Science: Evolution of Fatherhood

Dads, be they animal or human, are natural-born deadbeats - big on courtship, short on childrearing and ever on the lookout for the next big fling, so says evolutionary theory, which can offer a scientific explanation for the widely reputed lack of paternal instinct in nature. But there may be another side to the story.

Post science writer Rick Weiss was online for a discussion about the evolutionary biology of being a good father on Monday, June 12 at Noon ET .

A transcript follows .

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Rick Weiss: Hello everyone. Thanks for logging in. I look forward to your questions.

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St. Mary's City, Md.: How much of people's attitudes about fatherhood are determined by society and not biology? I believe most attitudes about gender are through nurture rather than nature, although I'm no scientific expert.

Certainly our society still has the attitude that men should be providers rather than caretakers. Too many people, men and women, believe that taking care of children is "women's work," that there's something unmanly about being an active father. How do you think the attitude originated?

Rick Weiss: I think that culture explains a whole lot about our attitudes about sex roles. It's hard to believe that the Aka pygmies, who I mention in the article, are biologically different from, say, New York City stockbrokers who never see their kids (okay okay all you stockbrokers . Don't start writing in. I know you are great dads too.) But they are probably colored by biological aspects. As mammals we nurse our young, giving the female a fixed role in childrearing that a man just can't play. And those hormones I mention that seem to affect animal behavior have potent influences over human emotions and behaviors too.

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Pittsburgh, Pa.: We watch TV every night, we eat microwave dinners, we work in fluorescent-lit offices and drive around using combustion engines. We are the least natural creature to ever walk the earth.

With that in mind, why should we value the natural paternal role? Since we're beyond nature in so many other ways, isn't the more important question one of choice and consciousness?

Rick Weiss: Well, I'm not sure I'm crazy about all the ways we have transcended Nature, so I don't find that a compelling argument. I do agree with you though that we no longer need to be slaves to all things Natural, and we should use our intellect to decide when and where we should follow those old rules or make our own. Anyway, I see no conflict in the case of fatherhood. There is plenty of the kind of fathering in Nature that appeals to me,so in those respects I choose to be a Natural father.

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Oakton, Va.: I think men are definitely in two camps...those that want family and those that don't. In humans I don't think it has anything to do with evolution, I think it has to do with upbringing, social environment and respect for women. If a man has positive qualities in all those areas he will probably make a nurturing father.

Rick Weiss: It does seem like some men are just not at all interested in having kids, but I do not put that entirely on social or cultural factors. I think some men are just not biologically there ... maybe it is hormones, or brain chemistry. My wife believes that some men cannot really fall in love (a prerequisite, probably, of wanting to start a family) because of serious defects in their sense of smell, which is probably a big part of the chemical communication of love. So there is a lot to consider here.

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Bethesda, Md.: When researching this story, which kind of animal's paternal instincts (or lack thereof)surprised you the most? And who in the animal kingdom should we, as humans, look to in our attempts toward achieving good fatherhood.

Rick Weiss: I was surprised to learn that so many kinds of fish show paternal behaviors, since fish generally strike me as rather, well, cold fish. And the giant water bug? Please. Who woulda thunk it? But let's stop for a moment and remember what we are talking about: I had some fun imputing human emotions onto these various creatures, but let's face it, that bug is probably not all lovey dovey as it picks debris off its eggs. It's just picking picking picking. That's what it is programmed to do. It works, so evolution has favored it. That said, there may be some semblance of buglove or fishlove in these actions. I can't help but wonder what it feels like to be a creature like that, caring for its young. Wouldn't it make sense for evolution to make sure that it feels good to care for one's young? And if so, are all these human emotions I feel for my daughter just chemical rushes to trick me into doing all the things I do for her?

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Pittsburgh, Pa.: Thank you for your insights!

I have two questions: First, do you think we can really choose to be Natural? or does Nature precede choice?

Second, what are your thoughts on couvade (sympathetic pregnancy)?

Rick Weiss: As for the question about Nature vs. free choice, which is a version of the old philosophical conundrum of whether we have free will or are slaves to predestiny, I have always appreciated the reply that was supposedly given by the author Isaac Beshevis Singer: "I have no choice but to believe in free will."

