The Psychology of Fathering

Most of the body of research dedicated to fatherhood has understandably been focused on how children benefit from the presence of a male parent or guardian. More attention is gradually being paid to the value of fatherhood to men themselves, however. Not just kids benefit immensely from involved and engaged dads, but so do adults, studies have shown, something that holds true across economic lines. Research has demonstrated there to be a host of positive effects of parenting among men, with fathers finding the time spent with their children to be rewarding and fulfilling on many levels.

As any dad will tell you, fathers can learn a great deal from a child by spending both quality and quantity time with him or her, so much so that the former’s perspective of the world is typically irrevocably altered. While much is known about kids’ psychological gains when they receive paternal love, newer research is showing that fathers also benefit from the emotional bond they share with a child (grounded in oxytocin, the “love hormone”).

The emotional benefits to be realized from fatherhood relate directly to the level of involvement in their kids’ lives. In 1989, Marjory Roberts reported in Psychology Today the results of a recently conducted longitudinal study of more than 200 fathers showing that being a dad was a positive experience in a psychological sense, specifically by functioning as a means of developing greater empathy and compassion. The finding was consistent with Erik Erikson’s theory of “generativity,” which held that humans achieved full maturity only when they advanced the lives of children in some way.

The other good news in this study was that, contrary to popular belief, the careers of men did not suffer when they became fathers or stepped up their involvement. And, as many previous studies had showed, children benefitted greatly from having their dads around. Both boys and girls became more confident, mature, and autonomous adults with the presence of an engaged father, the study by psychologists Joseph Pleck, John Snarey, and Anthony Maier found, with the authors declaring fatherhood to clearly be a win-win experience. “The role of the father is just as important as the role of the mother,” Snarey stated, something many dads likely suspected but were still happy to hear.

Richard Taylor, a retired philosophy professor, offered anecdotal evidence that supported such research. Taylor, who was 67 years old in 1987, had a 39-year-old son and a one-year-old baby, this almost four-decade gap between children allowing him to measure how much fatherhood had changed for him and other older dads. Taylor attended classes prior to his new son’s birth and was present when it happened, things he had not experienced back in 1948 for his first child. He had admitted to being clueless about basic infant care for his new son, something his much younger wife was surprised by, given that he was not a first-time father.

For Taylor, the experience of having a baby late in life was profound, something quite typical of older fathers (including myself). As a younger man, the professor was heavily invested in his career and social life but now he was, as he expressed it, “free to focus entirely on my wife and baby.” Not having any competing interests, in addition to the wisdom gained from life, were fostering a new and different form of love between him and his baby son (named Aristotle) that Taylor could only describe as “fulfillment.” The psychological benefits of receiving pure, unadulterated love from a child were well-documented, but at the time, relatively little had been written about the rewards of giving the same kind of love to that child; this was the thing that Taylor found to be such a transformative experience.

Neuroscientific research related to fatherhood backs up such stories. “When men morph into fathers, they experience a neural revival that benefits their children,” Brian Mossop explained in Scientific American Mind in 2011, with both baby’s and dad’s brains forever altered in the days following birth. A biochemical bond is quickly established between fathers and their children, analogous to the one forged between mothers and their fetuses during pregnancy.

More specifically, dads’ brains are hardwired to respond to any threat to their infants’ comfort and survival, just one way oxytocin affects early paternal behavior. Fathers’ and babies’ brains function symbiotically, neuroscientists are finding, each party benefiting in some way from the other’s cognitive influence. Men even grow new, additional neurons after becoming fathers, studies have shown, nature’s way of establishing an emotional connection that will pay off dividends throughout the child’s life.

If the idea of some kind of cognitive symbiosis taking place is not amazing enough, a father’s brain will typically alter its hormonal outputs and neural activity depending on his particular parenting responsibilities. Dads’ brains can switch back and forth between a network geared towards social bonding and vigilance and one designed for planning and thinking, according to a 2014 study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, changing its output based on the situation.

Parenting Essential Reads

Are You Helping or Enabling Your Adult Child?

4 Signs You’re Too Emotionally Invested in Your Adult Child

Nurture is certainly important in parenting but, as in an increasing number of other activities, it is nature that researchers are discovering predisposes an individual toward certain behavior. Being a “good” parent is thus heavily determined by the brain’s wiring, this research suggests, making us rethink much of what we have assumed about the practice of fatherhood. Although fatherhood has been around as long as humans, we are clearly embarking on a new frontier of understanding it, with many exciting adventures no doubt looming for the future.