Why Fathers Really Matter

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/09/opinion/sunday/why-fathers-really-matter.html?pagewanted=all

by lambtron • 14 years ago

97 59 14 years ago

smoyer• 14 years ago

This article is clearly on the nature side of the "Nurture versus Nature" argument and clearly genetics can play a big part in how your child turns out. But why can't we just say "both" to the nature versus nurture argument? Who hasn't been either negatively or positively impacted by the role of their fathers once born?

mtoddh2• 14 years ago

To me it seemed like the article was less about nature vs nurture and more about the author's resentment that men aren't held as accountable for their children's health as mothers are:

From the article,

Older mothers no longer need to shoulder all the blame: “It’s the aging man who damages the offspring."... The well-being of the children used to be the sole responsibility of their mothers. Now fathers have to be held accountable, too. Having twice endured the self-scrutiny and second-guessing that goes along with being pregnant, I wish them luck.

yummyfajitas3• 14 years ago

It's also a silly conclusion. The effect of paternal age on offspring is vastly smaller than that of maternal age.

philwelch2• 14 years ago

The difference is that any Lamarckian epigenetic influence would still be passed on at conception, and is at any rate set throughout the father's entire lifetime. There's no actual period of time, like pregnancy, that presents itself as a particular opportunity for criticism.

adaml_623• 14 years ago

The author really seems to buy into the concept of a blame culture doesn't she. People don't seem to realise that there is a chance of 'bad' stuff happening and if they want the good stuff they need to take a risk. You might be able to minimise some risks but if you obsess over them you're going to go down the path of seeing only danger everywhere.

Of course this blame culture develops and spreads through social networks where people talk behind the back of someone who doesn't have a perfect child and blames their genetics or parenting skills or lifestyle choices.

antidoh• 14 years ago

I took that undercurrent as slightly more firm than tongue in cheek. The overall description of the science and its implications were interesting enough to make the article worthwhile.

Everyone has a bias, and a popular article is going to let that show through more than a scientific paper, to make it interesting.

You may as well complain that comics are funny when they observe the human condition.

johnernaut• 14 years ago

That much is clearly clear.

awakeasleep• 14 years ago

There is something weird about how humans look to understand things in dualistic thought.

We want to believe in Nature vs Nurture as if they are entirely separate, when the scientific details probably won't be so simple.

Claudus• 14 years ago

Supposedly: Children with older fathers and grandfathers 'live longer' (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4152379)

"Experts have known for some time that lifespan is linked to the length of structures known as telomeres that sit at the end of the chromosomes that house our genetic code, DNA. Generally, a shorter telomere length means a shorter life expectancy. ... However, scientists have discovered that in sperm, telomeres lengthen with age."

Dn_Ab3• 14 years ago

Causal links cannot be drawn with that paper. This study was unique in showing that telomere length determination by paternal age was generationally additive. It was not designed to determine if older paternal age translates into longer lifespan.

JshWright4• 14 years ago

It's an interesting article, but a horrible title... As if to say the impact fathers have after conception doesn't 'really' matter...

philwelch2• 14 years ago

It's part of the casual misandry that permeates our culture.

winter_blue• 14 years ago

I agree with you to an extent; fathers are often seen as incapable of raising children in American culture. However, do you know if there is any literature or articles/discussion on this? (In particular about how fathers are seen, and more broadly on the misandry.)

s_baby2• 14 years ago

According to Warren Farrell NYTimes is systematic and deliberate in perpetuating misandry. This is coming from a man who was both a founding member in a major feminist organization(N.O.W) and a writer for the NYTimes.

http://www.ifeminists.net/introduction/editorials/2003/0610f...

lifeisstillgood• 14 years ago

Nice word. Thanks

king_jester• 14 years ago

There is no such thing as institutional misandry, so no, misandry does not permeate our culture. However, the headline is total click bait, but this is the NYT so no surprise there.

bearmf6• 14 years ago

Father's primary impact is in his genetic material. Secondary impact is his parenting impact which starts to matter mostly after child is 2 years old. Before that, from conception to birth to 2 years, mother is much more important.

JshWright4• 14 years ago

Care to expand on that?

My daughter is two weeks old today. In the past 14 days, my wife has been responsible for providing 100% of what our baby consumes, but at least half the time, I'm the one feeding her (we're about 50/50 breastfed/pumped breastmilk in a bottle).

Aside from that, there's effectively no difference in our roles in caring for her. We both change diapers, we both bathe her, we both hold her and comfort her when she's fussy. We don't pay any particular attention to making it a 50/50 split for these activities, but it probably works out to approximately that, for all intents and purposes.

Right now her schedule seems fairly nocturnal (she seems most awake from ~2300 to ~0400), and I tend to be the one up with her during that time, since I find I'm pretty productive during those hours anyway (I've gotten pretty good at one-handed typing).