As for sympathetic labor pains -- I feel your pain! -- this makes perfect sense to me. (Bill Clinton, to labor and delivery please!)

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Vienna, Va.: When I was a boy, the coach would say "It doesn't matter if you win or lose, it is how you play the game". To me that kind of thinking contributed to building a healthy layer of interactive forces in society.

But there has been an evolution in the way we interact - to the extent that we accept "win at any cost" as normal.

My nephew has a father (and he also coaches a soccer team) who follows the latter. The boy is being taught that winning is everything. Loosing is humilitation. As a result, his thinking is very calculated. His friends are just resources to help him get ahead.

My fear is that this will be our new society. Do other cultures press "winning" to this degree?

Rick Weiss: The "culture" that uses the "win at all costs" strategy is one we are all familiar with: Nature, red in tooth and claw. I don't see why we would want to emulate that system, although it does have the advantage that everyone knows where they stand: You're fine until someone bigger or stronger wants what you have. Happily, Nature also is rich with examples of communalism, job sharing, cooperation, bargaining. Maybe it's because I am not a big brawny guy, but that is the approach I'd like to see us emulate.

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Philadelphia, Pa.: Since dads have become more involved in their kids' lives, gen x dads spend over an hour more than baby boomers, there are more full-time fathers and 17.4% of employed working men with children 18 work from the home (single fathers have risen too), researchers have found that fathers tend to more boisterous as children's playmates (even with their daughters) than mothers. Is there a biological or cultural basis - or both! for this?

Rick Weiss: One of the researchers I spoke with for today's story has done some interesting cross-cultural work on boisterous father-play with children. He documented what we all have seen in this culture: That dads are much more likely than moms to rough-house with their kids, and to tumble around with them lovingly. But he also found that in cultures in which dads spend a lot more time with their kids than we do here, they don't do that kind of thing. His hypothesis is that, in a sense, that kind of wrestling love is a way of making up for lost kid-contact time. It's almost as though we feel the need to touch our kids a certain number of times in a day, and if it is all going to get packed into a few hours, then you need to do a lot more of it, or do it more intensely, during that period.

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Fayetteville, N.Y.: On the topic of sense of smell, might that in some way also relate to how a man might interact with his child? Might sense of smell impact on fathering?

Rick Weiss: It's certainly been shown that in a lot of animals a parent can identify his or her own young by sense of smell (in several instances it is the smell of the urine that seems to play a role -- another argument for full bi-parental involvement in the diaper-change ritual?). Parents also seem to love to sniff their newborns. What that is about, I don't know, but we know that smell receptors are wired directly to the so-called reptilian part of the brain -- where deep emotions seem to have their home -- without taking the usual neuronal sidetrip through the frontel cortex, where higher thoughts arise. So there is a direct connection between smell and many emotions.

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Rockville, Md.: It's been shown that as individuals (and collections of them like nations) become more educated, their birth rate drops; with the result that places like the U.S. and western Europe need to bring in people from places like Latin America and the Middle East.

What are the long-run implications of reverse-Darwism, in which the least fit (in modern economic terms) become thost most likely to reproduce?

Rick Weiss: I don't agree with your (or the "modern economy's") assumption that the people you are talkng about are "least fit." As far as I can tell, these "unfit" people are practically the only people doing actual hard work in this country, at least: building our buildings at construction sites, cleaning our homes and yes, filling most of the science classes and labs in this country. I see these influxes as enriching out gene- and cultural pool.

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Anonymous: "Wouldn't it make sense for evolution to make sure that it feels good to care for one's young? And if so, are all these human emotions I feel for my daughter just chemical rushes to trick me into doing all the things I do for her?"

This is the argument I have against people who claim animals (usually they are talking about pets) don't have emotions. We see human parents devotedly caring for our babies and say "love", then we see dogs devotedly caring for their puppies and say "instinct". Why do we think they're different?

