if a father is too attached to the idea of the continuation of his genetic legacy, it may pressure the children to fulfill the father's idea of a legacy rather than find their own path.
After becoming father I experienced biggest weight loss ever. I went from 260 lbs to 200 lbs. During the months not being chained to a table with computer I was living healthy life. Lots of time outside with stroller or baby carrier, healthy food for baby and me. Few years later I am at 220 lbs again.
So, reading this thread is making me really not want to have children. Seems like one would have to be completely insane to voluntarily sign up for that.
People that have children. Do you think it was honestly a good idea in retrospect, and if so, why? If your wife had been on the fence about having children, would you have preferred to go child-free, in retrospect?
Imagine if you just read about the negatives of Ivy-League schools - the insane admissions process, the cost, the pressures, the depression, the sleep deprivation, the drug abuse, the suicides, etc. You'd think people must be crazy to go there, yet when you weight it against the benefits, it turns out that basically anyone that can go there, should go there.
I think parenting, like school, is also a very high-effort, high-reward activity. Maybe while the negatives are easy to understand, the rewards are not so easily understood. "Give life to your offspring" just doesn't have the same ring as "make a ton of money" or "become the ruling class".
Honestly I’ve loved every second of it. Granted, Ive only got one, and she’s pretty easy going so far and never had problems sleeping the night once she was out of “needs food every 2 hr stage”. Yeah, things change, I don’t go out to the bars to socialize as much (or at all) any more. Most of my friends don’t have kids yet (but some do). Having said that, I need to constantly be “changing” or “growing” in life. There are only so many years I can go drinking with friends every weekend until it gets boring and I need a new adventure in life. I travel less too, but still made it to Europe for a week this year (with baby in tow). Your life doesn’t have to stop, but the things you do change. And yeah, I love it. I am also not usually one of the ones that bemoan all the lost sleeep or what have you in comments here. I would imagine I’m not the only one who stays positive.
Having two kids myself, it has been the best thing to happen to me by far. I never really thought about having kids until my late 20's, so I can understand why people may want to go child-free. Kids are a huge investment of time and effort after all! But personally I could not imagine it any other way.
Also, it is nice to have a receptive audience to dad jokes.
So are the others in this thread exaggerating the negatives? Or is it more that those difficulties are fairly short-term, and in the longer run don't really matter / are forgotten? Say, like preparing for and sitting a difficult exam, or going to the dentist, etc.
As a dad myself (2.5 yr old and an almost 1 year old), the negatives do not seem to be exaggerated at all. Going to work as a software engineer is the easiest part of my day, by far. What is not always mentioned are the wonderful parts of it, which is hard to describe. Scott Hanselman wrote something where he said that having kids is 49% awful and 51% amazing, and that 1% makes all the difference, and it really hits the nail on the head. I also think its worth putting into perspective that every week it gets a tiny bit easier. I'm happy I no longer have crying babies in the house, and soon my oldest will be potty trained. It sounds cliche but it is the hardest and most rewarding thing I have ever done.
It does get easier as they get more independent, I have slowly clawed back time for sleep, now slowly getting time to exercise again, soon again I will have time for some hobbies again! I do hope to have some shared hobbies with my boys though!
> So are the others in this thread exaggerating the negatives?
The negatives are real but they are outweighed by overwhelming positives. In my experience, there was a new level of satisfaction achieved after becoming a father that made it worth every sacrifice.
Maybe, maybe not. Every situation is unique. My wife and I have 11 week old twins. We went from 0 to 2, so we have no baseline. But, it's been a joy. Challenging? Yes. Absolutely and without a doubt the most challenging thing that I have ever done in my life. That brings about a number of rewards on it's own, even aside from the children themselves.
It doesn't have to be chaos and it doesn't have to be torture. It's all fairly subjective and I don't want to type out a novel. But, I do want to give you a bit of a different perspective.
I am very busy tending to these babies, keeping our home maintained, working, tending to our dogs, etc... I handle 50% of our feedings entirely by myself (feeding for us is code for: change baby, feed baby, burp baby, soothe baby, get baby onto their next activity or put down for a nap or sleep, and this is times 2 for our situation). We're walking the twins in the morning and the evening. We're bathing a baby every night, so they get a bath every other day right now. We play with them during the day and we read to them at night before bed.
Yet, I slept for just under 7 hours straight last night. My wife slept for 4 hours, pumped, and then went back to sleep. She leaves me a note on the bathroom counter every night so that I know if I need to wake her up or not. I can hear that she is waking up now and so after this comment I am going to head upstairs and I'll be feeding both of the twins again by myself while she pumps and we get ready for that morning walk. I also worked out twice this week and since Sunday have gone for 2 hour-long runs. I have another run today, whenever I can find the spare hour. Another workout tomorrow. Saturday is a day off. We'll play with the twins as much as they'll have it. We don't really have any help in the house, it's overwhelmingly just my wife and I. We're making things work and things are working well. I've been told by people IRL not to say these sorts of things out loud. I've been told to "stop bragging" about how my infants sleep at night. So, personally, I've found that I don't really care to say much about it.
edit/ I'd do well to note that I work full-time remote and that makes a world of difference in our outcomes. If I had to commute to an office, no doubt that I'd be exercising much less and we'd not be eating very well right now.
Most of the others commenting here have seem to have small children, so of course their feedback is going to highlight all the ways in which their lives have changed.
To offer a counter-point, my daughter is 18 and off to college (literally dropping her off this saturday), and my son is 15. With each moment that passes from the time they are born, things get easier ... sleep? improves. complete and utter dependency? they learn to wipe their own bum. So, all the things that _seem_ really bad that people are reporting here are, ultimately, rather temporary.
