The Life of Dad

by Anna Machin

  I found the first three months certainly the hardest in terms of lack of sleep, not really getting anything back from [my son]. It’s just an endless cycle of changing nappies, feeding and burping, crying and so on, but then once you get past that early three months, you start getting things back. Like the first smile is amazing, it’s just such a nice feeling, and then you get to the first laugh, and then he reacts to things much better than he did.

  Zac, dad to Aidan (six months)

  Human babies are astonishingly helpless when born. A newborn human baby can do little more than eat, sleep, cry and be the source of many dirty nappies, a relentless merry-go-round that will be familiar to any new parent. This lack of interpersonal interaction, combined with an as yet undeveloped bond, can make this period unbelievably tough for the new dad. I follow fathers over the long-term and it is not unusual for the apprehensive, excited and well-rested father-to-be of my pre-birth visit to be replaced by an exhausted dad doing a passable impression of the proverbial ‘rabbit caught in the headlights’ at the two-week post-birth visit. One of m y most recent dads experienced a period of self-diagnosed ‘baby blues’, convinced that his baby didn’t like him, as he was unable to comfort her as his wife did. Fathers find themselves trying to fulfil the remit of the involved dad – changing nappies and providing comfort day and night – but without the strong bond that they had envisaged they would feel to fall back on. Combined with very little sleep and a crash course in parenting, where the curriculum can seem to change minute by minute, this is an overwhelming time. But with the passing of weeks, and as the baby’s visual acuity improves and allows her to recognize and react to dad with a smile or a giggle, the relationship between dad and baby turns a corner. Play begins to emerge at around three months and the introduction of solid foods at six months provides endless opportunities for fun and involvement, as long as your definition of fun is being liberally covered in puréed apple by a laughing infant.

  This gap between the idealized expectation and reality of fathering has been described by some as a case of ‘fathering being delayed’, and it is certainly true that fathers tend to say that the bond they have with their baby at six months is categorically different in both depth, breadth and complexity than that they felt when their child first emerged. One of the very early pioneers of family studies, Ralph Turner, recognized this phenomenon when, writing in 1970, he argued that the development of the father–infant bond is a two-stage process. The first stage, experienced in most cases at birth and underpinned by oxytocin, relies upon the biological connection between father and child provided by genetic relatedness. The second stage comes much later, is based upon conjoined lives and interactions and is promoted by the much more powerful bonding chemical beta-endorphin, leading to a more profound and much deeper love.

  If you are a new dad, this early period of your baby’s life can be tough, but there are a few things you can do to ease your anxiety and capture a glimmer of the bond that will, in time, form. It’s a good idea to try and find a caretaking duty that is just for you – as we know from Chapter Four, massage is always a good choice both to improve your bond with your baby and to give your mood a boost. Other dads like to get on the reading bandwagon early and read their baby a bedtime story – he or she may not understand the story or even be able to focus on the pictures, but the opportunity to be physically close and to let your baby hear your voice is invaluable. And remember, skin-to-skin is not just for immediately after the birth. Take every opportunity you can to undress your baby (maybe nappy on!) and snuggle them inside your shirt or dressing gown, against your skin. I am told it is the most wonderful experience.

  And all first-time fathers agree that they only fulfil their wish to be fully involved, and experience the bond they had hoped for, once the baby is more independent; this is the point at which dads have the opportunity to take on caretaking tasks on an equal footing with their partner and get the endorphins flowing by some serious – and daddy-exclusive – interaction:

  We do interact differently. It’s not as if I’m rough with him, but probably my interaction with him, the way I hold him, is different from Sarah and partly that’s just if I’m holding him in the air, I can see he is really enjoying it, whereas Sarah would probably be slightly nervous.

