The following recent post from John Stonestreet at BreakPoint is worthy of reproducing here for readers of this blog. Read it and reap!

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While the loudest voices in our culture continue to insist that men and women are interchangeable, science is offering more evidence than ever that the two sexes are anything but interchangeable. Nowhere is this uniqueness more apparent than in the distinct and very real transformations that both men and women undergo on becoming parents.

Of course, having children changes a woman—both body and mind—but it turns out men experience changes, too. They may not be as outwardly obvious as those in women, but they are dramatic and life-altering.

Writing at The New York Times, Oxford anthropologist Anna Machin cites a decade of findings on how men are designed to respond physically, emotionally, and neurologically to the arrival of a baby. And those changes, she observes, aren’t the same as those seen in women.

For example, a five-year study of over 600 men in the Philippines found that those who became fathers experienced a significant drop in testosterone—the hormone associated with male aggression, strength, and sex drive.

While this may herald the arrival of the stereotypical “dad-bod”—which I may or may not know something about—it also marks a critical transition in a father’s behavior. Lower testosterone makes way for a cast of new hormones that draw him toward his partner and infant, and encourage him to participate in “caregiving and baby-related household tasks…”

Machin points to studies indicating that the lower a man’s testosterone, the more likely his brain is to experience surges of bonding and reward hormones like oxytocin and dopamine when he spends time with his child. …

But here’s where things become really interesting …

Want to read the rest of John’s article? Go here.

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