Saliha Bava and Mark Greene are aghast that the Wall Street Journal claims his testosterone won’t allow him to nurture his kids.
You can read the study here, for yourself.
The study indicates that those men who took parental leave, (their contributions at home were measured across a list of 25 specific child-care tasks), didn’t do as much child care by a long shot compared to the mothers, even in cases where the mother might be still working.
It’s an outrage right? The study’s authors, father and son team Steven E. Rhoads and Christopher H. Rhoads, go on to say that men don’t have the urge to nurture because of biological factors. The study’s authors state, “Males have more testosterone, which inhibits nurturing, and women more oxytocin, which enhances it”.
Whoah. Now wait just a damn minute. Let’s just hold our horses here, people.
Evolutionary biology is only one thread in the full tapestry of human behavioral studies. To invoke the purely biological, as a predeterminate to how a man will function as a father or as a spouse, doesn’t take into account the social cultural processes that inform gender identity and hence gender equality.
In other words, I’m not buying the following: “Sorry ladies. Back to the kitchen with you. I would love to nurture my young son, but I have to go manufacture some testosterone at the office.”
Shea goes on the note, “One woman quoted in the study broached what’s problematic about giving male professors parental leave, given the trends identified in the surveys: “If women and men are both granted parental leaves and women recover/nurse/do primary care and men do some care and finish articles, there’s a problem, though a problem with no clear solution.”
I took a peek at this study about how “men don’t really have the biological chops to handle nurturing.” And frankly, I’m little annoyed I had to take the extra time to do this, because I already had to get my son up this morning, dress him, get him his favorite pancakes ( I like to grind a steel cut oats and add them to the batter along with frozen blueberries), make his lunch (with a little love note to him I always try to put in there), look over his homework, and then walk with him to school. On top of that, he was feeling a little off today so I had to pick up some Tylenol for him. I told his teacher that he wasn’t feeling well and let her know that I had given him some Tylenol but to call me if he continued to feel badly. She said they were going on a field trip today, which I actually KNEW because I had filled out the permission slip a few days back and made sure to put it in his backpack, but it had slipped my mind because I wasn’t really tracking THAT part of the school schedule because today was “dress up like your teacher day” and we had decided to not do that because of my son not feeling 100% okay, but he was feeling good enough to go to school and see how things went…..oh. Heh. Sorry…. CLEARLY I’m digressing a bit here…
Anyway, the study states the following in the section titled sample: “5.5 percent (unweighted n=11) were males who had taken paid or unpaid leave in the past two years; 24.7 percent (unweighted n=49) were females who had taken leave in the past two years.”
I’m thinking this means the study draws its conclusions about men, male parental leave, childcare and fairness from interviews with eleven guys. Eleven.
Is the idea here that we can judge the validity of male parental leave based on interviews with eleven guys? And then on top of that we base our conclusions about these new dad’s success or failure on the completion of a list of 25 tasks? Tasks? How male is that? WTF?
Look, I’m not going to go too far into this, but when a baby is born to a couple, it is an event that changes every single aspect of their lives. It can cause extreme emotional turmoil for a women who has given birth. It certainly realigns every single process and function in the household. And it creates significant challenges to the emotional and sexual relationship of the mother and father.
This being said, the opportunity for a working father to live into those changes for a few weeks after a child is born is huge. Being in the house gives a father the opportunity to stay connected to his wife and to participate in the first weeks of his child’s life. This is extremely important. This initial bonding period can impact how connected and involved he is as a father going forward.
Whether or not he does 50% of the child care or 13.675% of the childcare does not determine the validity of a parental leave policy for men. It’s not just about who does the diapers. It’s about being in the home for the first weeks of the most life-altering period his marriage and family is every likely to go through. Personally, I would suggest that if the guy knows what’s good for him, he’ll change the damn diapers.
