Darby Saxbe, Dad Brain Is Real, and It’s a Good Thing, NYTimes, June 15, 2024.
The brain and hormonal changes we observe in new dads tell us that nature intended men to participate in child-rearing, because it equipped them with neurobiological architecture to do so. They too can show the fundamental instinct for nurturing that’s often attributed solely to mothers.
Not only that, but men’s involvement in fatherhood can have long-term benefits for their brain health — and for healthy societies. At a time when boys and men seem to be experiencing greater social isolation and declining occupational prospects, the role of father can provide a meaningful source of identity. [...]
In a 2022 study, my colleagues and I collaborated with researchers in Spain to gather brain scans of a small number of first-time fathers before and after their babies were born. Our results echoed studies of mothers done by some of the same researchers. In several landmark studies, they found that as women became mothers, their brains lost volume in gray matter, the layer of brain tissue rich with neurons, in regions across the brain, including those responsible for social and emotional processing.
Although a shrinking brain sounds like bad news, less can be more: These changes might fine-tune the brain to work more efficiently. [...] Women who lost more brain volume showed stronger attachment to their infants after birth, indicating that the shrinkage promoted bonding.
Our findings for fathers were similar. Men also lost gray matter volume in new fatherhood, in some of the same regions that changed in women. But volume reductions for dads were less pronounced.
Fatherhood brings meaning and purpose:
Even so, most fathers tell us that they derive tremendous meaning and purpose from their connection to their children. Contemporary fathers are almost as likely as mothers to say that parenthood is central to their identity, and men are even more likely to report that children improve their well-being than women are. And the newest data suggests that parenting may ultimately promote long-term brain health; among older men and women, a brain-age algorithm estimated that the brain looked younger among people who had children.
There's more at the link. I've linked the original research below the asterisks.
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Magdalena Martínez-García, María Paternina-Die, Sofia I Cardenas, Oscar Vilarroya, Manuel Desco, Susanna Carmona, Darby E Saxbe, First-time fathers show longitudinal gray matter cortical volume reductions: evidence from two international samples, Cerebral Cortex, Volume 33, Issue 7, 1 April 2023, Pages 4156–4163, https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhac333
Abstract: Emerging evidence points to the transition to parenthood as a critical window for adult neural plasticity. Studying fathers offers a unique opportunity to explore how parenting experience can shape the human brain when pregnancy is not directly experienced. Yet very few studies have examined the neuroanatomic adaptations of men transitioning into fatherhood. The present study reports on an international collaboration between two laboratories, one in Spain and the other in California (United States), that have prospectively collected structural neuroimaging data in 20 expectant fathers before and after the birth of their first child. The Spanish sample also included a control group of 17 childless men. We tested whether the transition into fatherhood entailed anatomical changes in brain cortical volume, thickness, and area, and subcortical volumes. We found overlapping trends of cortical volume reductions within the default mode network and visual networks and preservation of subcortical structures across both samples of first-time fathers, which persisted after controlling for fathers’ and children’s age at the postnatal scan. This study provides convergent evidence for cortical structural changes in fathers, supporting the possibility that the transition to fatherhood may represent a meaningful window of experience-induced structural neuroplasticity in males.
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