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First-time fathers show longitudinal gray matter cortical volume reductions
- bergenty 4y agoA test with 40 people is not a real study.
- MarkusWandel 4y agoA test with 1 person isn't a real study either. And whether the brain is shrunken or not, the sleep disruption, the great increase of things to take care of, the constant distraction... definitely makes you less smart. But too late, you're permanently rewired into "parent mode" and would have it no other way.
- dylan604 4y ago>you're permanently rewired into "parent mode" and would have it no other way. that's a big assumption. we'd like to think that all people that have become parents wanted to be parents, but not everyone that's a parent wanted it. obviously, certain actions could have been taken to help prevent that. however, even if both parents were in agreement neither wanted to be parents, their options are less and less with each month's passing.
- thrown_22 4y agoOne thing I've never heard anyone talk about is how much you can learn about yourself from your children if you pay attention, e.g. my child would start crying if things got too loud and I could never concentrate apart from working in the middle of the night. Putting two and two together I got myself a pair of -30db fitted ear plugs and now I can work during the day just as effectively. Turned out I'd been doing me wrong for 20 years.
- quickthrower2 4y agoBeing a parent also makes you smarter, depending on how you defining smart.
- dylan604 4y agoWhy? Did they use fake people? Ask the people managing the flow of info from those 40 people and ask if it was real or not. If anything, this is how I'd imagine real science being done. Doing something like this to get results at a scale that isn't quite funded, but enough to get attention. Later, someone else recreates the study at a larger scale to see if it is reproducible and hold as it scales.
- renewiltord 4y agoHow many people does one need for a real study?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- bergenty 4y agoAt least a thousand.
- renewiltord 4y agoWhat is your reasoning for that?
- bergenty 4y agoIt’s the generally accepted analog for the general population
- renewiltord 4y agoI was unable to find any such reference.
- dgl 4y agohttp://archive.today/k1EuT http://archive.today/k1EuT
- nimbius 4y agononsense. I for one recall my fathers near clairvoyant ability to sense minute fluctuations in the ambient air temperature even before they were made. he focused this experience into a sound known only to a child's ears 'don't touch that damn thermostat' his poetic aptitude for dad jokes was intense, dare I say profound. truly a mind of the ages.
- dylan604 4y ago>his poetic aptitude for dad jokes was intense, dare I say profound. truly a mind of the ages. i was going to suggest the opposite as the lameness of dad jokes pretty much supports the premise.
- TootsMagoon 4y ago
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 4y ago> Dr Martínez-García’s study followed a group of 40 expectant fathers, 20 from Spain and 20 from America, and also, as a control, 17 Spanish men who did not have a baby on the way. They should also have included fathers from cultures that aren’t as involved in pregnancy and infant care.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- jimbob45 4y agoWhich culture reliably has absent fathers?
- artificialLimbs 4y agoI think OP was not talking about absence altogether, but rather fathers that weren't as intimately involved in the day to day affairs of their children. Maybe nobility?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Auracle 4y agoOr dads with full time stay at home wives.
- criveros 4y agoExplains a lot.
- diob 4y agoMisread this as "becoming your father" and it got a good chuckle out of me.
- dylan604 4y agoYou should see what your father says about that! I know mine would have agreed
- bradleykingz 4y agoMental freduian slip?
- STRML 4y agoSo what's the working theory here? Does the shrinkage allow new attachments to grow, essentially a "re-wiring" that causes the mother and father to focus on the child more than the rest of their lives? Anecdotally, I feel that experience; consequently, business tasks have become much harder. I don't believe it'll be anything more than temporary, but it is certainly substantial.
- arcanus 4y ago> Anecdotally, I feel that experience; consequently, business tasks have become much harder. Interesting. My experience was the opposite. After the initial sleep deprivation, once our child was sleep trained, I achieved a new level of productivity in my life. Before children, I wasn't as focused. Now, I'm more efficient. The knowledge I have a break coming where I know I'll be giving my family my undivided attention helps motivate me through the day.
- notch656a 4y agoI became more productive, although less efficient. Kids really fuck with after-hours efficiency. There's always the knowledge that if I fail to maintain a job, it is statistically associated with divorce, and that divorce is statistically associated with child support, and that child support is statistically associated with prison and revocation of passport/property/licenses keep me going. If I fail to be productive enough I will be tossed in jail, that wasn't really the case before. But unlike some other people, I lived an exceedingly free (and low-cost) life before children, often just being homeless and hitch-hiking around the country, fighting for foreign militia, spending months living in forest or hiking trails, etc.
- e67f70028a46fba 4y agoWeird that an elite mouthpiece would publish anti-natal propaganda. Really out of character.
- water8 4y agoMost elite, save for Musk, think the earth is going to be over populated
- wyager 4y agoI assume GP is being sarcastic. Basically every "reputable" media outlet is constantly trying to convince people not to have kids.
- toomuchtodo 4y agoI mean, they’re not wrong! They’re expensive ($300k each 2022 inflation adjusted in the US, from 0-18), they age you faster, and there is no guarantee the experience is worth it. They also destroy relationship satisfaction in the early years. Half of all annual pregnancies both domestic to the US and internationally are unintended. I have kids and attempt to convince those who ask me about my experience not to have them. It is not for the faint of heart.
- bluedevil2k 4y ago> I have kids and attempt to convince those who ask me about my experience not to have them Sounds like you might need a little therapy
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- toomuchtodo 4y agohttps://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/sex-murder-and-the-meaning-life/201102/new-study-parental-love-is-merely-cognitive-dissonance https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/sex-murder-and-the-m... https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0956797610397057 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/09567976103970...
