Do Fathers Matter?: What Science Is Telling Us About the Parent We've Overlooked (28 page)

This relationship is seen in animals
: Sarah Zhang, “Better Fathers Have Smaller Testicles,”
Nature News
, Sept. 9, 2013,
www.nature.com/news/better-fathers-have-smaller-testicles-1.13701
.

More than hormones are at work
: Prakesh S. Shah and Knowledge Synthesis Group, “Paternal Factors and Low Birthweight, Preterm, and Small for Gestational Age Births: A Systematic Review,”
American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology
202, no. 2 (2010): 103–23.

fathers who were involved with their partners
: “Father Involvement in Pregnancy Could Reduce Infant Mortality,” EurekAlert, June 17, 2010,
www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-06/uosf-fii061710.php
.

affect the birth weight of their children
: Lesley M. E. McCowan et al., “Paternal Contribution to Small for Gestational Age Babies: A Multicenter Prospective Study,”
Obesity
19, no. 5 (2011): 1035–39.

Bowlby began his work
: Sarah Blaffer Hrdy,
Mothers and Others: The Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Understanding
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), 82.

Freud was not a scientist
: Anthony Storr,
Freud
:
A Very Short Introduction
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 146. J. Allan Hobson and Jonathan A. Leonard,
Out of Its Mind: Psychiatry in Crisis: A Call for Reform
(New York: Basic Books, 2001).

evidence for the adverse consequences of depression
: Anne Lise Kvalevaag et al., “Paternal Mental Health and Socioemotional and Behavioral Development in their Children,”
Pediatrics
131, no. 2 (2013): e463–69,
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/131/2/e463.full.pdf
.

paternal depression was indeed a risk factor
: Laurie Barclay, “Paternal Depressive Symptoms During Pregnancy May Predict Excessive Infant Crying,” Medscape, July 10, 2009,
www.medscape.org/viewarticle/705633
; Mijke P. van den Berg et al., “Paternal Depressive Symptoms During Pregnancy Are Related to Excessive Infant Crying,”
Pediatrics
124, no. 1 (2009),
www.pediatricsdigest.mobi/content/124/1/e96.full
; R. Neal Davis et al., “Fathers’ Depression Related to Positive and Negative Parenting Behaviors with 1-Year-Old Children,”
Pediatrics
127, no. 4 (2011): 612–18,
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/127/4/612.full
.

Families Through Time
: James P. McHale,
Charting the Bumpy Road of Coparenthood: Understanding the Challenges of Family Life
(Washington, DC: Zero to Three, 2007), 2, 30, 56–57, 61.

Fathers who are involved during pregnancy
: Natasha J. Cabrera et al., “Explaining the Long Reach of Fathers’ Prenatal Involvement on Later Paternal Engagement,”
Journal of Marriage and Family
70, no. 5 (2008): 1094,
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2822357
.

When expectant fathers are asked
: Cowan and Cowan,
When Partners Become Parents
, 97.

The researchers tried offering their program
: Philip A. Cowan et al., “Promoting Fathers’ Engagement with Children: Preventive Interventions for Low-Income Families,”
Journal of Marriage and Family
71, no. 3 (2009): 663–79.

4. FATHERS IN THE LAB: OF MICE AND MEN

tested rats’ ability to discriminate
: Allison L. Foote and Jonathon D. Crystal, “Metacognition in the Rat,”
Current Biology
17, no. 6 (2007): 551–55,
www.tinyurl.com/k7tupky
.

developed enhanced spatial learning and memory
: Craig Howard Kinsley and Kelly G. Lambert, “The Maternal Brain,”
Scientific American
, January 2006,
www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-maternal-brain
.

paternal grooming is essential
: James P. Curley, “Parent-of-Origin Effects on Parental Behavior,” in Robert S. Bridges, ed.,
Neurobiology of the Parental Brain
(Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2008), 326.

“The male allows the egg to fall gently to the ice”
: Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson,
The Emperor’s Embrace
(New York: Washington Square Press, 1999), 26–28.

The seahorse takes a far more bizarre route
: Ibid., 68–69.

nasty example of parental favoritism
: Natalie Angier, “Paternal Bonds, Special and Strange,”
New York Times
, June 14, 2010,
www.nytimes.com/2010/06/15/science/15fath.html?pagewanted=all
.

