Becoming a dad changes men's brains

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-becoming-a-dad-changes-mens-brains/

by momentmaker • 1 month ago

111 97 1 month ago

greenflag• 1 month ago

Becoming a dad simultaneously made me more empathetic (seeing a little person from the beginning for all they are) but also more impatient (fewer hours in the day), but beyond that not much. Given the notoriety about some of the techniques referenced in this article [0] curious if others notice anything more consistent.

0: https://academic.oup.com/brain/article/140/8/e53/4032512

doubled112• 1 month ago

Empathy, I’m not sure, but I can confirm the lack of patience.

I had less time, less energy, and my tolerance for BS plummeted accordingly.

mrweasel• 1 month ago

The lack of tolerance towards BS and people being difficult in general has gone out the window for sure. In the morning, sure, you get a lot of slack, but when the kindergarten closes at 16:30 and it's now 15:30, I don't have time for people being difficult. We solve the problem, we have 30 minutes, if you're being difficult I'll ignore you. You can complain tomorrow.

JoeBOFH• 1 month ago

I can add to the personal experience piece. I am way more emphatic, to the point I apparently now tear up on certain movies/shows. Also yeah way more impatient and honestly more selfish now due to lack of personal time.

hoyd2• 1 month ago

Songs too.

Hugsbox• 1 month ago

Hell, some TV commercials make me tear up.

hoyd2• 1 month ago

With four kids, I think I have grown more patient with people in general. Also one who got more sentimental.

andrew_lettuce2• 1 month ago

The youngest of my three is now 14. When it's come to managing developers raising kids is a superpower

pavel_lishin2• 1 month ago

After my child was born, I could no longer even look at newspaper headlines where something bad happened to a child.

Now, I can read the headlines, but I still can't read the articles.

mekdoonggi• 1 month ago

I'm still at step one. It's just unbearable. And the rage I feel at people who are apathetic or "there's nothing we can do" is so strong.

derwiki• 1 month ago

Do any of these studies account for new parent sleep deprivation?

spiderfarmer4• 1 month ago

I slept way less and more fragmented when I was a student.

typeofhuman• 1 month ago

That is almost too hard to believe. Sleep less? Ok. More fragmented? Doubtful, unless your baby slept more than 4hrs straight in their infancy.

ignoramous2• 30 days ago

new parent sleep deprivation

Think the 9to5 culture make its even harder. It takes a village, probably 2 if you've got twins / triplets+. 9to5 is not something "long childhood" can be compatible with? https://onbeing.org/programs/alison-gopnik-the-evolutionary-...

karunamurti• 1 month ago

No wonder Magnus lost 4 times in a row.

patates2• 1 month ago

Becoming a dad made me a sensitive snowflake crybaby :)

There were a lot of days on which I cried more than the baby. Diagnosed with anxiety disorder, but then they said it comes with ADHD and probably has little to do with the baby.

As many as one in 10 men will experience paternal postnatal depression or anxiety. The symptoms often look different in dads—anger or sudden outbursts

Oh well.

fatnoah2• 29 days ago

I fully experienced postnatal depression, starting around 12-15 months, and it wasn't until relatively recently (my kid is now 18 years old) that I realized it.

We were living in a 1 bedroom in the city when we had our kid, and moved to a house in a suburb when the kid was 9 months old. My wife and I both worked, but I had a longer commute and a job that frequently required later evenings. Between the job and keeping up the house, I had a few minutes in the morning, random holidays, and part of one weekend day to really spend time. I spiraled into depression and insomnia, overwhelmed by all the work required to keep up the house while also feeling like a terrible father and husband. I was withdrawn, had angry outbursts, and my daily work routine involved sitting in my car in the train station parking lot having a good cry before heading home.

Before our kid started kindergarten, we decided to sell the house and rent a place in the city. Our apartment was about a 30 minute walk from my office with my kid's school as the 1/2 way point. I was actually able to walk my kid to school every day, coach sports that started at 5pm, and have both weekend days available to go on adventures around the city.

patates2• 24 days ago

Thanks for sharing, I can totally relate. I'm so happy for you that things seem to have worked out.

close04• 1 month ago

A previous discussion on this topic which doesn't require a subscription to read: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47820046

b3lvedere• 1 month ago

The first born defenitely changed me somehow. As if some evolution gene was suddenly ordering me "You will protect this with everything in your power!" The second born, not so much. Perhaps the brain was already settled in the right configuration :)

fullstop3• 1 month ago

With the first kid you sterilize everything. After that I guess you learn how much dirt they put in their mouths and don't bother.

andrew_lettuce2• 1 month ago

I have 3 kids. When they started on solids: #1 got fancy home made baby food, like cheesy chicken broccoli frozen into ice cube chunks. #2 got steamed yams and crackers. #3 got whatever we were eating, ripped into baby-sized chunks. All are fine.

MomsAVoxell2• 1 month ago

For me, my first born taught me that love is infinite, no matter how much I loved my wife, that little creature was getting all my love as well, somehow as if there were some parallel source of infinite love for the two of them.

