It’s fair to say that while there are many fa­thers in T&T who take su­perb care of their chil­dren, there are too many who run from their kids. Some think these dif­fer­ences are cul­tur­al. Some think they’re bi­o­log­i­cal. Oth­ers high­light the re­li­gious, for ex­am­ple, the MA­GA Chris­t­ian ide­ol­o­gy of fa­ther­hood em­pha­sis­ing a strict, pa­tri­ar­chal struc­ture, the moth­er stays home and takes care of the chil­dren, with the fa­ther as the au­thor­i­ta­tive house­hold head, pro­tec­tor and spir­i­tu­al leader.

Stud­ies of hor­mon­al lev­els in moth­ers dur­ing preg­nan­cy and af­ter show def­i­nite changes linked to ma­ter­nal be­hav­iour. Func­tion­al MRI scans show brain changes as­so­ci­at­ed with ma­ter­nal be­hav­iour, all of which are linked to the Mom Brain phe­nom­e­non. Part of that is for­get­ful­ness, men­tal fog and de­creased fo­cus on oth­er things dur­ing preg­nan­cy and post­par­tum, with at­ten­tion fo­cused en­tire­ly on the ba­by’s sur­vival.

We’ve known this for years. Now, it seems that, based on hor­mon­al and MRI stud­ies, sim­i­lar changes oc­cur in many fa­thers, al­though they are less ev­i­dent. These changes are not cul­tur­al and not re­li­gious. They are bi­o­log­i­cal.

There is a Dad Brain phe­nom­e­non. The ev­i­dence comes from stud­ies that be­gan ap­pear­ing in sci­en­tif­ic lit­er­a­ture around 2010, so this is all new stuff.

The re­sults come from pre-preg­nan­cy stud­ies, preg­nan­cy stud­ies and af­ter preg­nan­cy stud­ies of hor­mones and func­tion­al MRIs in men who be­came fa­thers, com­pared with men who are not fa­thers.

There are four main hor­mones as­so­ci­at­ed with the de­vel­op­ment of “Dad Brain.” First, that old “ma­cho” hor­mone, testos­terone. Men who had ba­bies showed low­er lev­els of testos­terone af­ter the birth of their child com­pared to non-fa­thers. Men who spent longer look­ing af­ter their ba­bies showed the largest drops in testos­terone. Those who shared a bed with their chil­dren had the low­est lev­els.

In­ter­est­ing­ly, men with the high­est testos­terone lev­els be­fore preg­nan­cy oc­curred in their part­ners, seemed to have fe­male part­ners who con­ceived faster, but their lev­els dropped once the fe­male be­came preg­nant. Be­hav­ioural­ly, the drop in testos­terone is linked to high­er com­mit­ment of the fa­ther, to both moth­er and ba­by and even to the re­ac­tion to the cry of their ba­by. It made them more alert and re­spon­sive.

The “love” hor­mone oxy­tocin pro­motes bond­ing, trust and in­ti­ma­cy. Fa­thers have high­er oxy­tocin lev­els than non-fa­thers and lev­els cor­re­spond to the amount of time they spend with their chil­dren. From birth, high oxy­tocin arous­es the sense for self-preser­va­tion, hy­per-vig­i­lance and makes fa­thers more ag­gres­sive­ly pro­tec­tive around their ba­by. You can ac­tu­al­ly give fa­thers in­tranasal oxy­tocin and make them even more su­per at­ten­tive, car­ing and alert to dan­ger di­rect­ed at their ba­by.

We could use some of that here. Spray it in the air?

Just last year, re­searchers found that va­so­pressin, a hor­mone in an­i­mals that is of­ten in­volved in ter­ri­to­ri­al­i­ty and male-male ag­gres­sion, was sup­pressed in new par­ents be­fore their ba­bies were born. And an­oth­er hor­mone in­volved in prepar­ing the moth­er for breast­feed­ing, pro­lactin, pre­dict­ed how in­volved fa­thers would be in car­ing for their in­fant.

The changes in the brain of fa­thers are sim­i­lar­ly amaz­ing. When MRIs are done on men dur­ing their part­ner’s preg­nan­cy and again when their ba­bies are six to 12 months old, fa­thers ex­pe­ri­ence a re­duc­tion in grey mat­ter vol­ume in the area of the brain that con­trols ex­ec­u­tive func­tion, con­scious­ness, thought, emo­tion etc. How­ev­er, the re­duc­tion is not a loss of grey mat­ter. It is a re­mod­el­ling to a high­er de­vel­op­ment of the adult brain, sim­i­lar to what hap­pens in ear­ly child­hood and at ado­les­cence, where we prune and stream­line brain con­nec­tions to work more ef­fi­cient­ly.

Brain changes were linked to the hor­mon­al changes. An area of the brain called the hip­pocam­pus, which is heav­i­ly in­volved in reg­u­lat­ing emo­tions, showed en­large­ment in dads who had high­er oxy­tocin lev­els and low­er testos­terone.

And as re­cent­ly as De­cem­ber 2025, a study com­par­ing fa­thers with non-fa­thers, show­ing both groups im­ages of ba­by faces and scant­ly clad at­trac­tive women, found that the non-fa­thers are way more in­ter­est­ed in look­ing at the women. New fa­thers were more in­ter­est­ed in their new­borns.

It turns out that the male brain in hu­mans is de­signed to take part in par­ent­hood. It’s not in­stinc­tive be­hav­iour or re­li­gious. Dads are wired with this bi­ol­o­gy that can turn on when they en­counter a ba­by. The more they are in con­tact with the ba­by, with the preg­nan­cy and birth, the more they want to be around. At­tend­ing ul­tra­sounds, go­ing to ap­point­ments, in­ter­act­ing with their part­ner dur­ing their preg­nan­cy and at­tend­ing birth may be one of the best ways to make fa­thers stick around, and the news that some lo­cal ma­ter­ni­ty units are prac­tic­ing this is good news for all of us.