That's not to say there aren't new challenges that come once they get older, and some challenges aren't experienced by everyone (I feel incredibly lucky and blessed that I haven't had any behavioral issues with my kids). So ... yeah ... they're not little parasites forever, just keep that in mind :P
I cant speak to having much experience with this myself as my first kid just hit 6 months.
I feel like the stress is much higher than it would be without kids, but the rewards are higher as well. Managed well it can be more than worth it, but doing it when you aren't prepared makes it hurt that much more.
The negatives are bad, sure, but it's like someone complaining about how bad college was and past work experiences were; the bad usually help you to learn the good. I wouldn't trade my 4-year old son for anything in the world.
Yes, they are exaggerating the negatives - as a father of three I can honestly say that parenthood is wonderful and fulfilling. My only regret is that we didn't have a fourth child!
I think it was both a good idea, and at the same time the biggest cause of stress and strife in our marriage. The ups and downs of life are larger with kids. You will experience moments of profound joy, and balance them with great struggles. And at the end of it all, you have your own family to grow old with. You trade a hard youth for a better old age. Which seems to match, philosophically, with the startup idea of working hard for a few years to be in a better place when it is done.
On a more pragmatic note, the idea that brains change when you have kids to make you more nurturing and empathetic sounds good for a career. It would help with communications and teamwork to be stronger in those areas.
Having kids is incredible. My youngest is 6 (others are 8 and 10), and sleeps 10-11 hours now. They are already hilarious little people, and not having them in my life would be empty and unbearable.
Re: "completely insane to voluntarily sign up for that" I hear the same thing here often about joining or running a startup and putting in 100+ hours per week.
The only reason I regret having kids is because of the planet they will be inheriting, and all of the shit they will have to deal with.
> Re: "completely insane to voluntarily sign up for that" I hear the same thing here often about joining or running a startup and putting in 100+ hours per week.
Crucial difference is that you can (ethically) quit the startup if you decide it isn't worth it.
People have a hard time admitting in retrospect they wished they didn't have kids because of biological bonding. My life would have INFINITELY less responsibilities and much more money had I not had a child. Are those things worth trading in retrospect? I don't know the answer to that because the toothpaste is already out of the tube. I'm currently middle aged, but if given the opportunity to go back in time and choose to either have kids or not, I probably would have chosen not. It's not because I don't love my kid to the moon and back, but it's a huge responsibility not many people can deal with. It's worth noting this is mindset is exacerbated by being divorced from my child's other parent, and it forces me to have to interact with a formerly abusive partner periodically.
What would have happened to me if I hadn't become a father? Would I have been financially a lot better off without kids to pay for, free to do whatever I want, had a lot time to myself? Maybe. On the other hand, I might not be here.
Having kids was the best reason not to commit suicide I've ever had.
That's rather drastic, but I'm glad that worked out well for you. Everyone thinks prior to having kids that their kids are going to be the next Carl Sagan. Nobody ever considers that their kids might be the next Jeffery Dahmer.
I'm a father of two, one who is nearly a teenager, so I'm still on the journey.
Having children is a life experience. A hard one, that will change you. It is certainly not the easy route. If you want a life of low stress and self satisfaction - having no kids makes a lot of sense. And I'd never begrudge anyone who makes this choice (of which I know many).
Choosing to have a family means you are willing to sacrifice your own goals to some extent. I think you could say the same about any relationship - you generally have to give up some of your own time and or desires to make a relationship work, whether short term or long term. Having kids is probably the most extreme version of this.
What do you get out of it? Life long companionship, for one thing. And a very unique experience, that only other parents can ever understand.
> What do you get out of it? Life long companionship, for one thing.
Not necessarily. I know many people who have quite strained relationships with their parents/children. I have relatives who had children based on the mindset of "who will take care of me when I'm old?", only for their kids to mistreat and abandon them in their old age.
Well, of course. Like any relationship it can break down. I don’t have a great relationship with my father, which seems common for my generation. He spent most of his time working - not enough time with his family. Having a genuine relationship with your kids and being involved requires a lot of self sacrifice - if you don’t do that the relationship is going to be bad. Almost always that requires putting your career on the back burner which is hard for a lot of people.
I have a 4 and 2 year old. It was the best thing to happen to me in a personal and professional sense.
It is difficult. The first year is hard. It’s hard to even draw parallels to. You know how it’s like to learn to ride a bike or a new language or play a musical instrument when you’ve never played one before? It’s like that almost everyday for the first few months at least. You will be sleep deprived. You will be in auto pilot doing things you wonder how/why you did it.
But the reward is amazing! You have the opportunity to do right in the world. You can raise kids that’ll add sanity to your worldview. I’m raising my kids to be empathetic and kind human beings. My older one unprompted goes to the shy kid on the playground and involves him/her. That’s so rewarding to see. He cares for his brother to the extent that he’ll ask us to go “let it go” when we try to get the younger one through his tantrum.
Now, why was it the best thing to happen to me professionally? 2 things:
1. Something better be a fucking good reason for me to spend time on it. Stupid meeting? Sorry, I’m busy I’m walking out to do other work. Random chit chat in a meeting that’s running late? I’m cutting that shit down. I’ve learned to value my time like execs value their time. I’m not rude but I have become very particular. Something has to be worth my time to take me away from spending time with my kids.
