Babies, mums and dads: myths and problematic lies
The maternal instinct scam. What changed with fatherhood? That we don’t have sex like before. Seriously? Yes, she doesn’t want to. Why is it like that?
“We wouldn’t survive without mamas,” I read, scrolling across an Instagram post whose spirit shared the importance of care until a baby gains a certain physical and emotional autonomy. I scrolled back down to it, considering that the way it was presenting its message, from a certified Argentinian childhood consultant’s page, ran the great risk of not coming across properly.
And it’s because arguments like this — you’re no one without your mother — are not a sure thing. Speaking on these terms stigmatises those who haven’t had the luck to have, or continue to have, a mother, but it can also accidentally foster the opposite effect, as well as augment problematic dynamics.
Unfortunately, a biological mother can also die before giving birth, and her baby can survive (and go on to live a full life). In any case, the most important thing is to have a committed, loving and stable caregiver, more than a “mamá”. We know that in general it is women who occupy this role, but:
It’s not always their conscious or free choice,
and, above all, it doesn’t have to be a woman’s role at all (and much less, her role alone).
I know it might seem like a minor detail, but it seems super important to me and is at the base of the domino effect, because it ends up reinforcing the idea that, even before a child arrives, motherhood becomes the center of the conversation, without taking other actors into account.
This, amongst many other things, later reproduces injustices and deepens the lack of sharing of the chores and responsibilities for the person who is coming into this world.
At the same time, in the context of heterosexual couples, this idea of mothers as irreplaceable works to relegate men to a secondary or dispensable role, it gets them used to being shunned to one side with the pretext that “in a child’s first years, it needs its mother” because “men can’t barely do anything”, because “a baby needs its mama”, and that this is a “biological question”. I put these statements in inverted commas because we have all heard these empty words before.
Let's be clear: the only thing a man cannot do is breastfeed, which is a lot because of the titanic demand it implies and it can be a super important stage for the baby and the mother. But not all mothers are able to or can or wish to breastfeed (less than half of babies worldwide are exclusively breastfed); and if they do it, it won’t be forever, nor is it the only thing that a newborn needs.
The rest of the jobs and responsibilities are equally possible to do for a woman than for a man, with the huge difference that some were educated from a very early age to play with doll babies or naturalized these tasks through their culture; and others — men — were educated for other things, but not for caring.
To some extent, there are also mothers who reinforce these dynamics, because they want or feel that they should fulfil the role they were prepared for, above all, by the demands of society.
At this point, it should be clear and obvious that the maternal instinct is a scam. As Anna Machin, the British evolutionary anthropologist and author of The Life of Dad: The Making of the Modern Father, said in a BBC article: “Women and men are just as instinctive as parents as each other, because they’re both biologically primed to do it”.
And before birth?
Beyond breastfeeding, there is a lot that happens before birth — nine months of pregnancy! — which also tends to fall on the mother although it doesn’t need to be this way. Someone who will give birth has enough to deal with considering a pregnancy and birth, which are unique, timely and vital milestones. It’s also a stage in which men can gain or lose many opportunities.
Neuroscience tells us that a baby’s brain grows a lot in utero, but fetuses also learn to recognise voices and languages. It can be difficult for a father to feel connected during a pregnancy, in which they can’t feel a baby growing in their body, and at a time which they feel they can lose touch with their partner a bit — they are not who they used to be, and he isn't either, although sometimes it can take a while to realise it.
To get to the point: to be involved, men don’t need to wait until their children can speak and can thus be reasoned with.
The connection with an unborn child should begin with those very first moments in the tummy. In fact, there are studies which clearly show that the earlier the connection with a papa, the sooner you can care for a fetus, the bigger changes you can see in the father’s brains. And there is so much that can be done.
, a professor of psychology at the University of Southern California, is currently working on Dad Brain: The New Science of Fatherhood, a book about how fatherhood transforms men. She is researching how their brains and bodies change as they become fathers.In the New York Times, in an op-ed from June 2024, Saxbe wrote: “The brain and hormonal changes we observe in new dads tell us that nature intended men to participate in child-rearing, because it equipped them with neurobiological architecture to do so. They, too, can show the fundamental instinct for nurturing that is often attributed solely to mothers.”
For Saxbe, fatherhood changes men just as much as it changes women, and any other person who dedicates their time to raising small children.
Fatherhood, for men, can have great benefits in the long term, for the health of their brains but also society: “At a time when boys and men seem to be experiencing greater social isolation and declining occupational prospects, the role of father can provide a meaningful source of identity. But the transition to fatherhood can also be a time of vulnerability, which is why supporting fathers should be a priority for policymakers,” wrote Saxbe.
One of the main hormonal changes in men who become fathers is a drop in testosterone, the male sexual hormone, which allows for more patience — a key quality when managing the arrival of a newborn — and it opens the door for a deeper connection between a father and his child. This makes it easier to spend time together playing and chatting. At the same time, it can also be a trigger for depression in men who become fathers.
