Are Dads Getting Better?
Saxbe reports on research showing that dads generally have lower testosterone than non-dads; the more time they spend with their kids, the lower their testosterone goes. This is another change that makes them more dadlike. The anthropologist Lee Gettler speculates that “low-T” fatherhood is basically an adaptation to circumstances: when new dads are immersed in the work of parenting—bathing infants and changing their diapers, or helping older kids navigate the emotional complexities of middle school—it simply doesn’t make sense for them to be “hormonally focused on competition and aggression.” Conservatives such as Tucker Carlson have lamented a decline in testosterone among Western men, seeing it as a crisis. But the decline—which Saxbe notes could be caused in part by obesity, nonsmoking, and other factors—might also simply reflect the fact that lots of dads are spending lots of time with their kids. The more men parent, the more they transform, quite literally, into family men. Such fathers don’t just act differently—they are different.
Does this make today’s dads better? That’s a surprisingly thorny question. In a chapter titled “What Makes a Good Dad?,” Saxbe draws on the work of Barry Hewlett, an anthropologist whom she describes as studying “the most hands-on fathers on the planet”—the men of the Aka, who live in the rain forest of the Congo Basin. The Aka gather honey and caterpillars to eat, and hunt much of the rest of their food. While living with the Aka, Hewlett found that fathers of babies had them within arm’s reach half the time, often carrying them while working or socializing. “Men might gather with a group of other men to drink palm wine, each of them holding an infant in their arms,” Saxbe writes. Meanwhile, the fathers of the Kipsigis tribe, who live as shepherds in Kenya, “rarely feed, bathe, or dress their infants,” and “consider it unmanly to carry a baby around outside the house.” They understand masculinity as so incompatible with babies that “fathers are not supposed to see their newborns for the first weeks after birth, lest they damage the infants with the ‘strength’ of their gaze.”
When Saxbe asks Hewlett “why the Aka are better dads than the Kipsigis,” he takes issue with the premise of the question. He concedes that “the Aka are more hands-on,” but argues that “better” is subjective. “Kipsigis dads support their families too,” Saxbe notes. “They serve as protectors, providers, and role models.” A comparatively hands-off father who is focussed on bringing home food “increases the odds that his child will survive past infancy. . . . Good fathers in any given culture are the ones who give kids what they need to thrive within their specific world.”
What kind of world do we live in? For fathers, this question is caught up in further questions about the shifting role of men. People with widely diverging political views agree that “men are in crisis”—but their views re-diverge over whether men aren’t manly enough or, in contrast, are “toxically” masculine. (Dip into the manosphere and you’ll think both complaints are true.) In his widely-read book “Notes on Being a Man,” from last year, the business professor and podcaster Scott Galloway surveys the challenges faced by men and boys. “If we can’t convince young men of the honor involved and the unique contributions inherent in expressing what makes them male,” he writes, “we’ll lose them to niche, rabid online communities.” They are growing up without social skills: nearly half of men between eighteen and twenty-five “have never approached a woman in person.” They are doing badly in school and in the job market. Misled by “a parade of fake men selling distorted versions of what it means to be a man,” they don’t know how to act or how to raise boys to act well.
And yet, simultaneously, many fathers are spending more time with their kids than ever. This contradiction—men in crisis, men being present—is part of our reality. Parenting has to happen regardless of whether you have all the answers, and so these many committed dads have all sorts of improvised theories about how to best approach their common task. Another researcher cited by Saxbe “thinks contemporary industrialized societies are in transition” between “ ‘high-T’ and ‘low-T’ models of fatherhood.” Anecdotally, I’d say that, for all the progressive, feminist, “low-T” dads I know (and I’d include myself in that group), I know an equal number of old-school, “high-T” dads with more traditional outlooks.
