Anna Machin is a doctor of evolutionary anthropology, a writer and broadcaster, who is considered a pioneer in fatherhood science
Millennial fathers spend, on average, triple the amount of time with their children compared to dads in the 1960s. It’s no straightforward golden age – parenting today is for many a complex juggle – but the shift in roles has been profound, with children and society poised to benefit. In this series, we meet two men who are dadding differently, and the fatherhood scientist who’s tracking the rise of more involved dads.
Fatherhood in focus #2: Anna Machin, evolutionary anthropologist and mother-of-two
No longer just breadwinners or disciplinarians, the shift that modern fathers have undergone is of huge value to society, Machin says.
‘Involved.’ There, in a single word: the modern dad. Stepping up. Pulling his weight. Doing his bit. Not just the antithesis of absent, but the engaged, enthusiastic, up-in-the-middle-of-the-night kind of co-parent.
Should we be so surprised? Yes, he looks markedly different from yesterday’s dad. Almost unrecognisable, in truth.
It’s this evolution of fatherhood that fascinates Anna Machin, an evolutionary anthropologist and author of The Life of Dad: The Making of the Modern Father. But what’s behind this overhaul of paternal norms? Practical reasons exist, she says. Think, dual working households (so more help needed at home), greater mobility (so grandparent babysitters are less available), and a stretched NHS (so far less postpartum care).
Yet, Machin insists today’s new-look dads are actually far more normal than our traditional ‘childcare equals women’s work’ culture leads us to believe. Homo sapiens is a rare specimen, in fact, being among the 5% of mammals that are evolutionarily conditioned to co-parent (other standouts include empire penguins, arctic wolves and marmosets).
“Investing fathers – which is basically fathers who stick around – is very, very rare in the animal kingdom,” affirms Machin, who shares her home with three domesticated dogs (which, unlike their wild brethren, have next to zero paternal instinct). “It tells us that it [the father’s active cooperation] was absolutely necessary for the survival of the offspring.”
More unexpected still, we now know that new fathers undergo a similar degree of physiological change as new mothers. Most notably, scientific studies show that men’s level of testosterone (a chemical, as Machin puts it, that’s “great in the dating game, but not in the family game”) drops by as much as a third after birth. Similarly, new dads experience increases in hormones like oxytocin and prolactin that assist with bonding.
Men’s neurological condition also shifts, says Machin, who spent 12 years at the University of Oxford investigating the genetics and neurobiology of love and fatherhood.
We now know that new fathers undergo a similar degree of physiological change as new mothers. Dads are as biologically primed to parent as mums
After a child’s birth, the outer areas of their brains, particularly the prefrontal cortex, which controls social interaction, are shown to increase in activity. On the flipside, those parts of the brain associated with stress demonstrate a marked slowdown.
To be clear: big differences still exist between new mums and new dads. The experiences of pregnancy, birth and breastfeeding give women a considerable “head start” when it comes to bonding with a newborn. In contrast, finding points of interaction can be hard for men in the first few months. But, from around six months, when children are more “developmentally ready”, opportunities for dads to build connection accelerate rapidly.
Often, this takes the form of “rough and tumble” play, Machin explains, so, jogging the baby on your knee, jumping up and down together, and generally larking about. There’s a serious side to such playfulness, however. Machin describes it as “fast and furious, and it works well because it’s a fast track to forming a bond”.
'Dads are as biologically primed to parent as mums,' explained Anna Machin. Image: Harry Lawlor
Behavioural science also points to subtle differences between male and female caring roles. The primary instinct for mothers is to “nurture”; by which Machin means soothing, hugging and other “inward looking” acts of affection that reinforce in a child the sense of being protected.
While fathers also engage in such behaviours, their primary focus is on preparing their offspring to cope in the outside world, which manifests itself in “pushing developmental barriers”, often with a (reasonable) element of risk or challenge.
Hence, fathers “come to the fore” at pivotal moments of social transition, like going to school for the first time or when building friendship networks as a teenager. On the second point, Machin adds that “dads are also the key parent when it comes to mental health in teenagers, because he’s the parent of building resilience”.
Importantly, none of this is etched in stone. The human brain is remarkably adaptive, Machin insists.
From around six months, when children are more “developmentally ready”, opportunities for dads to build connection accelerate rapidly
For starters, that means everything a biological father experiences in early parenthood can be true of another man, hence, the term ‘father figure’ being often ascribed to any other man not involved in a child’s conception who steps in to parent them.
Similarly, single parents are not confined by their gender, with either mother or father able to pick up what comes instinctively to the other. The same is true for gay parents. In the case of the primary gay caregiver, the nurturing (mother) and social cognition (father) parts of the brain “both light up”, Machin explains: “It’s like there’s a new neural connection between the two, which means he can balance dad’s role and mum’s role.”
Challenges for new dads still remain, however. Primed as men might be by evolution to co-parent, cultural mores move slowly. Workplace norms, in particular, remain skewed towards a female-first model of childcare. Despite recent regulatory tweaks, for instance, men in the UK are still only entitled to two weeks’ statutory paternal leave at full pay.
But the good news is that when men are enabled to fully co-parent (for example in countries like Sweden, Norway and Finland), the positive repercussions are profound. All the available research indicates that “no question” exists of the offspring of more hands-on dads being more involved in domestic life and in the lives of their own children. “With this model of more involved dads,” Machin concludes, “the effects are cross-generational.”
Anna Machin is author of books including The Life of Dad: The Making of the Modern Father, out now
Main image: Harry Lawlor
