Are Men a Little Less Manly After Becoming Fathers?

We see a lot of stories about how children are slowly draining the souls from their ever-loving mothers, courtesy of national news outlets and navel-gazing parenting bloggers like yours truly. But we don’t see nearly as many stories about how is taking its toll on fathers.

One new study that surfaced last week did a little bit bring some attention toward one of the downsides of becoming a dad: Hormonally speaking, men who are present in the lives of their children are less manly than their singleton counterparts.

Anthropologists at Northwestern University found lower testosterone levels in fathers who spent time with their kids, in comparison to the hormone levels in single men, as reported by Bloomberg News upon the study’s release in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Now, of course we moms beg to disagree, am I right ladies? Nothing oozes more machismo than a baby-daddy who is an equal partner in raising our children, shouldering the burdens and sharing the joys of with us, side by side in the trenches. I think we can all agree that a partner who helps with everything from getting the kids their breakfast on a Saturday morning so you can sleep in to brushing their teeth at bedtime and wiping their butts anytime is mommy catnip.

So to all the dads out there who stumbled across the story and felt a little ill at ease about their masculinity, please take heart. As the Bloomberg story put it, the “study that suggests family men experience a biological shift that may awaken their nurturing side” and that the very hormone that helped them become dads evolves to help them become good caretakers. And that is music to the ears of every wife and mother.