The Life of Dad

by Anna Machin

  In this chapter, I want to expand our focus a little to move beyond just dad and consider the family. To explore how both parents can work together to provide a child with all he or she needs to develop, but also to understand how adding a baby (or two, or three . . .) can have an impact on a relationship. We’ll consider the best way to make sure this is a happy transition for everyone. And I will show you the profoundly different way that mum and dad conceive of their family and the relationships within it, which can help us understand why difficulties in the parenting relationship have a significantly more negative impact on dad and his family relationships than anyone else.

  We may joke about the difference in parenting styles between men and women – a well-worn cliché given full run-out in numerous sitcoms and movies – but what we are observing here are the results of half a million years of brain evolution, with the ultimate aim of producing a team that is ideally adapted to provide the best environment for raising a child. Not all children emerge into the world as members of a nuclear family – heterosexual or gay. But for those that do, their arrival can have a profound effect on both parents’ brains, biology and psychology.

  A distinction they see in us . . . is the way we do discipline. I tend to be the one more likely to become quickly angry, whereas Sarah is more balanced, able to reason with them. What would they come to me for? Maybe it’s around the things I enjoy, the things I like doing with them, so if they want a bike ride they will come to me. Sarah tends to do more creative things with them; I come home and there are paints and crayons [and I think], Ooh, looks like hard work.

  John, dad to Joseph (four) and Leo (two)

  John’s observation is one I hear with reasonable regularity. We learnt in Chapter Two that during pregnancy the baseline levels of oxytocin of parents-to-be are synchronized. It is believed that this wonder of biology – triggered by the cohabiting couple’s close behavioural and physiological bond – occurs to ensure the relationship between the couple is strong and that as parents they will speak and act as one; crucial if they want to maintain some semblance of control and provide the stable foundation that their child will need. But evolution hates redundancy – the idea that two people will carry out a survival-critical behaviour when it only requires one to do so. Energy is finite, and the job of raising a human child is complex. Evolution is loath to make both parents fulfil a task when one could be freed up to achieve a different and equally vital parenting goal. As a consequence, this level of hormonal synchrony is not necessarily mirrored by behavioural synchrony. Of course, we know this. Even among those most equal of parents, the Aka of the Congo in Africa, there are still roles that are distinct to mum and dad – dad for co-sleeping, mum for feeding. In the West, it is generally the case that in traditional family set-ups, dads play and mums nurture. Dads push developmental boundaries and mums plan activity timetables. Dads fix broken toys and buy games consoles, mums handle the baking, painting and sticking, just like John’s wife. We know from Chapter Seven that dads get a peak in oxytocin when playing with their child, while for mums this chemical rush is reserved for caring behaviours. The brain has evolved to ensure that the parents favour doing very different but equally vital activities with their children – and as such, all the bases are covered by the parenting team. And this neurochemical split is mirrored by a corresponding split in brain activity.

  In 2012, fifteen pairs of heterosexual parents of 6-month-old babies volunteered to be placed in a fMRI scanner and have their brain activity assessed while they watched videos of their children playing. Israeli psychologist Shir Atzil wanted to see whether the behavioural and neurochemical differences we see between dads and mums are reflected in differences in their brain activity when involved in a child-centred activity. What she hoped to see was synchrony in some areas of the brain, reflecting the skills and behaviours that all parents need to exhibit to build a secure attachment, but asynchrony in others, reflecting the distinct behavioural differences between the members of the parenting team. And her wishes were granted. While viewing the video of their child playing, both mums and dads showed activity in the areas of the brain linked to empathy and mentalizing. Mentalizing is the ability to read and understand the thoughts and feelings of another person – to place yourself in their shoes. It is essential if you want to manipulate someone, or lie or cheat, as it allows you to second-guess their next move. But it is also essential if you are to care for someone, for it allows you to feel what they feel, respond appropriately and anticipate what they may need next. This ability is fundamental to a secure attachment between parent and child, and the activity patterns in the brains of both parents show us that both mum and dad have the neural capability to build a strong attachment to their child.

  But in other areas of the brain, there was a distinct difference between the sexes. In the brains of the mothers, the ancient centre, known as the limbic system, was the most active. Within this area, at the very core of the brain, lie the brain systems associated with emotion. The fact that they are more active in mothers than fathers may reflect the key characteristics of mothering – giving affection and nurturing. One area of the limbic system, the amygdala, was particularly active. This small structure detects, and causes a reaction to, risk, suggesting that as well as caring for their child, a mother is constantly monitoring the environment for any potential threats – that slippery rope ladder in the introduction to this chapter being one. In contrast, in the father’s brain it was the neocortex that was set alight – the outer, deeply riven surface of the brain. In particular, the areas associated with social cognition – responsible for enabling someone to handle complex thoughts and tasks and make plans. This may reflect the special responsibility a father takes for teaching and encouraging his child to strive towards independence above and beyond that carried out by mum. When viewing the video o f his playing child, the father is assessing her abilities and planning the next step in pushing her developmental boundaries. Furthermore, the fact that a father’s activity is located in this brain structure – the site of our species’ advanced intelligence and abilities – reflects the innate flexibility of the dad’s role.

