The Biology of Fatherhood

merrymouse

I was mixing up two quotes and should have been clearer.

The first part was meant to be an example of the specific interaction that is play, not a more general daily grind type interactions.

I do think men play with children in a more physical manner, simply because they can.

knowing what you do impacts on their long term wellbeing is very different basis for a relationship and has a very enduring effect

Maybe for some, but I’m not thinking about what it was like to be pregnant when I interact with my children now.

merrymouse I indeed can but it won’t be popular.

I agree with everything you say about the physical aspects of being a mother (although I am not convinced that breast feeding makes that much difference where other good alternatives are available - but that is an argument for another thread), but the article isn’t talking about the physical aspects of being a parent.

arnold again you are talking about physical aspects of being a parent. I have rarely had to carry 2 children at the same time, so I don’t think the ability to carry 4 is vital.

I agree that it’s more difficult to talk to a child about a physical process you can’t experience, but most of my parenting revolves around making sure there is something to eat in the house, not discussing puberty.

Humans are successful as a species because we are adaptable, not because we have evolved a uniform style of parenting.

We can’t change the physical aspects of being a parent, but I think the traditional idea of the ‘father figure’ is a result of men being left off the hook when it comes to the day to day grind, and then being given special jobs to make them feel important.

*Both my dc are high achieving.

I am a lone parent, their father is abusive and only parents when and how it suits him, not for the dc's benefit.

Can you explain, OP?*

Not OP, but this is the anecdotal fallacy; single parenting does actually correlate with worse outcomes, but hard to say if it’s because of socioeconomic reasons or because of the lack of a father figure.

merrymouse I indeed can but it won’t be popular.
Carrying a child for nine months, feeling it move inside you, resenting how rubbish it sometimes makes you feel, knowing what you do impacts on their long term wellbeing is very different basis for a relationship and has a very enduring effect.
The process of giving birth has to be the most fundamental event that men cannot hope to experience. It is literally life giving and transformative in terms of both mother and child and their relationships.
Breastfeeding can only be done by a mother. The ability to provide entirely for a child, from your own body, has a deep psychological impact on both mother and child. Yes, fed is best but breastfeeding is the Gold Standard for more reasons than a reduction in lactose intolerance and reduced obesity risk.
We can deny biology to suit ourselves but men and women have different roles from conception.

If it’s so obvious can you describe them?

To me the most obvious difference is in shear physicality.

I have never run the length of a football pitch with four children aged 8 down to 3 hanging off me. I don't have the physical strength to carry four children at once. Mr Whatshisknickers used to do so with our children and their cousins.

More importantly there are areas of my son's and nephews' lives that I simply don't have the experience to understand in the way a man does. I will never know the teenage rush of testosterone and the feelings that come from it because I am not male. A man is better placed than me to help a teenage boy understand his developing body and to control the emotions associated with male hormones.

Of course mothers and fathers have different reactions to and interactions with children.

If it’s so obvious can you describe them?

I believe studies have shown mothers and fathers (generally) play differently with their children.

The idea that anyone should play with their children is very recent.

Until the end of the twentieth century women had very little control over the number of children they had, poor families would have spent most of their time trying to put food on the table, rich families would have delegated child care, and there was nobody much in between.

I don’t have a problem with people studying any area of science, but I think there is a danger with this area that people start with a preferred result and work backwards, despite there being very little data to prove a point either way.

Until recently most parents expected their children to start work at 11. There are no halcyon days to return to.

Of course mothers and fathers have different reactions to and interactions with children. To suggest otherwise is a bit emperor’s new clothes. It’s too obvious for words. Just because we don’t always like the truth doesn’t make it untrue.
Of course children from stable, secure and loving families have advantages that children from broken homes or from feckless pregnancies miss out on. I’m not sure that’s about fathering per se though. I’d think those advantages were similar from enduring gay marriages.
Children with both close male and close female role models and where those role models teach children norms are going to have a more balanced perspective and understand biological impact.

I believe studies have shown mothers and fathers (generally) play differently with their children. Men will do more physical play and more risky play

That may well be the case, however, once again these differences would not be specific to mothers and fathers but would be differences between men and women.

There always have been and always will be many children growing up without one, other or both biological parents. That does not prevent those children from having positive male and female influences in their lives. Children also have grandparents, aunts and uncles, adult family friends and neighbours around who play with them.

Influences are not just about biological parents, and not having one or both around does not, in and of itself, lead to poorer outcomes for children.

When you say "biology", do you mean the fact they are male, or the fact they are the biological father?

I believe studies have shown mothers and fathers (generally) play differently with their children. Men will do more physical play and more risky play

But why do you think this is caused by biology and not social factors?

Are masculine and feminine differences merely limited to their respective roles in reproduction or are there other emotional and psychological differences?

I don't understand this. Nor do I get the OP's insistence that any of this is about biology.

There aren't masculine and feminine differences in reproduction, whether a woman is masculine or feminine she goes through pregnancy and birth, and the postnatal period, the same way.