In some species of poison frogs
: Hanna Kokko and Michael Jennions, “Behavioural Ecology: Ways to Raise Tadpoles,”
Nature
464 (2010): 990.

The male midwife toad carries strings
: Masson,
Emperor’s Embrace
, 74–75.

a nod to marmosets and tamarins
: David P. Barash and Judith Eve Lipton,
Strange Bedfellows: The Surprising Connection Between Sex, Evolution and Monogamy
(New York: Bellevue Literary Press, 2009), 73–76.

cotton-top tamarin fathers start carrying
: Sofia Refetoff Zahed et al., “Social Dynamics and Individual Plasticity of Infant Care Behavior in Cooperatively Breeding Cotton-Top Tamarins,”
American Journal of Primatology
72, no. 4 (2009): 296.

showed that in a frightening situation
: Karen M. Kostan and Charles T. Snowdon, “Attachment and Social Preferences in Cooperatively-Reared Cotton-Top Tamarins,”
American Journal of Primatology
57, no. 3 (2002): 131–39,
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1482833
.

exiled when childbirth moved out of the home
: Judith Walzer Leavitt,
Make Room for Daddy: The Journey from Waiting Room to Birthing Room
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009), 1–7, 8, 161–63, 231–33, 236, 242–43, 245, 259, 260, 261, 266.

Humans are predominantly monogamous
: Masson,
Emperor’s Embrace
, 53.

“combines short-term and long-term mating bonds”
: Bernard Chapais, “Monogamy, Strongly Bonded Groups, and the Evolution of Human Social Structure,”
Evolutionary Anthropology
22, no. 2 (2013): 52–65.

graceful example of harmony and monogamy
: Barash and Lipton,
Strange Bedfellows
, 28–29.

likely dates back to the dinosaurs
: David J. Varricchio et al., “Avian Paternal Care Had Dinosaur Origin,”
Science
322 (2008): 1826–28,
www.esf.edu/EFB/faculty/documents/varricchio2008paternalcaredinosours.pdf
.

are increasingly seeking paternity tests
: Ruth Padawer, “Who Knew I Was Not the Father?”
New York Times
, Nov. 17, 2009,
www.nytimes.com/2009/11/22/magazine/22Paternity-t.html?pagewanted=all
.

a wandering male cannot justify his infidelity
: Barash and Lipton,
Strange Bedfellows
, 53.

males can be coaxed to rise
: Stephen J. Suomi, interview with the author, March 11, 2011.

“One of the most striking aspects”
: William K. Redican and G. Mitchell, “Play Between Adult Male and Infant Rhesus Monkeys,”
American Zoologist
14, no. 1 (1974): 295–302.

one in ten new fathers suffers
: Charlene Laino, “Men Also Get Postpartum Depression,” WebMD, May 6, 2008,
www.webmd.com/depression/postpartum-depression/news/20080506/men-also-get-postpartum-depression
.

linked to conduct problems or hyperactivity
: Michael E. Lamb, ed.,
The Role of the Father in Child Development
, 5th ed. (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2010), 107–108.

5. INFANTS: SCULPTING FATHERS’ BRAINS

Salvador Minuchin, whose book
: James P. McHale,
Charting the Bumpy Road of Coparenthood: Understanding the Challenges of Family Life
(Washington, DC: Zero to Three, 2007), 5.

think about various roles in their lives
: Carolyn Pape Cowan and Philip A. Cowan,
When Partners Become Parents: The Big Life Change for Couples
(New York: Basic Books, 1992), 80–82.

Kotelchuck did four studies
: Michael E. Lamb, ed.,
The Role of the Father in Child Development
, 5th ed. (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2010), 96.

fathers often show the same elation
: Ibid., 97.

Fathers also pick up on cues
: Sarah Blaffer Hrdy,
Mothers and Others: The Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Understanding
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), 42.

a unique response to their babies’ cries
: James E. Swain and Jeffrey P. Lorberbaum, “Imaging the Human Parental Brain,” in
Neurobiology of the Parental Brain
(Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2008), 84.

only in the past few centuries that health care
: Marian F. MacDorman, Donna L. Hoyert, and T. J. Mathew, “Recent Declines in Infant Mortality in the United States, 2005–2011,” National Center for Health Statistics data brief no. 120 (April 2013),
www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db120.htm
.