2. After parenting most things feel easy to me. Exec presentation? Give me an hour. Train a new person with a bad attitude. Pfft. I can handle that without getting upset. Deal with an aggressive Engineering Manager. Yeah I got skills to calm this person down. Stand up for the quite colleague in the corner? You bet I’ve noticed it and intervened to seek their input.
It has been my observation and experience that if you don’t do so patronizingly, a lot of how to talk to a child can be applied to grown ups with marvelous results.
All of this though is if you’re ready for it. I knew I was when I realized I wanted to share my view of the world with someone I was caring for. Good luck!
I also struggled with the decision whether to have kids. I don't generally like kids or kids stuff. I was very happy with how I spent my time. It seemed like huge sacrifice and also a leap of faith into a new life with no way back.
Long story short, I did have kids and it was the right decision. And if I were able to talk to myself when I was struggling with the decision, I would say "Don't miss this experience. There is nothing else in life like it. It is hard but it is worth it."
I get people who don't do it. I can't imagine a life not having kids around.
If your scared how it will affect your life, maybe it isn't for you. It's not how kids work, you make it work, period. Either you do it or you don't. Whether it's a good idea is very irrelevant.
It's a great question. My son is 11. If you'd asked me when he was 3 or 4, I may have said it wasn't worth it. Now, I 100% feel it was worth it. It's a pain, forces you to change your life priorities, but overall it's made me into a better person as I try to embody the attitude and behaviors that he'll want. There's also nothing better at washing away the stresses of the day than the gigantic hug I get when I walk in the door.
My daughter is two and a half months old, and it's nowhere near as difficult as some people make out. My wife is currently studying, so is taking a year off to look after her. Plus I work from home, so can help out now and then.
In terms of sleep she usually sleeps from midnight until 4-5 when she will wake up to be fed, but often I don't even wake up now (yes, she is in the same room).
I have two kids, my wife and I never sacrificed our physical health. When our first was born I was an air traffic controller, and when my second was born I transitioned into being a data scientist.
During the first 4 years of fatherhood, I did triatholons and ran ultra-marathons - primairly ultras as the crowd was far more relaxed. After our second was born I decided to take up powerlifting, worked up to a 1405 total.
I've recently decided to go back to endurance events as being 230lbs of raw strength isn't conducive to life, plus our grocery bill is higher due to that. So I'm swimming and dropping weight; running at 230 (now 210) was terrible and humbling all at once.
My wife did half-marathons and now does cross-fit.
During these different 'eras' we exposed our children to our activities and they partook when interested, they are highly interested in riding their bikes and run as they please. Though they prefer volleyball and gymnastics at the moment.
They only negative, is they can't sit for school, as school only offers one recess during the day.
I love my son more than anything, but the job of being a parent mostly sucks. I don't like it, although it's way better now that he's 10. Even though it's not for me I would 100% go through it again to have my son again.
The only real concern I have about having a child is I don't know what kind of world he's entering.
I was skeptical, but I'm happy with the decision. I can't cite anything for this, but I swear it rewrites your mind and body to be a more perfect parent. My own theory is that there are some kind of pheromones in baby breath that trigger something. If you have kids and spend a lot of time with them, you will be near certain to be glad you did. The biggest physical change I noticed besides some short term weight gain was a drastic improvement in my reflexes. I was happy without kids. I think what convinced me in the end to have kids is that my wife and I don't have a lot of friends or younger family members around. If I still wanted to have a family when I get older I'm going to need to make some.
You need to be passionate about it. If you are on the fence, in my opinion, go child free.
It's better for the environment (the mountain of plastic and CO2 that having kids causes is astounding) and there are plenty of people in the world that are passionate about having kids.
Thanks for the opinion. I feel the same way as the parent poster - this thread is fairly horrifying, particularly as someone who has spent the past couple of years on personal growth, particularly improving my fitness and sleep.
Always been on the fence, keep hoping I want to have kids some day, because I sure don't want to go into it with a negative attitude. I don't want to "miss out" and regret having lived a childless life when I'm 70, but I sure don't want anything about that lifestyle today. My wife seems to be much the same way. We always talk about "some day, if we have kids.." but nearing our 40s, some day doesn't seem to come.
I absolutely believe it must be rewarding in a way I cannot imagine -- just as most 'worthwhile' pursuits that take time and effort and learning and growth are. And precisely because the benefits are non-obvious (I don't really enjoy anything about being around children). I've found raising pets to be far more rewarding than I could have imagined, so I'm sure children must be 100 or 1000x that reward.
But, just like I don't need to take on every challenge the world has to offer (someone else can die on Everest, others can become passionate about their skydiving hobby), I'll pick and choose my challenges.
What? In what way? Genetically? I mean, I suppose, but do you really care about that? Passing on your beliefs / values? This rarely even makes it a single generation, and why can't you do this by simply making an impression on people around you?
I don't think anyone should have children because it helps them come to terms with their own mortality.
> why can't you do this by simply making an impression on people around you?
It's easier to make an impression on someone if you are nearly constantly around them through their most impressionable years, starting at or near birth.
If you aren't the actual (natural or adoptive) parent, the actual parents will probably get tired of you trying to do this relatively quickly, unless you have an unusual relationship with them.
Well no.. I wanted kids as much/more than my wife. Why should I care about hormonal responses. My body is designed to get my wife pregnant and have babies. I embrace that. Whatever changes it undergoes is fine... That's the price you pay for family.
Yes. Chemical change in my brain / body causing me to love those little buggers more than life itself.
No. A bit of free time and piece and quiet would be nice occasionally and to selfishly do what I want, when I want, how I want.
> would you have preferred to go child-free, in retrospect?
