Topic: at-home dad convention
Some notes from the convention I promised you - Veteran at-home dad researcher Kyle Pruett of the president-producing Yale U delivered the at-home dad convention keynote speech. Although It was weighed down with research data and words like "prolactin" no one whined or took a nap. It's because he's a pretty funny guy, didn't show any diagrams like the one at right, and he knows his dad stuff. (If the diagram excites you, click on it and you can learn everything there is to know about prolactin.)
Pruett's
4 main talking points:
"What I found out was what you are doing is all right and that you do
not have to have a sex change to do it" We are genetically wired to be good fathers just
as moms are - In his book The Nurturing
Father he writes "We know
for certain that men can be competent, capable, creative caretakers of newborns.
This is all the more remarkable given that most men are typically raised with an
understanding that they are destined through some natural law to be ineffective
nurturers. . . . The research on the subject, some of it now decades old, says
this assumption is just not so. And it says it over and over
again, in data from many different discipliners.
When
your wife disagrees with you she is right also - Pruett notes while mom and dad will handle the same situation differently they
are ?both right? in their actions. For example he says "Fathers are
more likely to encourage their kids to tolerate frustration and master tasks on
their own before they offer help," he explains, "whereas mothers tend
to assist a fussing child earlier." With
this balance the kid understands that he need to take risks but he knows to be careful
the next time he wants to steer
the sled off your breezeway roof. I?ll add
a few notes about some of the other dads at the convention tomorrow.. - Pete
Pruett talked about the piles of studies on the hormone
level changes in a dad's body before and after he becomes a father.
One hormone, prolactin,
(which helps moms produce milk) was up 20 percent in new dads while testosterone
levels dropped.. He mentioned one study that was well covered by Psychology
Today ??researchers asked couples to hold dolls that had been wrapped in
receiving blankets worn by a newborn within the preceding 24 hours. (After their
wives gave birth, fathers held their actual baby.) They listened to a six-minute
tape of a real newborn crying and then watched a video of a baby struggling to
breast-feed. The investigators took blood from the men and women before the test
and 30 minutes later. What they
found is startling: Men who expressed the greatest desire to comfort the crying
baby had the highest prolactin levels and the greatest reduction in
testosterone. And testosterone levels plummeted in those men who held the doll
for the full half-hour.?
"Babies respond better to higher tones, but once they are upset they
respond better to a lower voice, so [the dads] should get up when the baby cries
at night"
Updated: Saturday, 18 December 2004 4:25 PM EST
Post Comment | Permalink | Share This Post