  John, dad to Joseph (six months)

  For, once the baby surfaces from the fug of sleep and milk that characterize the early days, one very special and uniquely paternal form of interaction emerges: rough and tumble play. At first this may be limited to the pulling of silly faces and generation of funny noises to coax a smile or giggle from the still quite tiny baby, but later this interaction will be characterized by a noisy, rough physicality broken by regular periods of hysterical laughter, which often prompt mum to exclaim in alarm. A child is thrown in the air, turned upside down and tickled until it is incapable with laughter; a scenario familiar to us all. It is certainly lots of fun, but this behaviour is also vital to the development and maintenance of the bond between father and child, and it is evolutionarily very ancient. It is clear from comparative studies that many animals play; indeed, it was the observation of this behaviour in our very distant cousins, rats, that prompted scientists to suggest that the function of play extended beyond mere enjoyment to the very underpinnings of infant development. For something to have persisted over such a long period of evolutionary time, it must have an essential link to the survival of our, and many other mammalian, species.

  In fact, evolution has played a vital role in making sure that human fathers and babies unconsciously gravitate towards this fun form of interaction. As with all other behaviours that we enjoy – including cuddling, eating pizza and looking at videos of kittens on YouTube – involvement in rough and tumble play stimulates the release of a flood of rewarding chemicals in the brain. The most important of these chemicals for the bond between dad and baby is beta-endorphin, now recognized as the chemical that underpins long-term bonds in humans and other primates.

  Beta-endorphin is an astonishing chemical. It’s the body’s natural painkiller and is fundamental to the operation of many of the body’s vital functions, including digestion and the regulation of the cardiovascular and renal systems. But it is within the brain that the power of this chemical is really apparent. Beta-endorphin receptors are located in all the brain’s key areas, including at the core of the brain within the limbic system and on the outer surface within the neocortex. This means it has a role in the experience of the most basic of emotions, including fear and love, and in the more considered and cognitively more demanding decisions of the conscious neocortex, which include the ability to navigate our socially and technologically complex modern world. It is this wide-ranging brief that secures beta-endorphin its place as the king of bonding chemicals, because it is capable of supporting all the many subtle nuances of human relationships. And it is addictive! It is the body’s natural opiate, so once someone has experienced an interaction that causes a release of this chemical, they will keep on returning for more. They are addicted to the wonderful feelings of warmth, closeness, euphoria and happiness that it engenders. And a wide range of behavioural interactions can feed this addiction, including laughter:

  I seem to be able to get him to laugh very, very easily, kind of fits of laughter, and a lot of it is just jumping around and scaring him. Stuff that my wife would never think of doing but that is something that we do between us, and it’s something that’s just me and him. I am the only person who can get him to laugh pretty much on cue. [There’s a] pride in enjoying it, there is that little link there that I never expected to happen that quickly at all.

  Will, dad to Christopher (six months)

  We know that humans experience endorphin hits when they touch each other, when they laugh and when they sing and dance. Indeed, my own research group at Oxford, headed by Professor Robin Dunbar, has pioneered research that has shown that human relationships, from the simple twosome to the chanting football crowd, are bonded by ac
tivities that promote beta-endorphin release. And if these activities can be synchronous, such as the strokes of a rowing eight, the singing of the choir or the laughter of the audience at a comedy show, so much the better.