Our second born, taught me that exact same lesson, again - that no matter what, there will always be three human beings in my life for which my love is infinite, and that I would step in front of a bullet for any one of them.

Whereas before it all went down, I was pretty much all alone, now I know for sure there are 3 other human beings I will want to say goodbye to, properly, some day.

plumbees6• 30 days ago

For me is the fact that before I was worry free, and now I'll be worried until the grave.

sublinear• 1 month ago

This mental shift can also occur before your first born.

Some men who are fathers now had to jump in early as the older sibling due to unreliable parents. Some of those men also chose not to be fathers. Taking responsibility for others is a broad range of experiences.

For all that is said about "dysfunctional" families, sometimes adulting early leads to better outcomes because you were given more time to think.

ndr• 1 month ago

https://archive.ph/UwObv

michaelsbradley• 1 month ago

About 2-3 months after the birth of my first child, I started “seeing” the baby’s face vividly whenever I would close my eyes, when I was falling asleep but other times during the day as well. It was not a conscious-voluntary imagination, more like an artifact of my brain rewiring priority numero uno. Our second child is now 3 months old and I have not experienced similar, perhaps because the brain changes already settled down before his birth.

balfirevic• 1 month ago

Tetris effect, but with the baby!

naikrovek• 1 month ago

the only thing that I noticed that changed in me was my sudden understanding of what "fear" really is.

I had not experienced fear prior to becoming a father. The thought of one of my children being ... i'm not even going to say anything more. Use your imagination. That kind of thing scares me so much more than it did before I was a father.

pavel_lishin2• 1 month ago

One of our tech leads at work tried to do a team building exercise where we'd go around the table and name our greatest fear.

I was very glad to have been late to that particular meeting. It would have been pretty awkward for everyone if I'd started crying at the table.

fcatalan3• 1 month ago

Exaggerating a bit, I felt like my old self was dead and I just happened to somehow have inherited his memories.

But a more concrete thing: While before I might have been saddened about bad things happening to kids, like any normal person would, after having kids myself I experience an stronger reaction:

I get almost physically ill when I hear about kids getting harmed.

bombcar2• 1 month ago

I was surprised how sudden the change was - I didn't become a dad to my kid, I became a dad to all kids within sight or sound. Sure, most of the time I don't have to do anything, but I certainly notice much more now.

bogrollben2• 1 month ago

This. Also, the feelings have become stronger as I age.

whateverboat• 1 month ago

I already feel like this and I don't have kids or want kids.

trizoza• 1 month ago

Same here, I can't even read articles on BBC about child abusers, it makes me nauseous just to skim over a title.

walthamstow• 1 month ago

I was saddened by just the headline and photo of the one last week.

The BBC and UK news readers in general absolutely love stories about child abusers, so they get prominent placing (and even a live blog on the sentencing last week)

pixel_popping3• 1 month ago

Since I have a daughter, those "thoughts" are straight violence to the next level in my head when I hear or even see children being mistreated, I'm normally not favorable for any form of violence but strangely, some crimes suddenly gets a pass and progressive decapitation becomes reasonable.

flowerthoughts• 1 month ago

I've been wanting to visit courts for a while, but never had the time.

I had a look at the local courts' agendas, and I was appalled by how many SA/CSAM cases there were. Probably half of them or so. Not just to children, but there's more than one case every week of that, and this is in a population of a few hundred thousand.

Still not enough reason to do all the CSAM scanning the governments want big tech to do, but it's definitely bigger than I though. (Or just easier to gather evidence on now, so that's what gets into courts...)

korse• 1 month ago

Exaggerating a bit, I felt like my old self was dead and I just happened to somehow have inherited his memories.

I had a small mental breakdown anticipating that this was going to happen while my wife was pregnant with our first. It didn't. I ended up replacing the part of my life that was video escapism with kids and kept everything else the same. Three kids in, things are going great.

I get almost physically ill when I hear about kids getting harmed.

Replace ill with enraged and I have had the same experience. The strong emotions were a bit of a surprise.

throwaw12• 1 month ago

I get almost physically ill when I hear about kids getting harmed.

This is how Israel's war radicalized me, I stopped watching videos, but they made me depressed, burned out, angry, because everytime I watched videos, my brain started asking "what would I do if this happened to my kids, would I join Hamas? probably yes"

I got burned out from these thoughts

sir0010010• 30 days ago

So you think you would've hang glided into a music festival and shot at all the young people dancing? Or you would've done this: https://saturday-october-seven.com/ ?

cbeach2• 29 days ago

It was Hamas’s war - started by a terrorist organisation butchering, abducting and raping young unarmed citizens.

The scale of the aftermath is what happens when an advanced democracy faces an existential threat from a terrorist-led neighbouring region, and must act to neutralise that threat for the safety of its citizens.

tayo42• 1 month ago

I don't think it's exagaration.unless you had kids young, before you had established yourself and some kind of identity, it does all go away. Who you were and your hopes and dreams all die after your newborn arrives. Your just a parent now trying to fit a life into 1 or 2 hours of free time.

bestouff• 1 month ago

That's how privacy-harming policies are so successful: "but think of the children !"

glaslong• 1 month ago

Some good biological imperatives at work! Beautifully Darwinian.

port113• 1 month ago

The Life of Dad was a good companion through the pregnancy, even if the author preaches a bit in some areas that felt off. It explains the massive mental transformation for fathers, the impact of testosterone, and why you’re “more affected” (so to speak) by being an involved father.

