The Five Ways How Becoming a Parent Neurologically Changes Men Versus Women
Women’s brains become streamlined, men’s testosterone levels drop, women learn to smell their baby, men become more problem-solving orientated, and much more
Everyone knows that parenthood is a massive life event that will profoundly change our lives. However, it will do more than just change our lives, it will also change us on a physiological and Neurological level.
Here are the five main ways that parenthood changes us on a physiological and neurological level.
The wiring in women’s brains changes to make them more focused and capable of nurturing their child
It’s popular to say that pregnancy shrinks women’s brains and, in the process, makes them more prepared for parenthood; however, though the latter part is true, the former part is a misunderstanding. It doesn’t shrink women’s brains, it streamlines them.
The misunderstanding stems from a study from 2002 that found that pregnant women do see their brains shrink, but then after giving birth, see them return to normal size. However, the back-to-normal-size brain is different to the pre-pregnancy brain, it is now streamlined and baby-focused.
Basically, pregnancy leads to a reduction in grey matter in women’s brains, and that reduction remains once the brain returns to normal size.
Grey matter is responsible for numerous tasks but most importantly in this case it is responsible for social cognition, which relates to the ability to interact with others — so think interpreting people’s feelings and forming attachments to people et cetera.
Because of this, the reduction in grey matter women see through pregnancy is believed to lead women’s brains to become more efficient and streamlined when it comes to social cognition, which increases the capability of women to form a strong attachment to their new infants through increasing their ability to interpret their needs.
So, it gives women the power to form a stronger connection with their newborn than they otherwise could do by giving them the power to better communicate with their child, and by helping them form such a strong connection, it also makes them less interested in forming connections with others i.e. it makes them more focused on just the child.
That means pregnancy literally changes women’s brains to make them better able to read a baby’s needs, better able to communicate with their baby, better able to connect with their baby, and through that, more interested in meeting their baby’s needs, better able to handle the stress of a newborn, and less interested in forming connections with the outside world.
It’s believed the changes last for at least 2 years, however, these changes were found not to occur in men, which has led the study’s authors to believe that the changes do legitimately occur because of pregnancy and not simply being around a child.
So, a woman has to go through pregnancy to see the changes, though further studies are planned to confirm i.e. to test whether women who adopt see any form of change.
Being a father causes testosterone levels in men to drop
A 2011 study found that when a child is born, a new father sees his testosterone levels drop, with the highest recorded drop being upwards of 34 percent.
Testosterone in men is largely responsible for motivating them to find new partners by making them more competitive.
This matters because parenthood favours a man focusing on his family and as dropping testosterone levels makes them less aggressive and competitive, it makes them more likely to focus on their family.
This effect is believed to be why higher testosterone levels in a man make men more attractive to women, women have evolved to use men’s testosterone levels to judge whether they are single or taken — something which in our precognitive days was likely very beneficial i.e. why waste your time pursuing a man if he will be more interested in his family than you?
That means becoming a father biologically alters a man to prepare him to be a father, and the crazy thing is, the more a man’s testosterone drops on the day a child is born, the more likely he is months later to be more involved as a hands-on father
Yep, no jokes, it has been found that the lower the amounts of testosterone in men the more likely they are to be rewarded with oxytocin and dopamine while interacting with their children.
So, lower testosterone in men makes parenting more rewarding — which is no doubt why they see a drop when becoming a father.
This is backed up by studies which have found that men who have higher levels of testosterone are more likely to have marital problems and to divorce, and are less likely to show sympathy and respond to a crying baby i.e. they get less biologically speaking rewarded for it and so are less responsive.
So, a man’s testosterone levels rather than being linked to his sex drive are more linked to his fatherhood skills. There is even some evidence that shows that the drop is permanent i.e. so it never returns to the pre-fatherhood level.
That means parenthood literally does in a way tame male competitiveness — but in a good way.
However, there is one caveat to male testosterone levels after birth, a baby crying typically leads to an increase in testosterone — so it literally raises the male temperature.
This is potentially because a baby in distress may have in our distant past signified a threat, which may have led men to have evolved to become combative on the sound of it i.e. to prepare to handle the threat.
So, a baby crying can lead the instincts of men to turn to preparing to face danger rather than preparing to provide nurture.
But regardless of that, the drop in testosterone caused by fatherhood truly does lead to men becoming better fathers than they otherwise would be, even if a crying baby seemingly momentarily turns them back to their normal selves.
Newborn babies have a distinct smell, and women can identify their children by it
Newborn babies have a distinct smell, one that is completely unique to that one child, and it typically lasts for upwards of 6 weeks.
Nobody really knows what the smell is, but it is called “newborn baby smell” and is truly believed to be addictive to women — especially to mothers.
For example, a study from 1987 found that 90 percent of new mothers can identify their baby’s distinct smell in as little as 10 minutes after first encountering it after birth.
Not just that, but it has been found that the newborn baby smell triggers women’s dopamine pathways, specifically the ones that are triggered by things like the delicious smell of food or food cravings.
So, it makes women crave babies like they do their most precious and favourite foods.
