First-time fathers show longitudinal gray matter cortical volume reductions
economist.com
economist.com
Also problematic are HN comments like (exaggerated here) "Shucks, on the day I turned 30, I lost 100 IQ points, and now have trouble remembering not to pick my nose at the same time I'm eating paste."
You be you, but please remember that prejudices and confirmation bias are problems, and try not to tar an entire group with your paste.
If some halfwit VC seriously passes on my company because he sees this one headline and concludes fathers are stupid then he’s terrible at his job and remind me to short everything he touches.
(PG might've started it, with influential essays about why he wanted college students as founders, perhaps making it socially acceptable. Then people like Zuckerberg reinforced it, with public comments. Many companies structure their interviews around tests/rituals that arguably start from "How, uh, fresh in mind are your undergrad CS classes, even though that probably has little-to-no relevance to the actual work you'd be doing here?")
That's only ageism. There's also sexism, racism, classism, genderism(?), etc.
There's enough of those biases going around, and we're in/hitting a recession. Not everyone can afford to decide "I don't want to work for a company where anyone who could influence my opportunities has some ill-informed bias against some group.".
Some scientific finding of X is fine, if the science is solid. But being aware of ongoing bias problems can affect how we communicate and think around that.
Maybe that's because early-20s people are willing to work for less, easier to manipulate to work long hours and don't understand red flags like founders who say things like that.
Perhaps you don't understand how science or the aegis of science have been historically used to justify discrimination. You can look to phrenology as a good example of this. It was touted at some point as a biological justification for white-black racism. So here we have a class of people who suffer discrimination (parents) and a "scientific" justification.
> If some halfwit VC...
You won't know that this happened. There will be plenty of other reasons which can be explicitly stated for not funding you (or passing you over for a promotion or whatever). You will only learn that you are suffering from discrimination if you get lucky and catch the oppressor on a hot mike or they fat finger the reply all.
It’s noted above the paywall in the article too. I won’t comment further than noting that you’re demonstrating the biases other comment warned about very well.
I would go so far as to argue that there is a single cohort "at the top of the power structure" comprised of men with no kids and men who have kids but do not actively parent. Men who have significant childcare commitments are in a lower cohort.
"Protected" by and from who? Whose "unfair prejudices" are really at issue here? I always cringe when scientific studies or other bits of objective reality are suppressed or downplayed because of the prejudices of people who believe that arbitrarily cobbled together groups of people by those who think they know better need to somehow "be protected".
>You be you, but please remember that prejudices and confirmation bias are problems
If someone has a problem with science and objective reality, that is a personal problem they should deal with, not a problem with science and objective reality. Unfortunately there is an ever-growing mentality (especially among younger people) that if objective reality is somehow offensive to one's sensibilities then objective reality should be ignored or explicitly rejected all together.
Anecdotally, I feel that experience; consequently, business tasks have become much harder. I don't believe it'll be anything more than temporary, but it is certainly substantial.
Interesting. My experience was the opposite. After the initial sleep deprivation, once our child was sleep trained, I achieved a new level of productivity in my life.
Before children, I wasn't as focused. Now, I'm more efficient. The knowledge I have a break coming where I know I'll be giving my family my undivided attention helps motivate me through the day.
I think that's a valid question -- one likes to assume that it's some adaptability trait, but the reality is that it could just as well be evidence of sub-standard conditions facilitated by the scenario.
Nothing generates focus like “I have this exact 45 minutes to do X this week, or it isn’t going to happen”.
For good and Ill, I suppose .
There's always the knowledge that if I fail to maintain a job, it is statistically associated with divorce, and that divorce is statistically associated with child support, and that child support is statistically associated with prison and revocation of passport/property/licenses keep me going. If I fail to be productive enough I will be tossed in jail, that wasn't really the case before. But unlike some other people, I lived an exceedingly free (and low-cost) life before children, often just being homeless and hitch-hiking around the country, fighting for foreign militia, spending months living in forest or hiking trails, etc.
We spend all the weekend together, the week is for me-time.
But heaven forbid you expect your wife to keep up the pretenses set when you married her.
It's almost as if 90% of their brain is dedicated solely to making sure their children are safe and looked after. It's like - at any moment - they think their children could just spontaneously combust or something. And I'm not talking infants. These are like 3 & 4 year olds...
As a non-parent, this is so bizarre. We all grew up with parents that weren't perfect, and we all ended up just fine.
I'm not sure if this is what's always happened to people when they become parents or if it's something new.
But the complete irrationality of their constant fears - something MUST have happened to their brains.
