[varun_chopra]

I find it very odd that the rest of the comments are sort of... not agreeing with the findings in the article.

I became a father recently (:D) and it's been an emotional rollercoaster for me. I had been frantically Googling my "symptoms" and asking around what's wrong with me, because it seems I've been quite sensitive since the birth of my baby.

One way to explain this is the Gordon Ramsay meme (https://imgflip.com/memetemplate/211147137/Oh-dear-dear-gorg..., LHS = my reaction to my baby, RHS = my reaction to other kids before my baby was born).

I think the article is spot on — the more time you spend with your baby and care for them, the more oxytocin you get and the more your testosterone drops (I cried when my baby first spoke — cooed, really — to me, for example, and that's just one instance).

Edit: I want to take this opportunity to say — fuck companies that don't give paternity leave. This is fucking hard to do alone, so be nice to your employees and offer paternity benefits. I'm in India, where paternity leave isn't required, so I was told to fuck off when I asked for time off.

[porknubbins]

Maybe its being older already but I don’t feel super changed having a baby like people told me I would. I don’t do work or hobbies or socializing any differently. Everything else in my life didnt suddenly seem unimportant.

The one big difference is up to now I though crying babies were annoying and subconsiously somehow blamed parents. Now I see how foolish that was as babies are born knowing nothing and are just adorable little people trying their best to get their needs met and handle emotions.

[dividefuel]

Agree with this. I'm a little more sensitive to the idea of horrible things happening to small children (e.g. sad news stories), but for the most part I didn't find kids to be a major shift in my beliefs.

[necovek]

One health-check I used to anchor that type of feeling is if both parents feel the same way?

But I really felt it because my kid was a lousy eater, slept little (I believe those are related), and you ended up with continuous lack of sleep and energy and adopt patterns to be very quiet when kid is finally asleep.

Still, we mostly kept our hobbies until the second kid came, albeit some we did together (like team sports) slowed down. And things like travelling cross continents have stopped too (hard to travel, risky food...).

With the second you don't even have the benefit of being two parents and one kid so you can alternate the rest and activities (though the older one is by now more reasonable, but still a kiddo). Perhaps it was just uncertainty and lockdowns of Covid during early pregnancy (3 months when lockdowns started) and first year that caused a shift, instead of kids, but without kids, we'd probably pick up the pace more easily after.

I have friends who had an easy first kid and didn't have to change much, and the second tore them apart (literally, now separated), so I doubt there is one approach that always works.

At the same time, I like to say that it is good to have two mindsets in two parents (when both are available): eg. I have friends where mom is more relaxed and dad is all stressed up, and they are still a healthy family (so neither unhinged kids when neither parent cares, not overly sensitive kids when both are too invested).

[casefields]

You’re experiencing that because fatherhood is raising your estradiol aka estrogen.

I’m on testosterone and one of the side effects is your estrogen raises too, and boy I had no idea how much that hormone affects us. It gave me a new appreciation of what women sometimes feel when I think they’re overreacting.

[voxl]

the problem with most research about humans is that the variance is usually massive. The study could be true on average and that could still leave millions of men who the study doesn't end up applying to.

[hkpack]

Famous story about the plane cockpit for average pilot ended up being bad for absolutely everyone comes to mind.

Probably you cannot average humans.

[kstenerud]

I remember how everyone told me that it would all change the moment I held the baby in my arms. And then I remember the moment I actually did. Nothing changed. Not then, not after.