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Parenting Rewires the Male Brain
sciencehabit writes: "Cultures around the world have long assumed that women are hardwired to be mothers. But a new study (abstract) suggests that caring for children awakens a parenting network in the brain—even turning on some of the same circuits in men as it does in women. The research implies that the neural underpinnings of the so-called maternal instinct aren't unique to women, or activated solely by hormones, but can be developed by anyone who chooses to be a parent."
This must be the process that makes it possible to see humor in dadjokes. Warrants funding research in that field.
One assumption of this study is that because homosexual men have a specific reaction in their brains, that all men have it. It ignores the possibility that homosexual men's brains are different from the start. It doesn't consider/ignores the fact that homosexual men are wired differently from the start which means they may have the same ability as women from the start as well. The wiring that makes a man homosexual may be the same wiring that makes them more nurturing/worrying/ect like mothers.
There isn't enough evidence to draw the conclusions they are drawing. This is a simple matter of someone deciding correlation is causation. It may be true, it may not, but this study is pretty inconclusive and jumps to conclusions that it shouldn't
I see nothing referencing heterosexual single fathers and how they compare/contrast to all this, which would be much more telling as far as the conclusions they've drawn.
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As a parent, I discriminate against the childless as I'm so jealous.
Oh, to not have three screaming children.
Our brains learn things by "rewiring" themselves. Why should we be surprised that spending a large amount of time causes a detectable difference in the action of the brain? Implying that men don't have the neural circuitry required for parenting is as retarded as implying that women don't have the neural circuitry required for mathematics.
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A few years ago, my ex had a miscarriage at three months. By that point I was already accepting that there was going to be a kid and planning accordingly (adding another room to the house, telling friends and co-workers, etc). We dated for five years and the stress that caused ended an already fragile relationship.
Since then, I've noticed a distinct change in my personality. It's subtle and hard to quantify in absolute terms, but it's definitely there and I'm not the only one who noticed. I'm a lot less interested in women than I was before. I'm a lot more interested in stability, especially financial, and I'm finding myself doting on my cat a lot more (she's the bestest). While I'm still in many ways "an overgrown college kid" I've noticed that I'm also assuming a lot more responsibilities with my life, especially cleaning, cooking, and being a lot more timely and responsible* in my behaviour.
It's hard to assign causation to something like this -- I'm nearly 30 now. Did I just get older and is that adequate enough to explain it? Was it because I was exposed to a lot of new things, such as The Atheist Experience which I started watching just after the breakup? Or maybe it was just a change in the social and political climate locally, here in Australia? Or possibly the change in friend circles (I moved across the country afterward) that did it? I lost a lot of weight, maybe that's it too? Or the change in career (IT to full time writer)?
It's hard to pin down, but something changed and although a lot of factors I can think of were environmental I'd find it quite plausible that there is a distinct bio-chemical trigger at play here too. Probably 75% environmental, 25% chemical?
The whole thing is very interesting at any rate.
*I bought a Pikachu onesie a week ago so maybe not too responsible.
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My girlfriend and I have chosen never to have children because it would interfere with our ability to travel.
Traveling with kids isn't that hard. You can get a backpack with a kid seat that will work till they are about five. When they are eight, they can walk fast enough to keep up. So that is only a three year window when they are too heavy to carry and too slow to walk. My daughter was born in California. My son was born in Shanghai. They have both been to five continents, and both speak three languages (English, Mandarin, and Spanish). When they grow up, they will have an international perspective, and can be a bridge between cultures. Kids will only hold you back if you use them as an excuse not to go.
That's just because he couldn't get less funny.
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So, you think it will take dumping her on an island thousands of miles away for her to not be able to find her way back home?
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Just think - if you parents had thought this way, then we'd have one less asshole in the world!
That's just fine - you carry on believing that. The rest of us will keep on breeding. As you are removing yourself from the gene pool, your beliefs will die out with you.
Strange, I see idiots breeding like rabbits and expecting government/god to take care of the children as if they had a mission to carry on the human race while intelligent people choose to not breed because they have something between their two ears. Having children because we need them to pay for your pension is nothing short of Ponzi scheme, having above 25% unemployment among the young as in Spain, Italy just screws up these "we need more children to work and pay for retirement pensions".
who persistently find in favour of the woman, ignoring the benefits that a father can bring to children: if mother does not want her ex-partner around the courts do little to help dad remain in the kids lives. She can break court orders with little penalty while dad is faced with huge legal bills and delays. The courts pretend to act in the best interests of the children - but really they are prejudiced in favour of mothers.
Insane. We flew within 2 months of our daughter being born and will be taking her to Japan next year. It is an excuse for the lazy.
What model of aircraft is now full of people who loath you?
Just remember time discounting and the generally shoddy statistical intuitions of humans: While I don't doubt that your assessment is correct (I don't have the data, you do, and in any case I'm willing to agree for sake of argument), you have the sex first, sometimes even without consequence(I forget the exact stats; but some combination of failure to fertilize and early-stage spontaneous abortion keep even unprotected sex during fertile periods from leading to recognizable pregnancy 100% of the time, and the odds fall further in lower fertility periods) and then have to deal with kiddo later.
Given that humans tend to markedly discount future costs, and do basically every horrible thing imaginable to statistical judgements, it may well be simultaneously true that your assessment of overall cost over time is correct and laziness(in combination with poor assessment of risk-discounted future costs, and/or short term lapses in judgement caused by the relative attractiveness of futzing with a condom or hot animalistic fucking) leads people to keep having kids where a less-lazy approach would more rigorously apply preventative measures.