At the time of the first born, most definitely. But girlfriend got pregnant "fairly" young at 24. She wanted to keep it, no further discussion had.
In retrospect, that is a very hard one. Very much aware of the "grass is greener" paradigm and to be "happy with what you got". But overall, I don't think I would change anything.
For me, having children was the worst decision I ever made. Since you've already identified the negatives (described in the article) I don't think I have to explain why I feel this way. If I could go back in time and tell my younger self one thing it would absolutely be "do not have children".
Yes, but I consider children fulfillment of instinctual needs. As I've seen my grandparents age and see how my extended family works, I just can't see myself childless.
If you don't want children, don't worry about it. Population increases exponentially.
I have a six month old, so I’m still kind of transitioning. I wouldn’t have wanted to be pressured into this, but I’m also very in love with my son. My life is better with him in it even if I get bummed out about the loss of autonomy and free time.
I was no particular fan of children or parenting before, but eventually I decided that raising children is such a significant part of the human experience, I'd be opting out on a huge chunk of what this life has to offer. Sure, it has major downsides and risks, but is also unmatched in its potential emotional and existential rewards. Going without may be perfectly rational for a given person, but for me, the opportunity cost tradeoff weighed in favor. That said, I became a father in my 40s after having had a pretty good run already, and that's definitely not something I would do any differently.
Weight gain has been the most obvious impact for me, but that’s probably a consequence of a collapse in willpower/discipline as a result of sleep deprivation and stress.
Anecdotal I know, but when my first was born and I was outside with them for the first time, I got a weird sense of extreme overprotectiveness - exaggerating somewhat to make the point, but it almost felt like I would punch anyone if they looked vaguely threateningly at my new child (a particularly memorable experience for me because I'm usually such a placid person). Not an expert, but that felt like it could be something hormonal.
And at risk of sounding a bit handwavy, I think I've adapted to being a parent much better than I thought I would, which I guess could be thanks to some biological help.
Also used to look a lot younger than I actually was, and now I look my age or even older, but that could simply be lack of sleep.
same ... I'll also add that for a time, I became hyper-aware of literally any noise that happened anywhere in my house at night. Lol, I can't tell you how many times I jumped out of bed to fend off an imagined intruder, or to run into the baby's room to make sure she was still breathing :P
I am 14 months into kid #1. I've observed friends and family who are well into kid #2.
My thought process was that going from 1 to 2 was going to follow some sort of logarithmic increase in complexity - but I am now convinced that the change is exponential.
With 1, you can split the work. With 2, the dad will probably be focused on the older kid and the mom on the younger kid. Thus, there is less help to go around.
Maybe at #3 there is some sort of loop-back effect where the older kid can help out with the younger siblings?
I'm on 4 with 5 on the way. Here's how I think about in terms of effort. Basically, after 2 it's logarithmic. I can do lots of things in batches that shave off time. So, brushing teeth happens for all 4 kids at the same time and the set up cost would be the same with 1. With more kids, you end up setting rules for how they play together, rather than micromanaging entertainment for one. Once one kid can read, the older can read to the younger. This puts the older one on a good task and entertains the younger one.
It's not the life for everyone, but I really enjoy it.
In terms of effort, the per capita cost goes down after each kid IMHO.
In my experience going from two to three was a bigger change overall than one to two. Primarily because the kids now outnumber the adults. Also, particularly while they're little, you now have more kids than one parent has hands. So mom/dad can't physically restrain/direct all the kids by themselves. One to two felt to me like roughly a doubling of work. And that was when we felt like we weren't sure how much more we could handle. Then with our third it felt like the exponential increase you mention and we laughed at our previous feelings. The same strategies and patterns will scale from one to two but not necessarily to three because you get outnumbered. So three felt like more of a sea change.
At the same time, the mental adjustment was easier. None to one was the biggest mental adjustment for me (wow, I'm a parent now! Oh God help I'm responsible for keeping another human alive). One to two and two to three were more like changes in degree rather than a complete paradigm-shift mentally. For number two and three I've already worked through the reality that I'm now a father.
Age difference has to play some role as well. Our three are very close in age. Maybe the experience is different when there is more distance between them.
Parenting style definitely changes 1 to 2, 2 to 3, after 3 it's kind of a wash. Helicopter parenting or "Tiger Mom" styles don't scale well.
A colleague of mine has 7 kids. Both she and her husband work full time with white-collar jobs. If she hadn't gotten raises and promotions they likely couldn't afford the childcare costs and she would be a stay at home parent. (Cultural norm for her).
I can't imagine how this would work in a blue-collar setting where work has to be done on-site. Between sick kids who can't go to school/childcare, doctor vists, dentist appointments, parent teach conferences, flexible work hours to come in late/leave early are normal things parents need to do and even more so when you start talking 3 or more kids.
The loopback can happen, but it doesn't really manifest until much later. Spreading them out 2-3 years seems like the best way to scale to large families as that first two years really are all parenting unless you have teenagers in the house.
(Also don't get me started on current employment laws as it relates to pregnancy and how being a mom can impact both wage and career opportunities)
I have three, they live with me every other week, since I have had kids for 13 years now it is hard to imagine how it was without them, how it was with only one or two of them. My oldest two helps taking care of my younger one sometimes. I also tend to let the younger one do more stuff earlier on than I let the other two do. On top of that, it is more or less impossible to fill 5 days with 8 hours work the weeks the kids are at my place, but age solves that, they can stay a bit longer at daycare, when they get to 8-9 they can walk home by themselves etc. Life is complex at times, but most of the time it is quite awesome. Weeks when I don't have the kids tend to be work and trying to get enough sleep to have the energy needed for a 100% week with my kids. Even if I dont do 8 hours every day the weeks I have the kids, I'd say it is more or less 100% responsibility from 6:30 AM to 11 PM.