But, how the work at home and childcare is eventually divided up is an issue for each couple to work out. I’m not saying there isn’t “unfairness” here. But this study is hurtful to men and women, as it tends to generalize based on the narrow lens of evolutionary biology and judges success based on a list of tasks. This is the age old debate about the difference between doing and being. To gauge the relative “fairness” of a couple’s move into early parenting based solely on shared tasks doesn’t take into account a range of relational and interpersonal markers. There’s a hell of a lot more going on there than a list of completed tasks. Its about how the couple are co-creating a new way of living into their relationship with the arrival of a baby.
And don’t get me wrong. The diapers do matter. We all know that. We worked it out at our house. You can do it at yours. Personally, I took pride in scrubbing the bathtub and doing the laundry. I am proud to have done the dishes, changed diapers, taught, played with, and held my baby son close every single day of his life. As a Stay at Home Dad, I still care for my son. I take pride in it to this day. Damn right I do. The experience has fully validated me as a man and as a father. And personally, I feel sorry for guys who are forced to spend their days at the office instead of at home with their babies. Because raising a child places demands on you to grow as a person in ways nothing else compare to. Nothing. I feel incredibly lucky that I get to be here for my son.
But, really, Misters Rhodes and Rhodes, testosterone is not causing men to dodge nurturing their sons and daughters. The social factors that inform a father’s ability to nurture his children are vastly more powerful. Do we as a culture respect Stay at Home Dads or empower men to make that choice? Because maybe we should. With the rise of the Stay at Home Dad, I can assure you that a lot of men are raising their children with the same deeply felt sense of connection and nurturing that mother’s have known about for years. And it’s making us better men in the process.
Meanwhile, maybe you two should stop being so task-oriented and just give each other a nice hug.
I would agree that the whole biological determinism happening in that study is just… stupid. I really hate that “women are more nurturing, men just want to hunt” stuff. While there are biological factors (obviously), I would argue that socialization plays a much bigger role in parenting. I really would not be too surprised if men did less “parenting” tasks but I wouldn’t view that as a fault of men, just that they have not been socialized to be parents. Women have many more examples of how to be an active parent, men don’t, though I do think that is… Read more »
“I really would not be too surprised if men did less “parenting” tasks but I wouldn’t view that as a fault of men, just that they have not been socialized to be parents. . .” To make such a comment about parenthood based on the first few weeks of a baby’s life is absurd and meaningless. How about checking back in when the kid’s 22 and out of college? You’re confused as to what a parent is. Some people imagine that parents just change diapers, and if they don’t change 50% of the diapers they aren’t parents. That’s ridiculous. Parents… Read more »
I was responding to the study’s results. The question of whether the first couple weeks is relevant for assessing parenting is a question for the study design, which I did not address in my post. I did not discuss what makes a parent and which tasks constitute being a parent. Please note that I put “parenting” tasks in quotation marks, indicating it as an arbitrary categorization. “Much to the chagrin of some, fathers don’t breastfeed, mothers do. There is a clear biological reality that some here refuse to acknowledge that impacts the interaction of mothers vs. fathers in the earliest… Read more »
“I didn’t say what a parent was. I feel like you are trying to debate me on something I haven’t discussed at all in my post. I think your issue is with the study design itself.” I am not debating, just correcting. You stated: “I really would not be too surprised if men did less “parenting” tasks but I wouldn’t view that as a fault of men, just that THEY HAVE NOT BEEN SOCIALIZED TO BE PARENTS. Women have many more examples of how to be an active parent, men don’t, though I do think that is changing.” Those are… Read more »
What I’ve noticed with female friends is that they are FAR MORE comfortable around children, do the whole AWWWW so cuuteee stuff and really show an interest in children that aren’t their own without fear. The men, myself, we hold back from the pedophilia hysteria, some of the women clearly seem to get along better with the kids because they have had practice and aren’t restricted by fear. This changes when the men have their own kids but I do wonder how often this happens, females are just trusted around kids far more than males it seems here in Australia.… Read more »
heh, I’m like the complete opposite around children than your female friends. I am incredibly uncomfortable and I don’t know what to do with them. I am also the youngest in my family, which I think influences this, because I was never around children younger than me. I definitely agree with you on this, that many men seem to restrict themselves around children. I would argue part of that may also be from the perceived feminine behavior associated with cooing over children and baby talk. Men generally seem to avoid behaviors associated with the feminine. Both are outdated, harmful notions… Read more »
Best friend had a baby a while ago and his fiance dumped the kid in my lap to look after when they visited whilst we talked, 26 and it was my first time holding a baby and I felt like I was holding a glass/extremely fragile being. What’s weird is children and animals seem to like me and this baby was no exception, she seemed quite comfortable with me. Definitely an interesting experience, if a lil freaky! The baby talk and cooing always made me wonder wtf people were thinking though, I wonder if the baby sits there thinking the… Read more »
How about this for a thought?