The reaction is stronger in new mothers than in women without children. Because of this, some theorise that the smell is designed to help a woman identify her own child and crave to be in its presence.
Also, it is believed that the smell, through the release of a dopamine kick, is likely also designed to help women handle the exhaustion of caring for a newborn.
So, the smell of a newborn motivates women to overcome exhaustion and everything through constant dopamine releases so that they can handle looking after the newborn.
However, the same effect has not been seen in men. That means at current there is no evidence to say that men can detect their newborn child through smell and that the smell has any effect on them. Future studies into this subject may yet show otherwise. But for now, this appears to be a woman-only thing.
Changes in the brain lead men to become more problem-solving and goal-orientated after becoming a father, but women’s to become more nurture focussed
Women’s brains don’t just become more streamlined after giving birth, they become more nurture focussed.
A study by neuroscientists at Bar-Ilan University in Israel back in 2012 which looked at the parts of the brain which lit up in new parents found that in new moms, the regions of the brain that change after pregnancy were the ones linked to care, nurture and risk detection.
That means becoming a new mom makes women more caring, more nurturing, and more focused on detecting risks.
However, it was different for men. The parts that changed were focused on goal orientation, planning, and problem-solving — all of which are equally important for raising a child, but in a different way.
So, mothers’ brains become more wired towards specifically focusing on nurturing the child, while fathers become more wired towards specifically focusing on providing for the child.
Some believe that this biological effect is the root of why even today, men typically end up taking on a more “breadwinner” role after childbirth by taking on more hours et cetera with the mother becoming more hands-on at home by cutting down hours.
It’s also believed to be why potentially there is a much higher divorce rate amongst couples where the father becomes a stay-at-home parent versus where the mother does, and why the women are pretty much always the ones to initiate the divorce.
The wiring in our brains changes to make women more nurturing and so less tolerant of an angry househusband having to deal with a baby all day, but the wiring in the male’s brain makes them more problem-solving orientated, and so more able to handle an angry housewife having to deal with a baby all day.
So, it’s potentially not just society that makes men and women think men should focus on providing and women should focus on the child, biology also may legitimately play a part.
But, the more we acknowledge and understand things like this, the greater the power we give ourselves to do things differently — should there be those who want.
Men and women get biologically rewarded differently for different interactions with their children
Women’s brains don’t just become more streamlined, they don’t just become more nurturing, they also become focused on teaching specific things to children. Men’s do the same, but those things are different.
A study by Ruth Feldman back in 2010 found that women get the highest amount of oxytocin and dopamine when they are nurturing a child. However, for men it’s different, they get the highest amount released when they partake in rough-and-tumble type play.
Because children’s brains mimic the oxytocin levels in their parents, it is believed that this is why children prefer rough-and-tumble play with their fathers but want more nurture from their mothers.
The reason we potentially have evolved to be this way is that both nurture and rough-and-tumble type play are equally important in a child’s development.
However, by having one parent specialise in the nurture side of things and the other in the rough-and-tumble the child has a better chance of becoming a more rounded adult i.e. it’s always better to specialise than to be a jack of all trades.
So, it’s the famous push-pull dynamic, women have evolved to be more prone to pull children away from danger whereas men have evolved to be more prone to push them more towards it, and the parenting dynamic this creates gives children a more balanced ability to handle conflict i.e. they learn when to avoid it, but also when and how to face it, and more importantly than that, not to fear it because they end up facing it.
One of the reasons it is believed that single parents lead to more troubled children, especially single mothers, is because of the lack of this push-pull dynamic.
For example, it’s well known that children raised by single mothers are more prone to not having the ability to handle conflict, which is why they are more prone to mental health problems, falling into crime, addiction and much more.
One theory for why this is, is that when a single mother raises a child she provides it with nurture and the skills to avoid danger but often struggles to give it the skills and the confidence to face it down, which is why the children end up struggling so much in their youth and adulthood, because they have not learned to face down danger by rough-and-tumbling, only to avoid it.
On the flipside, it’s also why often children raised by single fathers — or so the theory goes — tend to struggle to form lasting relationships in adulthood, because they didn’t have a mother to teach them how to nurture a connection. So, they become very good at not fearing danger and handling conflict, but not so good at maintaining and nurturing a connection.
That means the clichéd run to your mother if you’re hurt and run to your father if you want to do something your mother would never let you, is likely born through biology. Women instinctually want to keep their children from rough-and-tumble and danger so they learn how to avoid danger and form lasting connections, men instinctually want to throw their children into it so that they can learn how to protect themselves and handle conflict.
Both dynamics are unbelievably important for children, which is likely why children raised by both parents gain such an inherent advantage.
However, the more we come to understand just why single parenthood provides such a handicap both on a sociological and biological level, the more we can help single parents learn to bridge the loss of the influence of the other parent by truly providing what is missing.
But anyway, yep, men and women truly have evolved different tools to provide children with different things, and both of those things are equally important.
That’s all from me, thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this, you may also enjoy the following:
15 Fascinating Anatomical Differences between Men and Women That You Probably Didn’t Know
Men and Women Working Out When to Make Babies is What Gave Us Our Intelligence — Here is Why
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