Yes. The older kids help. My wife comes from a family of eight. It's arguable that she's changed more of her siblings diapers than our own two kids (2 and 1.5m). Not only that but house duties are also split among them (dishes, cooking, trash, cleaning, etc.).
>2014, Dr. Pilyoung Kim, Ph.D., a developmental neuroscientist at The University of Denver, put 16 new dads into an M.R.I. machine: once between the first two to four weeks of their baby’s life, and again between 12 and 16 weeks
16 examples -> I would set more store by tealeaf reading.
It felt like a mental "click" but not like you get when you have been trying to solve a puzzle... it felt like a mental " gear change ".
My thought processes changed order or priority, Things that I felt were important before were suddenly less important and I think I things from a different angle (not just life stuff but problem solving approaches.).
its really hard to describe.
What I can say is that having a second didnt do a damned thing... lol whatever change was going to happen only happened on the first.
> Things that I felt were important before were suddenly less important
I definitely felt a change in perspective like this. Sitting in a 1hr long meeting, going over something which could be done in 10 mins, and the whole time thinking "none of this even matters, there's a human life at home which I helped create!".
My first thoughts were that it was like that, but I realized after a few weeks that I was thinking like that at work as well, when nowhere near the kid.
“a widespread and deeply ingrained belief among fathers: that because their bodies haven’t undergone the myriad biological changes associated with pregnancy, birth and breastfeeding, they’re not as biologically and psychologically “primed” for caretaking as women are.”
I doubt that this concern is “widespread”. Sounds like the author creating unnecessary urgency for an already interesting topic.
I'm female and have never wanted children. I never want to be pregnant. I'm 41, and have no children.
But I have had folks try to make me feel like I*m doing something wrong for not wanting children - both men and women. Apprently, that's what I'm supposed to want.
I've got Tinnitus. I should have used ear plugs or rather a heavy duty hearing protection much earlier.
My daughter had problems with her stomach or with us trying to put some clothes on her. The scream amplitude and frequency in a small bathroom are a horrendous combination.
Our youngest daughter screamed something terrible for months and months when she was a baby. There was a period of maybe two months where I thought I had permanent hearing loss from it.
Went to the doctor and turned out that I had a cold as some point and the pressure in my ear never equalized back correctly, which meant the ear drum couldn't vibrate right. A couple weeks of allergy medicine seemed to fix the issue.
Around that time though, I bought a pair of ear muffs and wore them every time I had to put her to bed or change her diaper. Amazing. Highly recommended.
https://nobaproject.com/modules/hormones-behavior here it says that a change in hormone levels can trigger a change in behaviour, but on the other hand it can be the result of changed behaviour. For me as a laymen it is not clear how to read all this.
1. It doesn't mention obvious potential causes to brain changes and hormone levels that coincide with having children like lack of sleep, changes to diet, or adjustments to work patterns etc.
2. It says towards the end that I should continue to wrestle the boys. Great!
Father of 5 here, during first 2 I was right there, gained a lot of weight slowly but identical twins @ 43 I am surprised there had actually been a weight drop.
It has been amazingly difficult with twins, for the first 6 months it was pure hell. I didn’t really sugarcoat it when people asked, yes it’s hell, no it’s not fun. People were much more understanding of the my sour attitude with twins.
Many people both get up as a sign of support but yea it’s stupid, after some time we found that taking turns getting up has allowed the other to get some sleep, surprised we didn’t get any guidance from the hospital on this subject at all while at the hospital.
"Certain areas within parts of the brain linked to attachment, nurturing, empathy and the ability to interpret and react appropriately to a baby’s behavior had more gray and white matter between 12 and 16 weeks than they did between two and four weeks."
For you father-programmers out there: did you notice any changes in your programming/work abilities around the 12-16 week mark?
I always took off 3 months from work per baby. There's no point coding when you're always sleep deprived. Last year the company agreed to about half the salary, so I'd work from home on some things, or come in half the week or half a day as needed.
Then again I did notice I was very good at understanding baby talk.
Taking from some old notes of my 5 month old baby:
"eh eh eh", but no crying at 6 AM = "I need a diaper change" or "I'm hungry"
rapid kicking = excited
wide open arms while lying down = "pick me up"
"uh huh/mmm" with slight head inclining = yes.
when mother is saying something, baby laughs, turns head towards me, "uh huh/mmm" with inclined head = "mother is right" or "I told you so"
laughing and turning away = "I like that"
licking lips = "I want to eat whatever you're eating"
"aaaaaaaaaaa" = conversation or song
long, drawn out, angry crying = "I'm tired and I don't know how to sleep"
This reminds me so much of the Simpsons episode with Homer's long lost brother, Herb (he invents a machine to translate baby talk).
I think, from my own experience, babies learn to communicate in a two way fashion - they try noises and responses with their caregivers, and when the caregivers respond in an agreeable fashion, the baby stores that bit of communication away to try again later (and possibly reinforce).
So I think some of their communication is learned (signals for positive/negative), and quite specific to the baby-parent pair, while some will be instinctual (e.g. I imagine the excited kicking to be related to an adrenal surge or something, and early-infant crying is definitely an instinctual distress signal)
agree. We did some infant sign language (using what seemed to us like very exaggerated motions for “milk” “more” “diaper” and a few others I can’t recall now). I was amazed (and slightly relieved) when each child could express themself a bit.