I want to get to this
We can’t be pregnant with babies in our bodies, we can’t breastfeed, and so on. It’s maybe normal that men feel they can do little during pregnancy, and in the first uncertain months of having a child. But it is not like this.
We let ourselves buy into a deceptive narrative and, practically panting with this projected resignation, we tell ourselves that we’d like to do more but it’s impossible, because in the end, it’s a question of biology.
This trap, which happens partly because society imposes it and partly through our own laziness, leads us to repeat these ideas that the mother-child bond is unique (as if the father-child bond wasn’t) and there’s no other choice but to be at the margins (which is almost synonymous with getting less involved).
In the extreme version of this, we’ve all seen or heard men who are so little-informed and disconnected in this new reality as fathers, that the first thing they can report about the first months of having children is that “we don’t have sex like we used to”. Really?!
If this is the case, I’d like to hear a profound reflection about why this happens. It’s not enough to proclaim “she doesn’t want to; all she cares about is the baby”. It would be good to ask ourselves certain questions, such as: “What is it about the arrival of a child which means one person wants to have sex, but the other one doesn’t?”
In Argentinian daily elDiarioAR, Gastón, a father, tells journalist Natalí Schejtman (in Spanish) about what it was like to become a widower with two children, aged three and seven: “I learned about that energy sap that raising children can bring. I used to come home and want to have sex with my wife but many times, she didn’t want to, and I’d get annoyed. And once I was alone with the kids, I saw that you simply have no energy left, and the only thing you want at night is sleep. The lack of sleep and fatigue in your body can be so immense”.
It is not hard to relate to Gastón’s experience of the hormonal, physical and psychological changes that come with caring for a baby. If a load is not balanced, it’s normal that it would have an impact on a person’s desire.
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For many years now, there have been more studies on men in relation to fatherhood, which is helping to tear down these old myths. In her newsletter The Double Shift, U.S. writer
interviewed gender expert . Mangino’s book Equal Partners: Improving Gender Equality at Home is a good read for the much needed ideas about changing gender roles.Mangino cites a study which traced what happens before a baby is born to heterosexual couples. Each couple works for approximately 40 hours a week in remunerated work, and both spend 15 hours a week on domestic tasks. After a baby is born, women continue to do 15 hours a week of domestic work, but they also add 22 hours of caring for the children. Fathers on average do 14 hours of childcare, but their domestic tasks go down to 10 hours per week.
For Mangino, this reflects the fact that we still define father — and motherhood differently: “You can be a successful father and get away with 14 hours. Whereas I think women are doing 22 hours and still getting judgment from people that they're not good enough.”
Mangino connects this with what I have been discussing:
“I think it also shows that culturally, when kids come into the picture, we confuse biology and gender construction. And I still hear even from people who work in gender and who try to be feminist and who try to be gender aware that there's still talk about this natural connection between mother and baby. They still cite the pregnancy of nine months to build bonds with a baby that a father doesn't have. I still hear people slipping back into these more traditional thoughts around biology. And I think that we have to push through those. There are studies that show men's testosterone levels drop when they co-sleep with a baby now that we're starting to study dads and fathers and how men's bodies change and respond to infants being in the house.”
As always, the context is key to this dynamic. Mangino explains that when you are flexible, you tend to earn less money, work fewer hours, obtain fewer promotions and gain less influence in a company because you’re prioritising the home.
“So it’s a cycle of undervaluing care work and underpaying women and keeping women back from achieving their potential in the workplace. So it’s a chicken and the egg thing,” says Mangino.
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I’ll end with these words from a reader who wrote to me recently, when they were expecting a child, and we exchanged some emails:
“I thank you for the chance to share these moments of intimacy, like caressing the belly of your partner, and somehow connecting with the life which is within, waiting for the moment when the baby will enter the world. It reminded me of something that I sometimes think of, and that I would like to write about soon: that while a baby is within a woman’s belly, the pregnancy is of both parents, and there is much that men can do. I’m telling you this because just this week, I listened to a podcast in which two fathers chatted and came to the mutual, unequivocal agreement that ‘during pregnancy and the first year of life, men hardly have anything to do’. And afterwards they complained about how they had not played a main role during that first year. I think that’s a part of the issue: as men, we have to learn how to do a huge amount of things in silence, without being at the center. Things which are very important, essential. Things which women do (and which we need to relieve them of).”
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Nacho
🙏 Many thanks to Worldcrunch for translating and editing this newsletter.
Before on Recalculating:
Family or nuclear bomb?
I have just one hour to write. I am going to do it against the clock. I’ve never done this in the two years since I have been writing Recalculating. I’m going to talk about time, about mothers and fathers who are burnt out, and about the nuclear family.
Great article! Thanks for the mention.