Anxiety in new parents and obsessive-compulsive
: James F. Leckman, “Early Parental Preoccupations and Behaviors and Their Possible Relationship to the Symptoms of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder,”
Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica
100, Supplement S396 (1999): 1–26.

breast-feeding mothers showed greater brain response
: Pilyoung Kim et al., “Breastfeeding, Brain Activation to Own Infant Cry, and Maternal Sensitivity,”
Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry
52, no. 8 (2011): 907–15.

increased activity in the prefrontal cortex
: James E. Swain, “Parenting and Neural Plasticity in Fathers’ Brains” (unpublished study), personal communication, March 26, 2013.

She enlisted one hundred Israeli couples
: Ruth Feldman, “Infant-Mother and Infant-Father Synchrony: The Coregulation of Positive Arousal,”
Infant Mental Health Journal
24, no. 1 (2003): 1–23,
www.tinyurl.com/nyfeypl
.

men who take time off from work
: Lamb,
Role of the Father
, 5th ed., 97–98.

referred to as fragile families
: Natasha J. Cabrera et al., “Explaining the Long Reach of Fathers’ Prenatal Involvement on Later Paternal Engagement,”
Journal of Marriage and Family
70, no. 5 (2008): 1094,
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2822357
.

the researchers recruited fifty-six couples
: Liat Tikotzky et al., “Infant Sleep and Paternal Involvement in Infant Caregiving During the First 6 Months of Life,”
Journal of Pediatric Psychology
36, no. 1 (2010): 36–46.

can include tantrums, biting, and kicking
: Paul G. Ramchandani et al., “Do Early Father-Infant Interactions Predict the Onset of Externalizing Behaviours in Young Children?”
Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry
54, no. 1 (2013): 56–64,
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3562489
.

looked at 624 men in Cebu
: Lee T. Gettler et al., “Longitudinal Evidence That Fatherhood Decreases Testosterone in Human Males,”
PNAS
108, no. 39 (2011): 16194–99,
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3182719
.

topical testosterone can be dangerous
: “Safety Concerns About Testosterone Gel,” WebMD,
www.webmd.com/fda/safety-concerns-about-testosterone-gel
.

biology behind father-infant attachments
: Patty X. Kuo et al., “Neural Responses to Infants Linked with Behavioral Interactions and Testosterone in Fathers,”
Biological Psychology
91, no. 2 (2012): 302–306.

6. CHILDREN: LANGUAGE, LEARNING, AND
BATMAN

From World War II through the 1960s
: Michael E. Lamb, ed.,
The Role of the Father in Child Development
, 5th ed. (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2010), 4–5.

toughness, power, status, sturdiness
: Michael Kimmel,
Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men
(New York: Harper, 2008), 45–46.

looking at children’s language development
: Nadya Pancsofar and Lynne Vernon-Feagans, “Fathers’ Early Contributions to Children’s Language Development in Families from Low-Income Rural Communities,”
Early Childhood Research Quarterly
25, no. 4 (2010): 450–63.

a boost in children’s intellectual development
: Catherine S. Tamis-LeMonda et al., “Fathers and Mothers at Play With Their 2- and 3-Year-Olds: Contributions to Language and Cognitive Development,”
Child Development
75, no. 6 (2004): 1806–20,
www.popcenter.umd.edu/filab/publications/images-firg/tamis%20lemonda%20shannon%20cabrera%20lamb%202004.pdf
.

wealthier fathers produced a greater rise
: Daniel Nettle, “Why Do Some Dads Get More Involved Than Others? Evidence from a Large British Cohort,”
Evolution and Human Behavior
29 (2008): 416–23,
www.staff.ncl.ac.uk/daniel.nettle/ehb%20paternal%20investment.pdf
.

fathers’ influence over children’s intellectual development
: Erin Pougnet et al., “Fathers’ Influence on Children’s Cognitive and Behavioural Functioning: A Longitudinal Study of Canadian Families,”
Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science
43, no. 3 (2011): 173–82.

think of their fathers as playmates
: Michael E. Lamb, ed.,
The Role of the Father in Child Development
, 4th ed. (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2004), 254.

“Fathers often use objects in an incongruous way”
: Daniel Paquette, “Theorizing the Father-Child Relationship: Mechanisms and Developmental Outcomes,”
Human Development
47, no. 4 (2004): 205.