> “my parents are bad they aren’t feeding me they should be locked up”
lol I remember this, we called it the 'worst parents in the world' cry. It continues forever, the form changes as they get older but the message is the same
I'll echo others on this thread and say at 12-16 weeks your work abilities are dominated by lack of sleep/just recovering from lack of sleep.
However, I think the implication is that these changes stick around. After we finally hit our "parenting rhythm" around 6 months to a year, I did find that many of the soft skills were coming easier to me than they had before I was a parent. I found was getting better at doing presentations, reading emotions/intention, doing mentoring, and organizing others to accomplish goals, Now correlation is not causation, it could also be I was just transitioning into a more senior role anyway, and I've got a sample size of 1, but I'd like to propose a mechanism: constantly practicing my public speaking by reading "The Napping House" to a miniature tyrant who communicates only through facial expressions and screaming, is your responsibility to teach everything to including successfully eating food, and requires a logistics train on par with an Army brigade just to leave the house changed my brain and resultded in transferable skills.
I was basically useless as a programmer at 12-16 weeks. I was also basically useless at 2-4 weeks, but that was largely because of the sleep deprivation and constant need to run around doing chores. (What they don't tell new parents: newborns spend 6-7 hours/day attached to the boob and do so in shifts of about 15 minutes on + 45 minutes off, so mommy basically has a full-time job breastfeeding and daddy has a full-time job doing everything else.)
I started to get some of my old coding mojo back around 8 months and at 18 months I'm IMHO better than I've ever been, but the newborn phase is basically a complete write-off. Parental leave exists for a reason.
> ...but the newborn phase is basically a complete write-off.
Good for you. The FANG (you can guess) company I worked for stack-ranked me at the bottom of the tar pit in my write-off year with zero increase in comp, followed by another quarter of intense improvement program after which they decided I still wasn't good enough. Disagreements ensued for three more quarters and then that was that. The result... unemployment.
Books and help manuals like to tell you newborns sleep for however many hours a day, to try and make it sound easy, but like you said - newborns only sleep for small periods at a time, including at night.
I spent an insane number of hours in the middle of the night bouncing on a swiss exercise ball, holding the baby, in nothing but my pants, in the dark, with the tv on (but muted), to coax the baby back to sleep. Honestly ... this sorta stuff needs to mentioned more to let prospective parents know what they're in for.
Since having a child, I've nothing but total admiration for any single parent - how they manage without a fulltime partner would be beyond my ability.
You're so sleep starved you program like a turkey and have to try and do mundane, low risk things for much of the day. Simpler fixes, documentation, clean up technical debt in test cases etc etc. Limit tricky things for the morning after you've warmed up and keep that burst short. But this is of course from birth until n months.
I'm guessing the lifestyle changes are going to have an effect that is large and the effects discussed here, while they may indeed be statistically signficant (who knows?),
are going to have an effect so incredibly small by comparison that they really aren't worth considering. But that's pure prejudice on my part - we'll see if there's any data capable of rejecting that hypothesis.
The changes to your sleep are huge. Now if you've had twins... Yeah.
I've always felt very child-focused by that point and working becomes more difficult. I've moved towards moving my work schedule around my kids rather than the other way around because I get very unhappy prioritizing work first.
So, without enough time with my kids, my abilities as a programmer absolutely plummet. I wake up early and work, spend time with my toddler, then finish work while he naps and when his mom is home.
I had the opposite to the commenters above. I had the best ideas when attending to the baby, middle of the nights. I also started reading serious books (like geopolitical stuff) when my baby was falling asleep on my laps. I did some of my best and most efficient coding the first 3 months with the baby (when it was sleeping). I worked less, but better. My brain definitely shifted, I had an unparalleled motivation to do things. After 10 months it started to fade away and return to “normal”.
Based on the replies, I jokingly conclude that the increase in gray and white matter during these baby phases is to handle the cognitive dysfunction of sleep deprivation.
I wonder if sleep deprivation is related to raising children pre industrial era. It seems logical but I don't know much on this topic. :)
I took three months off each time. I suspect I'd have been very sub-par in a work context as like others have mentioned, the overriding change was lack of sleep. We definitely felt zombie-like for some good proportion of that time. Perhaps the extra brain matter was trying to compensate for running on empty? :)
We organised with me as evening shift - so mum could get a little uninterrupted sleep, and she picked up the morning shift.
I became unbeatable at catching & resolving pages in the 'wish I was dead' hours (1am-5am) with our second. Hot tea & wrapped in a blanket trying to raise my body temperature out of the depths of the circadean rhythm downward cycle so my brain would switch from sleep to awake mode
This has been a very useful thread.I have struggled with weight for many years. I have sufficient motivation to exercise and I am normally able to keep a disciplined schedule. But with our 2yr old daughter, sleeplessness has kind of messed me up and I struggle to keep any form of discipline now. It's hard. I am just glad to know that I am far from the only one :)
Maybe it's just my biology training, but that was obvious to me decades ago. I mean, why should humans be different from other mammals, regarding such a basic thing?
It's also part of why I never wanted kids. That, and the threat of global nuclear war.
It’s the fact that the source of sound is often 10-20 cm from your ear. As the average source-ear distance grows though, their lung volume grows too so you end up with a looong period of dangerous sound pressure levels.
Most reliable method in my own experience: simply eat less.
Eat your normal amount of meals, shovel it in your mouth, but stop before finishing the whole portion. I eat maybe 75% of each meals and toss the remaining bits. Do it for a couple months and watch the weight magically shed off.