1) a little bit dumber than I used to be
2) a lot more tired than I used to be, even after a rare full night sleep
3) a lot less self serving than I used to be
4) a lot more anxious than I used to be (which was already pretty high). I definitely visualize the “worst case scenario” in every situation I’m in
5) (stealth edit in) a lot less career motivated than I used to be. I predict this returns when the kids are older but maybe not
All that to say: yes, my brain has definitely rewired itself.
Also I used to think parents whose kids were throwing a tantrum in the middle of the grocery store were doing a bad job but now I get it.
The first time they throw a tantrum to get something just walk away and don't buckle .. especially if it's in a very public place.
Avoid providing feedback that throwing a fit in public will bend you to their will and it won't happen much more.
Personally I don't indulge tantrums but that doesn't make them stop. I assume the child does it to punish me to try and make me feel as bad as they do, as she seems to understand the tantrum won't result in me actually doing anything. Like a tic-for-tac, not as a way to actually get something (she knows I don't give anything or really acknowledge a tantrum).
If you got a toddler to make tantrums 'not happen much anymore' I think either you have an exceptional child or they just grew old enough to grow out of it.
It's worked fine with my own children, my grandchildren, and various nieces and nephews.
I agree that the the "not indulging" in tantrums doesn't make them stop on a dime .. but they peter out faster and anecdotally appear less frequently in the future.
It's good to have cool calm collected kids down the track so you can teach them to pull molten glass from a 1000C furnace when they're five, to use an angle grinder safely at nine, and start driving by ten.
None of these offspring of mine are exceptional BTW, they're kind of typical for rural WA (W.Australia).
I'm 100% sure my kid would just start ripping and destroying the items on the shelving in that aisle. And that if the child were seen unsupervised in the aisle, at best the kid would be taken to the front and at worst police would be called (my country, USA, is extremely paranoid about children which means even if you are not paranoid about your kid you have to be paranoid about CPS and the criminal charges).
At any rate I wish more places were mroe like rural Australia in that regard. Even relatively minor independence for young children is effectively illegal in much of the US.
You think .. but you don't actualy know is what I hear you saying :-)
In my experience small people indulge in a lot of performance art for the benefit of the faces they recognise in order to gather reactions and learn from that feedback - not as a front of brain delibrate strategy, more as innate "born to learn" pattern.
If you get in a Mexican standoff with you're own kid you're almost certainly going to lose .. I know I would with mine .. you start "daring them" not to do something and they'll start inching that jar ever closer to the edge until it drops.
"Young enough" kids will generally pull into best behaviour in a sea of faces they don't recognise, that's pretty much the time that you have a window to treat poor behaviour by simply walking away.
After that period they're more confident in front of strangers AND (uh-oh) understand that behaviour not seen by you is still behaviour known by you .. and that can manipulate you.
Child-parent relations are a non stop conveyor of escalating mirror awareness | peek-a-boo interactions .. and then puberty hits and you're into full Cold War MAD scenarios :-).
But yeah, independence for kids is pretty essential, it's good to have them walking | riding to school, looking after pets, growing food, building radios etc.
I suspect any drop in cognitive ability is largely a symptom of this, not a permanent rewiring.
Many non-parents experience memory, concentration, computation, and anxiety problems, when operating under the pressure of low (or low quality) sleep.
Children that age have the _potential_ to do a lot of damage and no _foresight_ whatsoever. They literally cannot see the potential consequences of running into the street.
It’s fine to not understand, but please think twice about calling something you don’t understand “irrational.”
There is a constant on-edge aspect where you find out in the span of a minute they can:
- open or climb over a gate to the stairs - reach on the counter to grab a glass jar - open a door by grasping the door knob
> we all ended up just fine.
It's probably once bitten, twice shy - every parent screws up and then remembers that one accident.
The girl began to wobble and myself and two other dads, without coordination or communication all instinctively began to lunge towards her (maybe 15 feet away).
We barely got two steps before we harnessed ourselves, noticed what happened and had a laugh. Then went back to being hermits.
I really felt like I was part of this ancient order. We didn’t know each other and yet we all understood each other.
I mean, we kind of are, right?
I couldn’t, I had these same ignorant ideas based on my fleeting, non-accountable contact with small kids.
Now let me tell you about the time my 10 month old, in the blink of an eye, managed to get a handful of her own poo into her mouth.
The struggle is real.
Plenty of us didn’t.
I’ve loved before. But once my first came things were very different. It was a new kind of love. I suddenly had such a clear mission in life: protect and nurture this baby.
I definitely changed.
If you don't believe in letting natural selection sort if you child will get past 2 yo, you 'll either recenter your whole environment and routines around the kid, or spend 90% or your time make sure they don't stab themselves with your antique knives collection or soldering iron.