  It is only very recently that we have obtained conclusive proof that endorphins also lie at the heart of the bond between parent and child. In her 2016 paper published in Brain, Behavior, and Immunity, Adi Ulmer-Yaniv and her colleagues explored the release of beta-endorphin, oxytocin and interleukin-6 – a new chemical to add to our repertoire, which is implicated in the stress immune response – in the formation of bonds between lovers and between parents and their children. Ulmer-Yaniv argued that a combination of the body’s affiliation, reward and stress systems is involved in the development of attachment in these closely bonded relationships. Oxytocin lowers the inhibitions to forming relationships (affiliation), beta-endorphin provides an addictive reward and interleukin-6 represents the inevitable stress associated with forming a new bond – we all remember the uncertainty surrounding our first love. Her study involved twenty-five heterosexual couples who were in a new relationship, 115 first-time mums and dads of 4–6-month-old babies and twenty-five single people who acted as a control. She took blood samples from all her subjects and then asked those in relationships to carry out an interaction in their couples. For mums and dads, that was playing with their baby for ten minutes, while romantic couples had to plan ‘the best day ever’ to spend together. Researchers noted to what extent the subjects displayed a range of positive bonding behaviours – shared gaze, facial emotion, vocalizations and touch – and to what extent they were synchronous. What they found was that in those relationships where new bonds were being formed – that’s parent to baby and between lovers – levels of all three chemicals were significantly higher than in the singles group. Further, new parents had higher levels of beta-endorphin and interleukin-6 than the new lovers, whereas the levels of oxytocin were higher in the new lover group. What does all this mean? It means that we have conclusive evidence that beta-endorphin is the key chemical underpinning the long-term bond between baby and parent, that becoming a parent is more stressful than falling in love (!) and that oxytocin, while significant particularly in the short-term, hence its high levels at the start of the lovers’ relationship, does not act alone to bond parent to child. Indeed, Ulmer-Yaniv found that the relationship between the three chemicals is at its peak during this frenzy of new bond formation. And that frenzy is the same whether you are a dad or a mum. Beta-endorphin really is the chemical of parental love.

  It should now be clear why rough and tumble play is essential to forming the bond between dad and baby, and why it is the perfect interaction to cause a big beta-endorphin rush. With its overt physicality and laughter and its requirement that the players synchronize their behaviour for the best play experience – no good launching yourself into the air with no one to catch you – it is the perfect prompt for this essential chemical to be released. But why is it fathers who are the predominant exhibitors of this behaviour? And why has research repeatedly shown that children show a preference for playing with their dads rather than their mums? The answer lies in the wonderful synchrony of brain development that has been positively selected for in parents and their offspring to ensure that bonds develop and that the child experiences the best developmental environment in which to grow up.

  In another pioneering study, Ruth Feldman observed Israeli mothers and fathers during fifteen-minute periods of play and interaction with their 4–6-month-old infants. She took samples of saliva and blood before and after these sessions from both parents and found, in both cases, that their levels of oxytocin rose following interaction with their baby. However, there was a crucial difference between fathers and mothers in the nature of the interaction that produced the most significant spike in oxytocin levels. For the mothers, the spike was prompted by interactions characterized by affectionate care but not play – cuddling, stroking and soft vocalization. For the fathers, the reverse was true: the spike was caused by rough and tumble play and not affectionate care, despite the fathers displaying both types of behaviour. As we will see later in this chapter, the role of play buddy is developmentally vital to a child, so evolution has fitted fathers to take it on by ensuring that it is associated with a special reward; fathers have a preference for the behaviour that gives them the biggest reward. Such a conclusion is supported by the finding that if you squirt oxytocin up a father’s nose before he interacts with his baby – yes, being a scientist can be an odd day job – his play behaviour becomes even more boisterous and all-consuming, but there is no increase in his nurturing behaviour.

  So, we have an explanation for the father’s almost automatic desire to play with his child. But what of the child? Well, again, for the baby there seems to be a relationship between who you choose to play with and the size of the neurochemical reward you receive. As the parents get a behaviour-specific boost, so the child mirrors this with his own oxytocin levels. So, an infant will get an oxytocin boost from the affectionate care of his mother and from the playful behaviour of his father. And this is as a consequence, once more, of that amazing neurochemical phenomenon, bio-behavioural synchrony. As with the essential bond between expectant parents, this is as fundamental to the healthy development of the bond between the parent and child. Because much of this interaction between parent and child begins during the first year of life, when a human baby’s brain is rapidly growing and forming, this leads to the development of neurochemical synchrony between preferred partners. And as a result, the preferred partner for play is dad and for nurture, mum. This finding leads me to two clear conclusions. First, that play is the method by which Western fathers develop and underpin their profound bond with their children and, second, that the role division we see between mothers and fathers is driven to an extent by biology and an evolutionary drive that aims to provide the optimal developmental environment for the child.

