Testosterone study puts dads’ manhood under fire

Science confirmed last week what AJ Jacobs had already feared.

“I knew that my testosterone was at a low point when I found myself wearing my wife’s polka-dotted breast-feeding pillow strapped around my waist in an attempt to feed a bottle of milk to my infant son,” said Jacobs, a writer who lives in Manhattan with his wife and three young children.

He and new fathers everywhere were calibrating the state of their manhood after the release of a much-discussed study of 600 men that indicated that testosterone—the defining hormone of maleness—drops after a man becomes a father.

If that were not enough, the study seems to suggest that practice actually makes imperfect when it comes to the hours men spend in rearing children. It found that the more time a man spends each day, say, strapping Crocs onto his toddler’s feet or helping her off the monkey bars, the more the hormone flags.

In a Mr. Mom era, where society encourages (and family schedules often demand) men to enthusiastically embrace a 50-50 split of every parenting duty short of breast-feeding, the question on many fathers’ minds is whether all of their efforts to be the ideal contemporary man are also making them less of one.

“A study like this implies you are scientifically less manly just when you’d like to think you’ve hit a new plateau of manhood,” said Robert Fahey, an online auto salesman in Burlington, Massachusetts, whose second son was born this month. “You’ve spread your seed, so to speak, and joined the ranks of your own father.”

Now, he lamented, “Not only are you a dork when you lapse into goo-goo talk, but now you’re less of a man scientifically.”

Fathers astir

As soon as the findings were released, fathers were tweeting them to friends and posting links on their Facebook walls, inviting comment. On playgrounds before work, and likely in bars after, men wondered: Does their inner Hemingway come with a built-in “off” switch that is activated the first time they empty a Diaper Dekor?

There was, to be sure, a certain macho indignation at the suggestion. “I don’t find myself to be less of a man because I change diapers and can make a bottle in the dark,” said Jason Maloni, a Washington father of a daughter, 3, and a son, 1.

“Just because our hormones shift a little doesn’t mean we’re going to grow breasts,” added Josh Kross, of New York, whose three children are under the age of 7.

“There was a time—not too long ago—when I was wild and unfettered. Dare I say riddled with testosterone,” John Cave Osborne wrote in a column on Babble, a website for hip young parents. Reminiscing about alcohol-fueled tailgate parties and five-day backpacking trips, he confessed that he no longer had the energy for such he-man carousing, thanks to having four children under the age of 4. “But it still never occurred to me that these rug rats were robbing me of my testosterone. My manliness,” he wrote.

“I’m tired,” Osborne concluded. “But I’ve not morphed into a woman, for crying out loud.”

Identity crisis

Such newfound identity crises come at a challenging time for fathers. Economic pressures mean that both parents are often forced to work longer hours and manage more stress. Yet, if anything, the social obligation to be a hands-on superdad is greater than ever. Even President Barack Obama ducks out of the Oval Office to show up on the sidelines of his daughters’ soccer games.

“There is a greater cultural emphasis on men who are actively involved in child care than there was a generation ago,” said Adam Mansbach, the author of “Go the F _ _ k  to Sleep,” the best-selling satirical children’s book that became a new bible for weary parents. Mansbach, 35, is the father of a 3-year-old daughter.

“There’s very different expectation: The amount of time you spend with the kids, the relationship you have with your kids—fundamentally, that work is not a valid excuse for not spending time with or having a strong relationship with your kids.”

At the same time, the image of the perfect American father, 2011-style, seems fuzzier than ever. The classic pop-culture archetypes—silver-templed sages in cardigan sweaters (Ward Cleaver, Cliff Huxtable)—seem as outmoded as rabbit ears in an era where fathers would rather act like their children’s best friend than square-jawed authority figures.

Overgrown boys

Today’s Generations X and Y dads are closer in spirit to Will Arnett in the new NBC situation comedy “Up All Night”—potty-mouthed guys in pocket T-shirts and stubble. They exchange bro-hugs with their children and dream of someday out-shredding them on the snowboard slopes. Overgrown boys themselves, they may not feel ready for the responsibilities of coparenting, but they feel obligated to fake it mightily.

Jacobs is also a humorist by profession, and the best he could hope for was to turn the dispiriting finding into a punch line. He had his worst suspicions confirmed when he visited a urologist while researching his coming book, “Drop Dead Healthy: One Man’s Humble Quest for Bodily Perfection,” in which he chronicles his attempts to become the healthiest man alive. Tests showed lower-than-normal testosterone, and the doctor suggested hormone-replacement therapy.

“When the doctor said he wanted to raise my testosterone, he told me that it would boost my libido,” he recalled. “And I said: ‘That’s not appealing at all. What exactly would I do with that extra libido? I’m a new dad with an overtired wife. That doesn’t help anybody.’”

Also, many new fathers are having to confront this exhausting double whammy (feeling overwhelmed, yet lacking physical verve) at a time when it seems socially unacceptable to vent. Women, in the common view, enjoy a greater freedom to spout off to friends about the crushing pressures of trying to “have it all” (that is, juggle it all). A vast and highly active Web of mommy blogs, books and even movies, like the new Sarah Jessica Parker film “I Don’t Know How She Does It,” exists as a support network.

But many men still feel an expectation to keep a stiff upper lip, a vestige of the days when the authoritarian father rarely let slip any admission of frailty, perhaps because he had a pipe clenched between his teeth.

New York dads

But maybe men are finally starting to close the gap. The testosterone study inspired crackling debate on the many fatherhood blogs cropping up. And in support and social groups like NYC Dads Group, which has more than 400 members, many men dissected the findings with one another and looked to the study’s more positive aspects to reassure themselves that they were strong, contemporary fathers.

“It’s a natural process,” Matt Schneider, a stay-at-home father of two young children who lives in Manhattan, said of the testosterone dip reported in the study. The finding, he said, was unfortunately being interpreted by some “as a way to emasculate men, when really it should be used as a way to show us all that we’re meant to be part of the caregiving process.”

That, in fact, was a point that the study’s authors emphasized: A dip in testosterone does not mean a man is less virile. Rather, it seems to be nature’s way of slightly adjusting impulses, to make him less likely to stray once he has a family to look after, and more likely to focus on the tasks at hand. (The much-deliberated relationship of testosterone to “manly” behavior became a raucous side debate in the days after the study’s release.)

Watershed moment

Kross, a member of the NYC Dads Group, said he hoped that such findings might signal a watershed moment when people finally ditch the lingering stereotype that men, at some deep biological level, are inherently inferior at child-rearing. He said attitudes have shifted in the two years since he and his wife, who works in finance, decided that he would spend the days taking care of the children while she served as the breadwinner, despite the fact that he has an MBA in operations management.

“It’s been dramatic,” Kross said. “It’s changed from the biggest concern being, ‘Can you really manage to do that?’ to people saying, ‘Wow, you can actually can do that.’ Most of the wives I’ve met say, ‘Yeah, he’s at least as good as me at being the caretaker.’”

Such thinking was evident outside the sensitive male-breeding grounds of New York City, too. Robert Saxton, a father of three in Bemidji, Minnesota, met the study’s findings with a shrug.

“Manhood is measured in so many ways,” he said. “That’s easy for me to say, I reckon: You are conversing with a guy who bow hunts, fishes, plays hockey and used a chain saw just hours ago, so I guess I feel pretty secure.” New York Times News Service