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December
I'll have some prolactin with lactation on the side
please.
Some notes from the at-home dad convention, veteran
at-home dad researcher Kyle Pruett of the
president-producing Yale U delivered the at-home
dad convention keynote speech. Although it was
weighed down with research data and words like
"prolactin" no one whined or took a nap. It's
because he's a pretty funny guy and he knows his
dad stuff.
Pruett talked about the piles of studies on the
hormone level changes in a dad's body before and
after he becomes a father. One hormone, prolactin
(which helps moms produce milk) was up 20 percent
in new dads while testosterone levels dropped.. He
mentioned one study that was well covered by
Psychology
Today “…researchers asked
couples to hold dolls that had been wrapped in
receiving blankets worn by a newborn within the
preceding 24 hours. (After their wives gave birth,
fathers held their actual baby.) They listened to a
six-minute tape of a real newborn crying and then
watched a video of a baby struggling to
breast-feed. The investigators took blood from the
men and women before the test and 30 minutes later.
What they found is startling: Men who expressed the
greatest desire to comfort the crying baby had the
highest prolactin levels and the greatest reduction
in testosterone. And testosterone levels plummeted
in those men who held the doll for the full
half-hour.”
Pruett's 4 main talking points:
"What I found out was what you are doing is all
right and that you do not have to have a sex change
to do it"
"Babies respond better to higher tones, but once
they are upset they respond better to a lower
voice, so [the dads] should get up when the
baby cries at night"
We are genetically wired to be good fathers just
as moms are - In his book The Nurturing Father he
writes "We know for certain that men can be
competent, capable, creative caretakers of
newborns. This is all the more remarkable given
that most men are typically raised with an
understanding that they are destined through some
natural law to be ineffective nurturers. . . . The
research on the subject, some of it now decades
old, says this assumption is just not so. And it
says it over and over again, in data from many
different discipliners.
When your wife disagrees with you she is right
also - Pruett notes while mom and dad will handle
the same situation differently they are “both
right” in their actions. For example he says
"Fathers are more likely to encourage their kids to
tolerate frustration and master tasks on their own
before they offer help," he explains, "whereas
mothers tend to assist a fussing child earlier."
With this balance the kid understands that he need
to take risks but he knows to be careful the next
time he wants to steer
the sled off your breezeway roof.
©2005, Peter
Baylies
* * *
It is easier to build strong children than to
repair broken men. - Frederick Douglass
Peter
Baylies is the Director, of the At-Home Dad Network
. The At-Home Dad Network is a loose-knit
grassroots organization for primary care dads who
want to start up or join any activity to help
connect at-home dads. Since 1994 we have connected
and promoted home-based fathers across the country
and around the world. It started in with a small
group of dads who wanted to be listed in the the
At-Home Dad Newsletter and grew into a network of
thousands of dads who started dozens of At-Home Dad
Network playgroups, e-mail list servs, media
contacts, conducted research, and the At-Home Dad
Convention. Subscribe to our free online At-Home
Dad Newsletter to be delivered to you via e-mail.
We also invite you to join the new At-Home Dad
Network online message board. where you can connect
with at-home dads next door and around the world.
If you would like to join either the At-Home Dad
Message board and or to receive the free online
newsletter and request to join or ask any questions
in joining or starting a playgroup or need any
resources. If you have any at-home dad news like
the one above, or opinions or events and you would
like me to check out and possibly share with the
readers, send it to Peter Baylies at
athomedad@aol.com
or www.athomedad.com
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