On a practical level, there's effectively no difference in the amount of care provided between her mother and I. Your statement that her impact is "much more important" is fairly offensive to me (and while I haven't bothered talking to my wife about a comment on Hacker News... I suspect she would be equally offended).

ars3• 14 years ago

Do you actually have any kids? Because that is not in the slightest true.

Even very young babies recognize both parents and expect different things from them.

DanBC• 14 years ago

Do you have any reliable sources for this please? Or is it opinion? Thank you.

mtoddh2• 14 years ago

Before that, from conception to birth to 2 years, mother is much more important.

Uninvolved fathers of America take note, you're off the hook until age 2. Apparently prior to that you don't really matter much anyway.

</sarcasm>

omni5• 14 years ago

New research has indicated otherwise http://www.thestar.com/healthzone/news%20&%20features/ar...

paul9290• 14 years ago

They matter - just look to inner cities here in the US where many do not have father figures and thus end up on the streets then in jail.

pavel_lishin• 14 years ago

I don't necessarily disagree, but there are a lot of other factors that make those kids' childhood precarious.

brc3• 14 years ago

I clicked the link expecting to find a discussion on the role a father has in the raising of children.

What I found was a wandering discussion about epigenetics with zero real-world applicability, given that all Fathers-to-be or existing Fathers cannot rewind the clock.

Changes in a childs crucial upbringing years will have orders-of-magniture more effect than this stuff.

Besides, it's dangerous to program little ears with 'you can't help being fat, it's because your father ate too much as a teenager'.

Personal responsibility is the most important thing for a child to learn. With personal responsibility, even the fattest person can get back to a normal weight range.

tokenadult• 14 years ago

"In the past decade or so, the study of epigenetics has become so popular it’s practically a fad."

Well, that's the one statement in the article I can readily accept as true for purposes of discussion here. Much more debatable is the assertion further down, "Twentieth-century Darwinian genetics dismissed Lamarckism as laughable, but because of epigenetics, Lamarckism is staging a comeback," which includes a link to a low-quality source. Much better sources on epigenetics for our discussion here are

"Epigenetics again: will it cause a revolution in evolution?"

http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2011/09/26/epigeneti...

which is a follow-up to

"Is 'epigenetics' a revolution in evolution?"

http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2011/08/21/is-epigen...

"The Epigenetics Miracle?"

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/08/21/the-epigenetic...

The scientifically careful study of gene regulation is NOT going to revive Lamarckian ideas, not at all. But speculation about this is probably in the popular literature again for years to come.

hsshah• 14 years ago

For a less biased still gentle introduction on epigenetics: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/body/epigenetics.html

kens• 14 years ago

Epigenetics is a very interesting area, and I expect it to increase in importance following the ENCODE project that just came out.

The NYTimes article is a bit strange, though, trying to politicize epigenetics through the "mommy wars". The article also muddles the difference between genetic issues due to aging fathers and epigenetic issues. The recent Icelandic study links mutations in sperm from aging fathers to autism and schizophrenia, which is genetic (the mutations show up in genome sequencing), so it's basically irrelevant to the article's epigenetic thesis. The NYTimes article mentions a theory that maybe epigenetic regulation is reducing DNA repair and causing mutations, but that's a pretty tenuous connection.

It's silly to turn this into a "blame game", but it is interesting that males and females contribute different types of genetic errors: females typically introduce chromosome errors, while males introduce DNA mutations. 20% of human eggs have the wrong number of chromosomes, compared with 3-4% of sperm. A cell has to split the chromosomes twice in meiosis to form a gamete, which is a difficult process where a lot can go wrong. Eggs sit around potentially for decades and then need to twice split properly, and this becomes much more error-prone with age. The first split happens at ovulation, and the second at fertilization (which is much later than I'd expect). These errors in chromosome separation are the leading cause of miscarriage and mental retardation. On the other hand, males are the main source of DNA mutations, since sperm are constantly being created, and each round of DNA replication has a chance to introduce errors. [Reference: Molecular Biology of the Cell, chapter 21, which is an interesting book]

Last week I read the book "The Epigenetics Revolution", which I recommend as it gives a good description of epigenetics. http://www.amazon.com/The-Epigenetics-Revolution-Understandi... (non-affiliate link)

AutoCorrect• 14 years ago

eggs don't sit around for decades. a study published recently discounted the theory that a female is born with her entire complement of eggs - to the contrary, like sperm, eggs are produced throughout the female's life.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/02/120229-women...

markyc• 14 years ago

[..] a child’s genetic future is set for life. [..] Character: check

Doesn't the author mean personality? I thought personality is in the genes and character is built throughout one's life.

andyl• 14 years ago

Misandry: alive and well at the NYT.

anuraj• 14 years ago

Does epigenetics qualify as a science. That needs to be established first.

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