Rick Weiss: I agree that we (wrongly) go out of our way to presume that animal love -- or animal emotions generally -- are different (and especially "less enlightened") than human ones. It seems to me that it's all part of the Biblical Dominion Thing -- that some still feel we are destined to ride herd over these other species, and it seems to me a remnant of other overly self-centric beliefs, such as that the Earth is the center of the solar system. At the same time, it doesn't make sense to think that an animal's parenting experience is the same as ours. We do have quite different biologies, and that counts for something. Recall the work done on prairie and mountain voles showing that these two subspecies have very different mating and parenting behaviors (one is monogamous, the other is a total love-her-and-leave-her cad) that seems to be the result of nothing more than the distribution of key hormone receptors in the brain.

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Washington, D.C.: My wife and I just had a baby girl in January. We decided to take turns caring for the new baby at home (my wife for 10 weeks; myself for 8 weeks). Initially, I was a little nervous with this because I had no experience with infant care. So, prior to my paternity leave, I prepared by reading up on child development, parenting, etc. I realize now that many of us men in this country have been missing out on one of the most amazing experiences in life. Even though they were difficult, the 8 weeks I spent caring for my daughter were the most rewarding weeks of my life.

Rick Weiss: Well, you are preaching to the converted here. Recognizing, again, that this may not be for everyone, I have to say that I had no idea how great it would be to be a dad, and I can't help but get a shiver sometimes about how easy it could have been to have just decided not to do it and what a loss that would have been for me.

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Alpharetta, Ga.: Is it true that a man's oxytocin level (bonding hormone) goes up when he hugs his children?

Rick Weiss: I don't know the answer to this. But I'd bet my lunch that it does.

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Arlington, Va.: Every father's day there are articles like yours that touch on the fact that so many men are horrible fathers, so many are absent, etc. On Mother's Day we see nothing but the positive aspects of motherhood. It seems this society has a very negative attitude toward fathers in general (look at our child custody laws in cases of divorce). Why do you think this is so?

Rick Weiss: As for why dads get such a bad rap, perhaps it has been unfair. But not completely. I have done a fair amount of traveling, and if there is one pattern that seems to hold true for virtually everywhere I have been (okay, I've not visited the Aka) it's that I see a lot of men sitting around with each other drinking various versions of fermented grain while women are out in the fields breaking up clods of dirt and cooking and cleaning -- with their kids strapped to their sides the whole time. Maybe it's because men are bigger and they can get away with it. Maybe it is because they have truly important things to discuss with each other. I don't know. All I know is that the bad rap is not COMPLETELY made up out of nothing. As for all the good press that mom's get: Yes, that seems overdone. For an excellent antidote, may I recommend you read an article in the New York Times from a few weeks ago by Natalie Angier (full disclosure, she's my wife) all about all the bad moms in the animal kingdom. Turns out there's plenty of them.

And yes, so now you are on to the real motivation behind today's story. It's just a family tit-for-tat, played out on the pages of two of the nation's best newspapers.

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Atlanta, Ga.: Recent studies actually show men who are more educated are more active in their children's lives. Also, there does seem to be a generational gap, as fathers between the ages of 21 and 39 said in a survey they would take a pay cut for more time with their family.

Rick Weiss: Seems to me that society ought to recognize parenting as an important contribution on par with other jobs and somehow compensate parents for at least some of that time so they need not face this ridiculous choice between income and childrearing. Companies with generous parental care options are great citizens in this regard.

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College Park, Md: Hello Rick,

I was sorry to read in the Post that you'll be retiring. Who will take over from you?

And while we're on the subject of the Post's science coverage, why is it so hard to find science stories on the Post's website? There's no separate category called "Science." Readers have to know in advance that science news---even if it's about research done outside the US---is categorized under "Nation"!

washingtonpost.com: The Post's science coverage can easily be found at washingtonpost.com/science

Rick Weiss: Hey, I am not retiring -- unless you know something I don't. Is that you writing this message, Mr Graham?

As for finding Science on the Web, we in the science pod have been in discussions with the Web folks about this and we hope that will soon lead to better display on the main page. For now, keep in mind that science is generally considered a subsection of National News. Click on National and then on Science and you should get most of what we write.

Okay folks, I have a 1 pm meeting so gotta run. Thanks for all your interesting questions and comments.

Rick

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