Maybe the mother of the couple decided that it was preferable that her stay-at-home male partner add to the family income rather then wax the banisters to a glossy shine?
Is it possible that these compromises are negotiated with the desires of both partners in mind?
There’s another study showing that the more men parent, the better they get at it, partly because it leads to a drop in testosterone production. So it seems the whole testosterone excuse for bad parenting on the part of men doesn’t really hold water any way. See http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/13/health/research/13testosterone.html
Here’s a wrinkle to add to the whole ‘parenting lower’s men’s testosterone’.
It may be that agitated men produce more testosterone because they’re _agitated_ and their body is trying to calm them down.
If highly involved dads produce less testosterone maybe it’s because they’re less stressed, and maybe they’re less stressed because they are being allowed to exercise their biological imperative to care for their young.
That’s your opinion, which you are entitled to but it only matters in your household.
What you and others don’t get is that many fathers willingly take on more than equal financial responsibility; contrary to your argument, that’s not financial exploitation. It’s this radical comcept called being a family member, willing to do more than 50 % if thats what the family needs. And it’s not financial exploitation. It’s called being part of a family.
If that was a reply to Razor’s comment, I think he was satirising marie’s contribution and pointing out what you just said.
If a man isn’t doing 50% of the housework it might be because he’s lazy, or it might be because he’s working 50 hours a week to pay all the new bills.
That was meant to be a reply to Marie actually.
The authors of the study need to take a basic statistics course.
They have 11 men in the sample who took leave. THIS IS NOT ENOUGH !!!!! (Given the number of statistical tests they perform, it would be impossible to achieve a significant result, if they applied a proper correction)
Then they completely fail to correct for the Multiple Comparisons problem. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_comparisons
The test they should use is called an analysis of one way variance (ANOVA). Not a mass of T-tests “descriptive statistics”
This study is a load of crap.
I’m not sure where to come down on this study. First, there’s indignation, because I’m a single father, I have my son during the school week, and so if we suddenly didn’t have family leave I’d be in serious bad shape whenever my son got sick or was otherwise unable to go to school. Then there’s the part of me that has always wondered how women do it, I’m certainly better at the “Here’s the daily routine, let’s follow it” part of child rearing than the “here’s some free time, find something nurturing and educational and fun to do with… Read more »
This article is very good and it’s too bad that Eric M and Henry Vandenburgh made such negative comments. Fathers who don’t take equal responsibility for housework and childcare are guilty of domestic exploitation and they certainly do NOT deserve tenure.
Mothers who don’t take equal responsibility for earning a paycheck and paying bills are guilty of financial exploitation and certainly do NOT deserve tenure.
If they’re tenure track, they won’t have a lot of time to daddy. 60-80 hour weeks teaching and researching. Take it from one who knows.
It said parental leave, though, so they wouldn’t be teaching classes.
However, I would be very surprised if the research stopped. I think that was one of the criticisms, was that men continued research and women did not.
I wouldn’t be able to blame the fathers for continuing the researching though, I think I would go crazy if I just stayed at home and took care of a child all day without any sort of work like research or writing.
New fathers evidently use some of their time to further secure their family’s future security. It’s a valid concern. Raising children isn’t free.