I was pretty disappointed with the way the article started out. I didn't see any reason to think that this was a bad thing when I first heard about it, but the writer seems to thing that this "is probably not the news most fathers want to hear". Thanks for sharing Al. This information is definitely empowering, in my opinion.

Whoops, sorry. I've had to pull that blog post while it is being considered elsewhere. Dang. Just when it was generating some interesting responses.

One woman replied that SAHDs were what was wrong with this country, and that she wanted a man with lots of testosterone so he could "kick major butt" if necessary. For your enjoyment, below is my not-obviously-testosterone-infused reply.

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Dear Mother of 6,

I'm sorry I couldn't reply on the blog. I've had to take down the post temporarily while it is being considered for publication elsewhere. Professional courtesy and all that.

I was looking forward to replying to your post, and when it is up again I will. It raises such interesting issues. In the meanwhile, I thought I would offer you the courtesy of a personal reply rather than make you wait.

You seem to have been faked out by the one data point you have to draw on, that one panty-waisted stay-at-home dad. Since the stay-at-home dads' statistical presence is roughly one for every 23 square miles in this country, that is not surprising. So, here are some things to consider, some bits about stay-at-home dads and some about the actual science as it relates to testosterone.

Stay-at-home dads tend to work more from home than do stay-at-home moms and thereby bring their households closer to dual-income homes than single-breadwinner. But, again, that may be a statistical anomaly due to our being a much smaller percentage of stay-at-home parents. By the way, fewer than three in ten kids under the age of TWO have a stay-at-home parent of any kind. After that age, it's just over one in five. Which means that just over one in five working dads are sole breadwinners. Does that indicate something wrong with our country? If it means that our economy or our values require both parents' paychecks to get by, then I think most people would say yes.

Testosterone increases aggression in men, but not necessarily strength. So testosterone does not provide the ability to kick major butt, just the proneness to try. But there is a big butt — er, but — to that. Testosterone interacts with the stress hormone oxytocin to provoke the famed "fight or flight" instinct. The behaviors associated with that are "lone wolf" behaviors: seeking isolation and making instantaneous decisions toward preemptive violence. Neither of these is conducive to protecting anyone but the self. After all, the testosterone influence is just as likely to make someone run away as pick a fight. Further, high levels of testosterone can impede sound decision making, and one need not look far to find a flood of examples where it has.

Moreover, a "decrease" in testosterone does not mean the elimination of it. Nor does it suggest that they drop to anything below optimal levels. More than enough remains to maintain manly prowess. So the only real advantage to testosterone in a fight is if a man doesn't know diddly about defending himself and can only rely on going psycho and hoping that his opponent is similarly clueless in the art of self-defense. Meanwhile, anyone with any working knowledge of boxing, wrestling or martial arts would thrive on a reduced level of testosterone, where he would be able to keep the cooler head to prevail.

Now, just as women have testosterone, men also have estrogen in their bloodstreams. When oxytocin interacts with estrogen, it provokes the "tend and befriend" instincts. These are more like "mama bear" instincts. They are protective. Having a balance of "fight" and "tend" is obviously beneficial to family protection. We can infer this fairly straightforwardly from the archeological record. James Shreeve, in his excellent book The Neandertal Enigma, deduces that the evolutionary edge that we had over the Neandertal (or Neanderthal, as we usually spell it) may have been our hormones. Neandertal women went into heat. The men would come around for that time before running off again for a month. Humans were less extreme in their hormonal behavior. Men had to stick around if they wanted to be present during ovulation. The resultant social structure of both parents tending and protecting the young gave us a breeding advantage (and once we became agrarian, having both parents around was even much more the norm, admittedly with some cultural variation (e.g. herding versus farming cultures), until the rise of commerce and, later, industry). So much so that we crowded the Neandertal out, to the point of extinction. This social structure would have meant that human males were less testosterone-charged than their Neandertal counterparts. In the Darwinian paradigm, that made them fittest to survive. It is also interesting to note that this nurturing-induced decrease happened at a much earlier age way back when, before people were waiting until their late 20s to reproduce. So we are already walking around for nearly a decade longer with what may arguably called an excess of testosterone.

Like you, I know very few stay-at-home dads. I do, however, know a lot more than one (and I am so sorry that the one you know is as you describe him; I do sympathize immensely on that). As for manliness, they are neither more nor less manly than the average. For fitness, as in physical fitness, they are above average. The job necessitates that (women do have physical advantages in tending children, for which men must compensate with their physical strength). I don't see many stay-at-home dads with the big fat belly of their working counterparts. So that weighs in our favor.

The manliest thing about them is that they do this job because they can. They saw a job that had to get done, and they did it. That's what men do. No matter the job. Any guy who would shy away from an important job that needed doing simply because he was afraid of being called names fits my definition of a wussy. Call me judgmental, but it does.

Testosterone, as I mentioned, impedes judgment. From a cultural point of view, particularly in a capitalist culture, testosterone is to be nurtured: testosterone sells. Advertisers want men to be moved by testosterone. In other words, they want us to be suckers for their sales pitches. I spent a decade or more in advertising, I know whereof I speak.

Anyway, the bottom line is, a high testosterone level serves a purpose. When it has achieved its goal, it is only in the way. So, in a very manly fashion, it rides into the sunset. Were it to have moved on already among those characters who I described as trashing the economy, then there would be a lot fewer families who needed to rely on two incomes. And here we are in total agreement that that would be much better for our country.

Thanks for reading, and thanks for your thought-provoking reply.

Cheers,

Pat Byrnes

CaptainDad.org

smurks.net

I salute you Captain Dad!

Hogan