  We know from Chapter Five that the power and value of the fathering role lies in great part with his ability to respond quickly to environmental changes to ensure the survival of his offspring. To do this, you have to be intellectually quick-thinking – hence a father engages his neocortex. What is also interesting is that the locations of these intense activations – the ancient brain core in mothers and relatively new outer neocortex in fathers – reflects the different evolutionary time points of the emergence of these roles. Mothering is as old as time, present in the earliest reptiles, whereas we know that human fatherhood is only 500,000 years old at best, meaning its skills are hard-wired into the newest area of the brain.

  Let’s be clear, Shir’s results do not mean that fathers never care and mothers never teach – we all know this not to be true. Fathers showed activation in the limbic area and mothers in the neocortex, but the extent of this activity was much less as compared to their opposite-sex partner. To avoid redundancy, evolution has shaped the brains of mothers and fathers to focus on different aspects of their child’s needs to ensure that, together, they meet all her developmental needs. And remember that the same is true for the gay parenting team; the primary caretaking dad shows activation in both regions of the brain. Within the nuclear family, evolution has ensured that, regardless of parental sexuality, a child is cared for by the perfect parenting team.

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  Both Deb and myself said, [for the] first month or so, we felt like Anna wasn’t ours, wasn’t our baby; it was weird, and it was only a few months in that you started to say, ‘It’s our little ball of fun.’ And only really recently when she has started to get a little character do you really think, This is my daughter and this is who I am going to be looking after, watch grow and stuff like that. So, it took a good few weeks, if not months, to really realize you have this
baby for the next . . . [however many years].

  Steve, dad to Anna (six months)

  Pregnancy is one of the very few periods in our life that has a firmly defined beginning and end. In most cases this allows parents nine solid months in which to prepare themselves for the whirlwind of parenthood. Obviously, this means that there is time to do all the essential practical jobs and engage in some serious equipment shopping, but there is also time to focus on the relationship between mum and dad. Unfortunately, this is often an area of preparation that gets overlooked – it is rarely the focus of antenatal classes and not something that most parents-to-be take much time to discuss. But if you think of it using the analogy beloved of human resources managers, that of the effective workplace team, before you are parents, you are a team of two and have gone through the sometimes rocky stages of team-building that mean that, hopefully, you have reached a happy equilibrium and rub along together well. However, having a baby is adding another member to that team and at a time when you both may have very few physical and mental resources to fall back on – this can result in a considerable ‘storm’, as everyone comes to terms with their new place in the order. The couple are being asked to work together, carrying out tasks that neither of them initially know how to start, let alone complete, with a new boss who is not terribly good at communicating what he or she needs beyond screaming at them. Sounds stressful, doesn’t it? Hopefully it is clear why, to cope with this new dynamic, it is a good idea to try to make the relationship between the parents as strong and healthy as it can possibly be before baby is added to the mix.

  We know that, for both mum and dad, how positive they find the experience of becoming a parent is strongly linked to how satisfied they are with their relationship. That is, the more cohesive, consensual and affectionate the relationship, the more satisfied the individual is with their partner and the more they rate becoming a parent as a positive experience. In particular, new parents rate their relationship highly if three criteria are met. Firstly, how mutually supportive and encouraging their partner is regarding their parenting role. Secondly, how aligned their ideas are about co-parenting and how happy they are with the way the baby-related chores are divided up. And, thirdly, the temperament and developmental stage of their baby. It is truly the case that life does become easier as your baby develops and can communicate their needs effectively and can meet some of these needs, such as feeding, themselves. This in turn makes parents less stressed and, hopefully, their relationship more stable. But beyond these jointly shared issues, there are some factors that are more important to dad than to mum and these mostly centre on the temperament of the baby and, more relevant here, the support dad receives from mum for his role as a father.

  Maternal gatekeeping is the term given to beliefs, attitudes and behaviours that exclude the father from spending time with his child. In its most extreme version it only occurs at low frequencies within the global population, but elements of it can be seen in a significant number of parental relationships where conflict is a regular occurrence. It is most often seen in separated or divorcing couples, but also exists within families where the parents cohabit. It can be caused by, and be the cause of, marital difficulty, as the mother uses access to the child as a weapon in her disagreements with her partner, which leads to instability in the family and further conflict. It is important to recognize, because it has serious consequences for the marital relationship, the relationship between father and child and the development of the child. Mothers who practise maternal gatekeeping tend to be overly and publicly critical of their partner’s parenting style. They tend to undermine his attempts at discipline and set unachievable criteria for allowing him to spend time with his child. They control all of the child’s activities and scheduling and, believing that mothers make the best carers, find it very hard to relinquish any of the care of the child to anyone else. Ultimately, they believe that the father is very much an assistant rather than an equal in the parenting project – they, as the mother, are the boss.

