‘Their prolactin might also be high, and their oxytocin would likely frequently spike up during affectionate, sensitive moments, reflecting father-child bonds and familiarity.’ They would have lower testosterone than less involved dads, and their testosterone would stay reduced during the early parenting years. Lee Gettler, director of the Hormones, Health, and Human Behavior Lab at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, and the lead author on the Philippines study, suspects that Swedish fathers might be further along the spectrum than the fathers he has studied – truly hormonally and temperamentally transformed. ‘This is a unique experiment that we are performing right now,’ and the consequences might be profound. But could the impact be even greater in Sweden, where men like me often take six months or more off work to be the primary carer for their babies? According to Kerstin Uvnäs-Moberg, who pioneered research into oxytocin at the Karolinska Institute, Sweden’s medical university, no one has tried to find out. These are the changes recorded in countries such as the United States, Canada and the Philippines, where mothers still do most of the childcare. It turned out that gray matter grew in areas linked to reward, attachment and complex decision-making. In a 2014 study, researchers scanned men’s brains in the first month after their children were born, and then again after the fourth month. Fatherhood also physically alters the brain. Prolactin, the hormone that triggers lactation in women, was almost a fifth higher in fathers of infants than in non-fathers.
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Levels of oxytocin, the so-called ‘cuddle hormone’, almost double in fathers between the time the mothers become pregnant and the first months of fatherhood. A 2011 longitudinal study of 624 Filipino men showed evening testosterone dropping by a median of 34 per cent in the first month after becoming fathers (the most extreme case saw a drop of 75 per cent). I felt compelled to find out if I was imagining it, and quickly discovered an explosion of new research demonstrating the dramatic impact that fatherhood has on men’s hormones – along with their affect and talent for staying attuned. One afternoon in the playground, I began to notice the high, exaggerated voices many of my latte pappa acquaintances used with their babies – clear ‘motherese’. I’ve been one myself, taking six months off twice over the past four years to be the main carer for my daughter and then son. He’s one of a legion of Sweden’s ‘latte pappas’, as the country’s legion of scruffy men with prams are known. The scientist hasn’t noticed much change, but as we bond over having given our daughters the same rare Nordic name, I’m struck by something about the way he is standing, his one-year-old perched on a stuck out hip. ‘There’s not so much “me” in focus any more. ‘My patience levels have sky-rocketed,’ reports the restaurant manager. Since they started trying to lure dads to their centre a decade ago, numbers have grown steadily until, recently, the fathers began to outnumber the mothers. Sweden is leading the fight for gender-equal parenting – men here get three months of paid, use-it-or-lose it paternity leave for each baby (in fact, many take more) – and Lisa and Karin are its warm, welcoming stormtroopers. Children will change their minds, and that will be good for our society.’ ‘These daddies here, they’re very much closer to their feelings. ‘We think it’s a revolution,’ her colleague Karin Hallback Stigendal chimes in. A Swedish restaurant manager is sprawled on the floor as his son presents him with various objects.
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One, a straggly haired Israeli scientist, has built a perfect pyramid out of Play-Doh for his daughter.
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‘Something happens to the men who come here,’ says Lisa Lindell, observing the first arrivals at her drop-in centre for new parents in Malmö, Sweden.