If children are doing better with their biological father in their life, then it's that not just as likely to be because the father is more likely to be engaged with the children if the children are his? And if he is engaged and a positive role model/influence, then the relationship with the mother is also more likely to be stable and positive.

Stepfather boyfriends are more likely to see children as part of the "package" of being with the woman they are in a relationship with, rather than him actually choosing to be involved with children, so of course the relationship between the (step)father and children is not usually going to be as strong as a father in a positive relationship with the mother who made an active choice to have children. (I would say a heterosexual couple adopting is similar because again both parents make an active, positive choice, so the lack of biology wouldn't hinder this relationship)

Basically, I think the positive influences of fathers is a sociocultural thing, not necessarily a biology one. It just so happens that the most likely/common basis for a stable positive family is a biological family. But that stability can be found as much in other less common setups, eg lesbian couples, or single mothers (despite the odds being stacked against them by society).

I do think it's a very bad idea to have men going in and out of the parents life, however, in a serial monogamy fashion

You sound so right until I look at this closer. Most women do not get together with a man thinking it will just be for a little while. Things go wrong and plans backfire.

And yes some parents are feckless, there always will be some like that, but the serial monogamy is probably the least of the children's worries in that case.

On the one hand your saying that women shouldn't introduce men into their kids lives but on the other, you're berating them for being single

I haven't blamed anyone for being single. There are a lot of reasons people end up in that situation.

I do think it's a very bad idea to have men going in and out of the parents life, however, in a serial monogamy fashion. I wouldn't describe that as "blaming" anyone though. If I laid any blame it was on changing social expectations which isn't about individuals - I'd call that causation though, not blame.

Saying something is unwise, or will have a bad effect, is not the same as blaming people for doing it, there is a really important distinction there. It's not possible to talk about the effects of what society believes if every statement is taken as some kind of personal condemnation.

I think you are expressing how you feel about your parents and men. I don't think you can generalise that other people feel the same way, particularly if you can't quantify why you feel that way.

OK, so let's take it out of the sphere of the personal. I said that there are aspects that I can't quantify because I believe that they are either unquantifiable or difficult to quantify: there are qualitative as well as quantifiable aspects to any aspect of human life.

The OP is talking about the unique aspects of mothers and fathers. Recent trends have attempted to impose a conformity of psycho-emotional functions on a biologically dualistic population. There have been ideological taboos placed on studying the unique qualities of fathers and mothers as there are now taboos being placed on studying the real trends in the transgender population.

There has been little emphasis on attempting to isolate the specifically positive masculine role of fathers in favour of attempting to promote conformity. We can't have it both ways - if we are biologically distinct, what does this really mean in psycho-emotional terms? It's shallow in the extreme to limit this merely to who takes their turn in changing nappies or picking up after the kids. And if we can't see any deeper than this then we are lost.

Are masculine and feminine differences merely limited to their respective roles in reproduction or are there other emotional and psychological differences? And if we want to deny that there are any differences beyond reproduction and we are wrong what will the consequences be?

I don't have the answers because nobody does and those people who believe they do are deluded.

It's not about waving special fatherly magic on your kids.

It's amazing how many people would disagree with the above.

I know it to be true, and I hope one day my dc know it to be true too.

Society and women needs to have much better expectations of men in ostensibly loving relationships before 'feminists' start putting the boot in to single women.

Agree, and I also think that parenting is about being there for your child all the time, regardless of whether you are brilliant at every single aspect of parenting. It's not about waving special fatherly magic on your kids. It's about clearing up sick and sorting out an argument for the 60 billionth time that day and remembering the ins and outs of their social lives. Neither men nor women are born with special abilities to do any of this.

But there is a wider part of my intimate being that I can't share with male-bodied people and this means, for me personally, my dad could not have parented me in the same way as my mum.

I think you are expressing how you feel about your parents and men. I don't think you can generalise that other people feel the same way, particularly if you can't quantify why you feel that way.

Oh and I've come to that conclusion because I've quoted you in three separate posts. If you're not trying to draw some kind of universal conclusion, it seems fairly odd to keep banging on about it b

you're saying

On the one hand your saying that women shouldn't introduce men into their kids lives but on the other, you're berating them for being single.

From where I'm standing it looks very much like you're blaming women for men's fecklessness.

This whole thread is a bit like that tbh. Women have no agency over whether men are good fathers or not. Most of us pick men who we hope will be. But it seems to be luck rather than design a lot of the time.

All we can do is support women who have had the misfortune to procreate with a shit bloke. Not tell them they should have done better. Honestly, who is that going to help?

Oh sorry, it's just goosefoot who thinks single mothers are shit parents who move random men in. My mistake.

I didn't say that. I said it was something that happens, I specifically pointed to a branch of my own family as an example though it's certainly wider than that.

I nowhere said that was something that all single mothers do, and I'm not sure how you would come to that conclusion. Do you usually think that if someone say "x is happening increasingly in society" it means "everyone does such and such"?

It seems like a fairly uncontroversial thing to say, that if a society takes a particular view, such as fathers being unnecessary, that more people will tend to make choices that reflect that.