It works because it requires no change in meal-type habits; it’s simply fewer calories. End of the day, that’s always the goal and this way is the most direct and simple
When the meals come where it’s hard to stop at 75%, I force myself to toss my napkin and utensils on the plate ensuring the food is now “dirty”. So altogether, it’s very few behavior changes make for a foolproof method.
It is quite rational but it's difficult to be rational when you're hungry; it's easier to cut on food when you have calm down your stomach. Like don't go shopping when hungry, you will buy more unhealthy food.
This approach is extremely ineffective for me. I find I have a lot of will-power before I start eating, but once I begin it's very hard to get myself to stop. The best solution for me is to skip meals, and then allow myself to eat larger meals when I do eat. For instance, if I eat two meals a day instead of three, my lunch and dinner might be 10-20% larger than they would have been had I eaten breakfast, but that's still significantly less total calories for the day.
I think the best method is to understand your own patterns, and to find ways to reduce caloric consumption which are going to require the least amount of will-power for you and will cause the least amount of psychological stress. The exact method is going to be different for different people.
I have been fasting for a month now and I have lost a solid 6kg. I started with one meal a day (OMAD) and then I started skipping a day twice a week for a total of 5x 24hr fasts and 2x 48hr fasts. This week I completed a 72hr fast.
One reason I like it is that it requires the least planning and mental load. I eat what I want as much as I want (except sugar) and almost no matter what I do it works out to be less than my maintenance calories and I lose weight because I can't eat 4k calories in one sitting. The simplicity of it gives me less breaking points, and the ability to "eat whatever I want" makes planning for a big meal in 2 days a good reward to keep going.
The beginning is very hard and it's mostly due to sugar addiction. Many people say switching to keto first to wean off sugar makes fasting much easier.
To answer your questions:
1. Hunger comes and goes in waves, but mostly it just goes. Mentally I become more focused and clearer the longer I am into my fast, and overall I no longer get the fog from overeating or too much sugar.
2. I take a standard multivitamin GNC brand. When I feel light headed/have low blood pressure I drink a salty bone broth. Some people have their own electrolyte recipes like snake juice you can look into.
3. I go for a set amount of time. I found that it's very difficult if I'm just fasting for "as long as I can" because when the hunger comes I break. If I have a set breakfast time it's much easier to carry on until then.
Yeah I have also found intermittent fasting to be an excellent tool in the toolbox when I want to reduce a bit of body-fat. As you say, for me it's easier to follow a simple rule-based diet like time-restricted eating than it is to track and measure calories and macronutrients.
I also had success with a ketogenic diet, but in my experience that's a bit harder to stick to, since there's a lot of hidden carbohydrates in food, and it's also the kind of diet you find yourself explaining all the time like when you have to turn down the cookie your colleague made, or you order a hamburger without the bun at a restaurant. TRE offers many of the same benefits, but has almost no impact insofar as how you live your life.
> Hunger comes and goes in waves, but mostly it just goes.
Interesting thing about the hunger pattern you described: subjective experience of hunger maps pretty well to the hormone Ghrelin, which tends to peak close to your normal meal-times, and then naturally subsides afterwords whether or not you have eaten. So the science points to the fact that hunger is very much something you can "wait out".
> I started skipping a day twice a week for a total of 5x 24hr fasts and 2x 48hr fasts. This week I completed a 72hr fast.
It's important to be cautious when attempting longer fasts. I know a lot of people have subjectively good experiences with multi-day fasts, but I saw a talk where the presenter showed evidence that long fasts (more than 72 hours) can cause long-lasting metabolic changes which weren't recovered even several years later.
> I know a lot of people have subjectively good experiences with multi-day fasts, but I saw a talk where the presenter showed evidence that long fasts (more than 72 hours) can cause long-lasting metabolic changes which weren't recovered even several years later.
I thought one of the benefits of fasting was long-lasting metabolic changes (for the better).
So my understanding is that there are positive changes associated with spending time in a state of ketosis, which is brought on by fasting as well as extremely low-carb diets: especially in the case of people who are already suffering insulin-related metabolic damage (like diabetes, prediabetes, or insulin insensitivity), there's evidence nutritional ketosis can help to halt or reverse that damage.
What the talk I linked in the other comment talks about is something different: there's evidence that prolonged periods of severe calorie restriction can make your metabolism's bias move more toward storing calories and away from expending energy.
I was kinda in the same boat. Just getting a bit “chunkier”. Was 220lbs (some was also water weight from creatine) and now I’m 180lbs (I’m 6’1 if that helps). I tried intermittent fasting and it definitely worked for me. Related to your questions
1. For me, I never really experienced brain fog while IF. If anything, I seem to get more fog after eating regular/larger meals. When I was really hungry, drinking water and/or coffee (Starbucks double shots) worked for me. After a while you get used to hunger, and I seem to work better when I’m hungry vs when I’ve eaten a typical meal. If I’m seriously so hungry I’m getting a headache (which happens) id only have something with protein, absolutely no carbs (i.e lunch meat, eggs, nuts)
2. Don’t have too much knowledge or experience on gallstones. I took fish oil supplements occasionally and cut out creatine, but that’s about it.
3. Not 100% sure based on wording, but I was doing IF for about 6 weeks and lost ~20lbs. I ate from 6pm to 10pm, slept typically 1am to 7-8am. Only coffee and water during the day.
Now at 180lbs and not on IF or a strict IF schedule, I typically just have coffee in the mornings, a light lunch if I eat, and a typical dinner. 30 mins cardio 2-3 days a week, compound lifts 2-3 days a week.