  However, the story of play is not one of pure biological hardwiring. The eagle-eyed among you may have noticed the insertion of the word ‘Western’ in the preceding sentence. For it is only Western fathers who are seen to engage in significant amounts of rough and tumble play with their children. Indeed, if we consider the Congolese Aka father that we encountered in Chapter Five, this paragon of involved, hands-on fathering rarely plays with his children, choosing instead to keep them in close physical proximity at all times and entertaining them with stories and songs. If play is the mechanism that underpins bonding in Western fathers, why is it not seen to the same extent in non-Western families, where the bond between father and child is undoubtedly just as strong? It is all a matter of time. Western fathers are often absent for a significant period of their child’s day, often working in an environment that is separate to the home. This means that the time they have available to build and maintain their bond is much reduced. Rough and tumble play is often described as quite extreme in both physicality and volume, and it is within this lack of reserve that its effectiveness lies. Play provides Western fathers with a quick and efficient mechanism for developing a bond with their child. Beta-endorphin is a powerful and addictive chemical, and the speed of play means that its participants must learn to quickly read another’s intentions and emotions to avoid upset, so it is a fast-track mechanism for getting to know someone. In a time-poor world, this is vital to ensure fathers and babies develop their bond. In contrast, the fathers of the Aka take their children with them everywhere, when they hunt and when they socialize, so they have all the time in the world to both be in contact, leading to oxytocin and beta-endorphin release, and to get to know each other’s characters.

  The delay in developing the connection with your child can be a difficult issue for the modern father, prepared as he is to fully co-parent from day one. Speaking for myself, I feel we owe it to fathers to help them manage their expectations regarding this period in their lives. It would be wonderful if midwives, health visitors and antenatal educators
could explain to dads that their relationship with their child is as vital and unique as that between mother and child, but that it develops at a different pace and via a different mechanism. That by comparing yourself to the mother as the ‘gold standard’, you are at risk of setting yourself up to fail. Because, dads, you are not male mothers. Rather you are an equally vital but different player in your child’s world and if you are patient, invest your time and energy – critically, your tickling, bouncing and running energy – and do not lose heart, you will develop the most profound and rewarding relationship with your child.

  As we know from Chapter Two, the relationship between a parent and child is not just a bond, it is an attachment. But while the prenatal attachment is largely driven by dad or mum, the attachment after birth involves baby’s behavioural and emotional input too. All mammalian babies form attachment relationships with their mothers, but humans are one of the very few mammals where a baby forms this intense reciprocal relationship with dad.

  You start out with this one-way street where you’re giving a lot, and that’s fine, I went into it knowing that was going to be the case and now I am reaping the benefits a thousand-fold of what I put into it. But I would say, in the last couple of months [my son] has started now to give back into the relationship as well and he’s now able to smile, he is interacting and grabbing and pulling on my hair, all of these sorts of things, and that’s a lot of fun.

  Jim, dad to Sean (six months)

  For many decades, it was felt that the only relationship of concern with respect to the well-being of the child was that between mother and child and, as such, tools for assessing the father–infant bond were deemed to be surplus to requirements. It is only very recently, due to the growing evidence that a father’s relationship with his child can have a profound effect on their development, that this gap in our academic arsenal has been filled. We met one of the pioneers of this area, John Condon of Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia, in Chapter Two. Over the past decade, he and his team have developed measures that assess the attachment between father and baby both before and after birth. Recognizing that the relationship between father and child was fundamentally different both in type and function than that between mother and child, they were the first to argue for dad-specific measures. Until this point, and as is still disappointingly the case in postnatal mental health assessment, measures designed for mothers were applied in a wholesale manner to fathers, making any reliable diagnosis difficult.