I had a spell of absurd anxiety. I’m not the same person in many ways. Being a dad is frekking cool and the weirdest challenge of my life.

And to your last point… I’m such a chill, no-violence dude, but once a drunk teenager walked into us and yelled at my baby. I was shocked, but 5 seconds later I only wanted to have access to a gun to shoot that teen right there and then. Yikes.

I don’t think any children should be harmed in a conflict. The knowledge of that, or of what we used to do to children in the past, are both things that can ruin a day for me.

bigfatkitten• 1 month ago

I used to work in digital forensics and I used to occasionally see horrible things as part of that work; child abuse material, beheading videos and the like.

I’d become largely desensitised to the content, but after becoming a parent I just couldn’t deal with the CAM anymore.

darkteflon• 1 month ago

Jesus dude, could you edit that to be less explicit please.

plumbees6• 30 days ago

150 of em. Just gone, for no reason. That week was agonizing.

solumunus• 29 days ago

I used to watch a lot of true crime and now if child abuse is involved I just cannot do it.

fatnoah2• 29 days ago

I get almost physically ill when I hear about kids getting harmed.

Same. I literally have trouble sleeping after hearing about things like this.

parpfish• 1 month ago

learning or doing anything "changes your brain". that's how learning works.

i hate this phrase and how it's generally used for scare-mongering headlines.

fcatalan3• 1 month ago

This is not mere learning, must have some kind of pre-wired special mechanism because it's very quick and very strong.

danesparza2• 1 month ago

First, this is true - learning or doing anything does change your brain. This article isn't talking about just that.

I personally don't think it's meant to scare-monger, either - although I'm sure opinions may differ on the subject.

What is unique about being a dad is having a living breathing creature depend on you. There are hormones exchanged. AND you're learning and doing something. AND you're remembering (and having to deal with) your own childhood memories. And realizing that in your memories, you were the kid ... now you're the adult. It's different.

mcbishop2• 1 month ago

As a dad, I have a strong compulsion to tell (bad) dad jokes. Ideally puns. All the time. I didn't used to be this way.

danesparza2• 1 month ago

Literally laughing out loud to this.

I can relate.

disgruntledphd2• 1 month ago

I have always had this desire, and now I have social validation that it's part of my role ;)

fcatalan3• 1 month ago

Are your kids teenagers already? Telling them in front of their friends is 10x better.

mcbishop2• 30 days ago

Yup. The closer I am to her friends... the stronger the compulsion. It's like magnetism.

mghackerlady• 1 month ago

As a daughter, I approve. Hell, I'm the one telling them to my dad most of the time

codeduck• 1 month ago

my Brother in pungnaciousness.

dofm• 1 month ago

Iliza Shlesinger has a great bit about how men discover that "woman is person too" when they have a baby daughter.

Best not go overboard on this whole thing about fathers and increased empathy, though.

Elon Musk has a father, after all. So did Donald Trump.

The Roblox CEO has children. Magical universal father empathy is clearly not working out there, or he would shut down his business and give any remaining money to charities.

Aperocky• 1 month ago

Read the whole article expecting it to explain how it would have changed, was disappointed to not read that.

morkalork• 1 month ago

Becoming a new parent I knew I'd sleep less and be tired all the time but what I didn't know was simultaneously how much energy I'd have to keep going. It's almost like low grade, months long adrenalin rush. Very strange.

WarmWash• 1 month ago

Fascinating how things that are most relevant to continuing your species are the things with the hardest coded behaviors.

coderatlarge• 1 month ago

and yet: paternal filial cannibalism

jurgenburgen• 1 month ago

Don’t do that

nerdsniper• 1 month ago

Cronus is not supposed to be a role model!

bogrollben2• 1 month ago

I have 3 teenagers and this claim seems plainly obvious to me.

otikik• 1 month ago

I had nightmares about bad things happening to me before. Like, getting ran over by a car, or falling off a cliff.

When my wife got pregnant, it stopped. I started having nightmares about bad things happening to my son instead.

Fun.

ChrisArchitect• 1 month ago

Previously related:

Dad brains: How fatherhood rewires the male mind

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47820046

0rganic_host• 1 month ago

Yeah, it gives them a superiority complex --- you're all still ants, now there are more, lovely.

plumbees6• 30 days ago

The changed I noticed is twofold: + If a situation would not be acceptable for my son (bullying) then I shouldn't have to tolerate it at work (workplace bullying)

+ Priorities shift dramatically. I see director level people running around like chickens without heads trying to fill in an excel sheet because one of the higher ups has sent down a directive; without them realizing that the time spent doing so is meaningless dribble that doesn't matter. It's like things that were not obvious time sinks are now very obvious and I'm less patient (of nonsense) because I have something more important to care about.

Becoming a dad changes men's brains

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