- annoyingnoob 4y agoI think it would be interesting to compare new parents with sleep deprived non-parents (if there is some way to do that). I have 3 kids, for me the first 18 months for newborns was pretty rough in terms of sleep. My first 2 are 15 months apart, there was a long duration of round the clock work. Doing startups and having babies is extra challenging in my experience, maybe that makes success extra sweet.
- droopyEyelids 4y agoThank you for posting this. All these articles about magical changes to fathers drive me crazy by listing every physiological consequence of sleep deprivation and attributing them all to the magic of fatherhood.
- notch656a 4y agoOr control for alcohol consumption. Pre-kids: "someone in the house is screaming 12 hours a day. I think I'll move out or have them evicted." Post-kids: "someone in the house is screaming 12 hours a day. I'll be tossed in jail if I leave the screaming person to their own devices, so I'll think I'll have a beer so I don't go clinically insane." If you had a kid with colic, you know.
- rootusrootus 4y agoMaybe sitting on the toilet too long results in screwing up blood flow to other parts of the body, like the brain. Because I'll tell you what, sitting on the toilet never appealed so much before I had kids.
- artificialLimbs 4y agoI wasn't very sleep deprived at all with our 2. Wife and I slept in separate rooms so that I could be focused at work. I still feel... completely different a s a father in ways I cannot possibly put into words. We got started late, so I'm over 40 now with a 1yo; I may just be 'getting old', but certainly experience more moments of cognitive decline than I ever have.
- neilv 4y agoI always cringe slightly when I see a headline like this on HN, imagining it feeding unfair prejudices about protected groups, to some nonempty subset of tech industry founders and interviewers. Also problematic are HN comments like (exaggerated here) "Shucks, on the day I turned 30, I lost 100 IQ points, and now have trouble remembering not to pick my nose at the same time I'm eating paste." You be you, but please remember that prejudices and confirmation bias are problems, and try not to tar an entire group with your paste.
- Hayvok 4y agoSorry but how is an article about physiological changes in men becoming fathers possibly feeding into prejudice? Because we might try to be a founder someday? We’re fine, thanks. If some halfwit VC seriously passes on my company because he sees this one headline and concludes fathers are stupid then he’s terrible at his job and remind me to short everything he touches.
- eyelidlessness 4y ago> Sorry but how is an article about physiological changes in men becoming fathers possibly feeding into prejudice? It’s noted above the paywall in the article too. I won’t comment further than noting that you’re demonstrating the biases other comment warned about very well.
- public_defender 4y ago> Sorry but... Perhaps you don't understand how science or the aegis of science have been historically used to justify discrimination. You can look to phrenology as a good example of this. It was touted at some point as a biological justification for white-black racism. So here we have a class of people who suffer discrimination (parents) and a "scientific" justification. > If some halfwit VC... You won't know that this happened. There will be plenty of other reasons which can be explicitly stated for not funding you (or passing you over for a promotion or whatever). You will only learn that you are suffering from discrimination if you get lucky and catch the oppressor on a hot mike or they fat finger the reply all.
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- tus666 4y agoLol
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- lettergram 4y ago1. This study had a relatively small sample size, curious if it’s even statistically significant enough for the claims. Particularly, with MRIs not being a perfect measurement for bodily function. 2. I wouldn’t be surprised if this is true, but not for the reasons the study (why are we linking to the economist) concludes. Everyone who’s an active parent recognizes that you’ll be sleep deprived the first year of having a child. Youll also be working harder and have higher stress. I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s the reason for shrinking the cerebrum.
- fallingfrog 4y agoFairly certain it’s just prolonged, extreme sleep deprivation. You can’t know if you haven’t been through it. My first required someone to be awake walking her around all night long for the first few months. I’d switch off with my wife at 3am then get up at 7 to get ready for work. For months. I actually remember the first time after she was born that I got more than 30 consecutive minutes of sleep, (maybe a week after?) because I woke up and saw the sun low and red in the sky, and legitimately did not know if was morning or evening. Turns out I had only been asleep 2 hours. I never understood the phrase “sleep like a baby.” You mean, for 20 minutes at a time then you wake up screaming?
- tsol 4y agoTbh i didn't read the article but the headline makes me think about synaptic pruning. When you're young your brain is actually a bit bigger than your adult brain, but then you go through synaptic pruning. A lot of extra neurons die off and your brain in turn re-wires in a more complex way. I wonder if it's something similar to that. I see a lot of people jumping to "smaller brain=less smart" but that's not always true.
- postscapes1 4y agoDad of three young kids here. Brain is definitely different. So much of the disruption is dependent on your kids personality, any medical issues (and sleep). If I had 3 clones of each kid and their personality my stress would range from minimal: "this parenting thing is amazing with some difficult moments and changes of rhythm" To if I had three clones of the middle child, I would be losing my complete mind.
- prirun 4y agoIt would be interesting to find out: - if the brain shrinks again after the 2nd kid - if the change is permanent, or if the brain expands 5 years after having a child.
- juancn 4y agoTwo words: sleep deprivation. Becoming a parent means you give up sleeping enough for a few years. It’s a bit harder on the mothers.
- mgarfias 4y agoDid they check later down the road to see if the cerebrum volume continued to be reduced? Having been a dad 2x, I would wonder if the decrease was do to being woken up often and having messed up sleep schedules. Does the decrease in vol happen again with the 2nd(3rd, 4th…) kid?