> I seem to get more fog after eating regular/larger meals. ... After a while you get used to hunger, and I seem to work better when I’m hungry vs when I’ve eaten a typical meal.
Yeah I seem to find that a bit of mild hunger (not starvation or malnutrition) is good for the mind. I have at some points in my life found myself in a bit of a dampened state, where I am constantly either a bit lethargic from the last meal, or a bit preoccupied thinking about what I'm going to eat next.
I would love to understand the physiology more, but I have a pet theory that your brain gets a bit more "switched on" when you make calories and nutrients a bit more scarce for yourself, and that maybe when you let yourself eat whatever you want whenever you want, that survival instinct gets dialed back a bit.
I've had the same thought. My pet theory is that digestion is actually a much more exhausting process then we give it credit for, and all the chemical changes happening while you absorb nutrients have a toll on mental energy. Food availability and modern 3 big meals a day culture means we never really have any time when we are not digesting.
After trying fasting, when I see a snake with a full belly sleeping in the grass like it's dead it makes total sense to me. That's what digestion feels like.
> Dumping/delegating mundane tasks onto a high income earner doesn't jive with common sense
From the article: "Caring for your child, therefore, produces not only a strong bond but a neurochemical reward, inducing feelings of happiness, contentment and warmth"
I suspect that some of the "mundane tasks" you have in mind are exactly the ones that produce this bond - like changing a diaper when you hear your baby crying at night. That's probably difficult if you're using earplugs, and I guess such tasks might not make sense for some high income earners, though.
Making HN worse while criticizing it seems incongruent and doesn't help anything. We've banned that account (an obvious troll: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=ijiiijji1). Meanwhile this other offtopicness just adds noise, and supercilious noise to boot. If you're going to judge a site by the trolls it gets, every site is worthless.
Depends on what you consider to be worse, I guess. On reddit you get many of the blatant fucks. The 4chan memers, the blatant racists, the unabashedly sexist incels. They all know who they are, what they're doing, and they practically do it for fun.
On hn, you seem to have the same demographics, but they either have no idea about what they're actually saying or they're smart enough to argue that it's okay and sound like they've almost made a legitimate argument.
I'm curious what the relation between child-rearing and balding might be, if any. The old-wives tale is that men needed to be evolutionarily "pushed" to settle down, and actually take care of their kids. I would think a drop in testosterone would actually have the reverse effect though, and reduce balding for those susceptible to dht.
That has not been my experience. During my dating period (about 5 years ago) I was regularly told that my full head of hair was a pre. Though there could be bias there since the ones who care obviously were more likely to seek me out.
My experience is that women - like men - have preconceived notions of attraction that are easily circumvented, to make you more overall attractive enough.
Full head of hair is a qualifier, without it different things are needed to get yourself an in. The same logic goes for many attributes are considered qualifiers that aren't.
Yes, there are some men that expend very low energy and have women seemingly flock to them. I've seen bald men in this circumstance, and full haired men in this circumstance, I would say it is a very low weighting on anything.
Balding though seems to function different than bald.
I am sure the author means well. However, this makes little sense from an evolutionary standpoint. Although humans have evolved far more than most animals on this planet, the basic idea of evolutionary biology remains the same. In the wild, males have to hunt (provide food), protect the new born(s) and their mate(s) from threats. Therefore having the same level or higher levels of Testosterone is a biological imperative. Testosterone makes the male stronger and more aggressive. Both are very useful traits from an evolutionary standpoint. I cannot imagine human males diverging too much from this basic framework.
Coming to today's workplace, after childbirth there is a drop in productivity of male employees as they adjust to their new reality. However, I have observed men become more diligent and aggressive at their jobs. I only imagine thats because they have a stronger sense of responsibility to provide for their partner & offspring. Whether or not Testosterone levels change is a different matter.
Evopsych explanations can often be used to argue both sides of any issue. For example, T is implicated in male aggression, which is useful when fending off predators both animal and human, but dangerous when you have a helpless, often extremely irritating Bundle of Evolutionary Fitness around. T is also thought to be involved in mate-seeking behaviour, which one may wish to downregulate for a while after successfully reproducing in order to devote resources to infant survival. Testosterone is also metabolically expensive, and those costs may be paid at the expense of the immune system. It might be advantageous to upregulate immune functions when an immuno-compromised neonate is around.
You and the author could both be correct, but neglect important components of the testosterone fitness package.
It's not widely accepted that humans are more evolved than other animals. Whether males are the hunters or not depends on the species. In lions, the males are more concerned with territory while it is the females who hunt.
The species closest to us all don't hunt. They're opportunistic omnivores.
I'm not sure if being very aggressive is useful if you have a small child. Also, testosterone increase could lead to searching for new mates, thus lowering chances of survival for mother and child.
I don‘t doubt the results, but I also wouldn‘t exclude a causation/correlation 101 fail.
Just thinking back at my own first years with kids, the workload was so tough I neglected most testosterone producing activities (sports, action, male bonding).
Annedoctally as a recent father of a 6 month old, I would likely self report a good sleep quality in a questionnaire. However, objectively I know I sleep about 5 hours 30min yesterday evening, which would be sufficient sleep 'deprivation' to impact T production.
Also I think parents in general will also have strong bias to not want to acknowledge their own child as a 'nuissance' in a survey/questionnaire.
My key point is that it would be important to reproduce this finding with actual sleep tracking instead of self-reporting sleep quality, to confirm if this is indeed linked with a bonding/interaction mechanism with a child or an unfortunate secondary effect of sleep deprivation.