Research has been released this week that suggests that fathers experience a surge of hormones similar to that of mothers when their child is born. 

Professor Ruth Feldman, a neuroscientist at Yale and at Bar-Ilan University in Israel states “This seems to be evolution’s way of helping men turn into good parents as soon as they have a baby. These hormones seem to have a powerful role in helping men bond with their newly born children.”

This coincides with a momentous event for me; that of becoming a grandfather for the first time. As I sat in awe of the beautiful little boy that my son and his partner have produced I also noticed with pride how natural my son looked as he held his son in his arms. He looked born to it.

The research published is gained from observing new fathers from birth through the first six, months of their child’s lives. The hormones involved are oxytonin and prolactin which have long been recognised as having a profound effect on women. Now the effect on men is being documented.

The effects must be long lasting or maybe we are experiencing a cultural change. My reasons for saying this is that for some time we have been running courses entitled Understanding Anger for Parents and the majority of the attendees have been women. I have recently noticed two things. Firstly I met, for the first time last month a father who came on his own. I have also noticed a trend of more couples attending together. Now this may be because we incentivise the price (£71 for one parent or £112 for both) or it could be that culturally men are becoming more involved in parenting. I would like to think it was the latter.

Whichever, our results just get better and better. Recent measurements showed that parents felt on average 43% improvement in their ability to manage their children and 48% improvement in their stress levels post course.

So, the hormones help and so too does taking positive action to learn more and improve out parenting skills.

For more details and to download an article on children’s self esteem visit http://www.beatingangerderby.co.uk/anger-management/understanding-anger-parents-1

Photo acknowledgements

http://www.flickr.com/photos/pinksherbet/

Image: Dynamite Imagery / FreeDigitalPhotos.net