  In their study of 365 Mexican American and European American families, a team of psychologists and sociologists from a number of American universities, led by Matthew Stevenson, explored both the causes of gatekeeping and the impact it had on the relationship between father and adolescent child and the adolescent child’s sense of importance – their self-esteem. They found that, irrespective of ethnicity or socio-economic group, an increase in marital problems – such as volatility, criticism, jealousy or infidelity – led to an increase in maternal gatekeeping beliefs in the mother. This in turn meant that fathers spent less time with their children, regardless of the gender of the child. The impact of this on the child was a sense that they did not matter or mattered less to their father than they previously had. As such feelings lead to increases in negative self-absorption and inability to control emotions, these are worrying consequences for the children within these families.

  Luckily, many fathers won’t experience maternal gatekeeping in their relationship with their partner. But the behaviours and mental health of all fathers are influenced by how their partners behave towards them in their role as a father. Where partners are encouraging and support the father in their role and actively enable the father to have time with his child, the risk of the father’s poor mental health decreases and the ease with which he adopts his new identity increases. And this has positive consequences for the bond he can build with his child. In their 2014 study, a joint team from the University of Sussex and City University London in the UK, led by Ylva Parfitt, followed a group of parents-to-be as they transitioned to parenthood. During pregnancy, seventy-two women and sixty-six of their male partners (not all the dads wanted to take part) were asked about their mental health and their degree of satisfaction with their relationship. The team then waited for babies to be born and repeated these measures for all when their babies were three and fifteen months old, with the addition of a measure that assessed the baby’s temperament. Two valuable conclusions were drawn. Firstly, for both parents, how strong the bond was between them and their baby was most significantly affected by how they had rated their relationships during pregnancy, meaning that we can get a good handle on the quality of the future relationship between parent and child by assessing their interactions with their partner. Secondly, this link between relationship satisfaction and the strength of the bond between baby and parent was still the case for men at the fifteen-month mark, in combination with his level of mental health, whereas, for the mums, the key factor impacting their relationship with their child at this point was only his or her temperament. The influence of the state of the parenting relationship appeared to be more influential for a longer period of time on the relationship between dad and baby than mum and baby. What this means for parents is that working on your relationship during pregnancy to make sure it is the healthiest it can be will make bonding with your child easier and that, particularly for dad, keeping half an eye on your relationship once baby is there is important. Seek out those willing babysitters, take some time to be a couple and try to make sure baby isn’t your sole topic of conversation, however tempting it may be.

  [It’s] been almost like our relationship is on holiday for a moment, so I wouldn’t say we don’t have a relationship, but it is very different in terms of what we talk about every day. It is obviously focused more on our baby at the moment. The first thing I get when I walk in the door is, ‘Do you know how many times he ate this?’ ‘He did that.’ ‘This was in his nappy.’ That is the daily report. It has changed our dynamic quite a bit and I wouldn’t say that’s a bad thing, it’s just part of the next stage for us and at some point I hope we move back to more of an intimate setting . . . [where] the two of us can sit down and chat about something other than nappies.

  Jim, dad to Sean (six months)

  It is clear from previous chapters that fathers and mothers experience the transition to parenthood – that is, the period of time it takes to feel comfortable and competent as
a parent – very differently. It is not entirely clear why this might be, but I could suggest that it is linked to the longer period required for a father to bond with his child, as we explored in Chapter Seven, and the fact that the current status of the father in Western families is still that of the secondary parent. Fathers are still the most likely parent to head out to work while mum takes on most of the primary care. As a result, dad’s time with his child is limited to evenings, weekends and the annual family holiday. This means fathers have less time to practise their new-found parenting skills and achieve the level of competence that will allow them to feel comfortable inhabiting their new role.

  All of these differences between mum and dad need to be accommodated within this new parental relationship, and if this is not achieved via constructive rather than destructive communication – taking time to explore feelings about parenthood, arriving at a joint co-parenting plan, avoiding judgement and criticism, taking care to remain supportive of each other – the quality of the marital relationship and the cohesiveness of the family will diminish.

  Once baby has arrived, the new family will exist at three levels of organization: the individual, the couples (teams of two: mum and dad, baby and dad, baby and mum) and the family (mum, dad and baby). Research by Ilanit Gordon on ninety-four heterosexual couples and their 5-month-old first-borns has shown that mums tend to perceive their family as a set of these couples; she will focus separately on the relationship she has with her partner and with her baby, and the relationship she observes between her partner and her baby. In contrast, dads view the family at these three distinct levels: individual, couples, family – and, as a consequence, they and their other relationships are more vulnerable to the impact of disharmony within the marital couple. This is known as the spillover effect and describes the fact that the impact of marital conflict can spill over to the rest of the family. Mums are more immune to this because they can compartmentalize their family relationships, so an argument with their partner does not impact upon their relationship with their child. But because dads see the family in its totality, rather than as a group of couples, if they fall out with their partner, the negative effects of this seep into their relationship with their child.