Fo that for a few years and you won't be switching back to what you were before just because your kid can now read your phone password from your finger movements from across the room.
I think the same thing happens when you're looking after your elderly parents.
PS: > We all grew up with parents that weren't perfect, and we all ended up just fine.
I talked to my parents a while after my kids were out of the "let's gob anything that can fit in my face hole", and I also basically robbed a few years of their life where they basically frozr their career and couldn't do much outside of making sure we're not dying. Some parents forget how hard it was though (and it's normal. Your brain is really in a bad state all that time)
"This pram needs to have suspension system. What if you got a pot hole too hard and the baby bounces out and hits the ground causing brain damage? Happened to a cousin."
I see this and push back on my wife almost every day (I don't have social media, so I'm blissfully unaware of what dangers lurk)
Never happened with other family/friends before.
'don't touch that damn thermostat'
his poetic aptitude for dad jokes was intense, dare I say profound. truly a mind of the ages.
How is this playing out in higher-tech homes? Are kids overcoming parental technical aptitudes, or is this scaring kids off from fiddling with all things techy?
(I am dreading the day my kids will want to poke around in Hubitat [or whatever I am running at the time] and mess up my perfectly configured rules.)
Keep your rules in a repo somewhere, and the kids can't screw them up.
You could even have unsigned commits change the temperature in the opposite (or randomized) direction to discourage tampering.
i was going to suggest the opposite as the lameness of dad jokes pretty much supports the premise.
I'm guessing this only applies in a heavily matriarchial society. If it was a patriarchial society, you'd be killed for lowering the status of the head of the family with such nonsense!
I expect if I was worried about social standing I would not say silly things. That I am "Dad" and cannot be fired means I am safe.
For example: I feel super proud when my daughter tells _me_ what I am saying is silly and she tells me why. So much of parenting is about us telling our kids things, what to do, or why something happens. Saying silly things invites the kids to tell us stuff with their own authority.
"What are they going to do, fire me?"
knock, knock
"You've been served"
<opens package to find divorce papers for irreconcilable dad jokes>
But then again, my 10 year old son does better dad jokes than I do. And it definitely hasn't made him the lowest member of our social totem pole.
I have 3 kids, for me the first 18 months for newborns was pretty rough in terms of sleep. My first 2 are 15 months apart, there was a long duration of round the clock work. Doing startups and having babies is extra challenging in my experience, maybe that makes success extra sweet.
Pre-kids: "someone in the house is screaming 12 hours a day. I think I'll move out or have them evicted."
Post-kids: "someone in the house is screaming 12 hours a day. I'll be tossed in jail if I leave the screaming person to their own devices, so I'll think I'll have a beer so I don't go clinically insane."
If you had a kid with colic, you know.
All these articles about magical changes to fathers drive me crazy by listing every physiological consequence of sleep deprivation and attributing them all to the magic of fatherhood.
They should also have included fathers from cultures that aren’t as involved in pregnancy and infant care.
I actually remember the first time after she was born that I got more than 30 consecutive minutes of sleep, (maybe a week after?) because I woke up and saw the sun low and red in the sky, and legitimately did not know if was morning or evening. Turns out I had only been asleep 2 hours.
I never understood the phrase “sleep like a baby.” You mean, for 20 minutes at a time then you wake up screaming?
Brain is definitely different.
So much of the disruption is dependent on your kids personality, any medical issues (and sleep).
If I had 3 clones of each kid and their personality my stress would range from minimal:
"this parenting thing is amazing with some difficult moments and changes of rhythm"
To if I had three clones of the middle child, I would be losing my complete mind.
2. I wouldn’t be surprised if this is true, but not for the reasons the study (why are we linking to the economist) concludes. Everyone who’s an active parent recognizes that you’ll be sleep deprived the first year of having a child. Youll also be working harder and have higher stress. I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s the reason for shrinking the cerebrum.
Does the decrease in vol happen again with the 2nd(3rd, 4th…) kid?
I have kids and attempt to convince those who ask me about my experience not to have them. It is not for the faint of heart.
Sounds like you hit one of two here. Not for the faint of heart. I hope yours recovers soon enough.
You can easily adjust your spending by an order of magnitude either direction.
> they age you faster
Yeah, I'm sure you'd have been looking great at 60 if not for those damned kids.
> there is no guarantee the experience is worth it
Satisfying the primary evolutionary optimization criterion seems overwhelmingly likely to be worth it.
> They also destroy relationship satisfaction in the early years
What do you think the effect on relationship satisfaction will be in later years to have lost your youth in any case, but also to be in a sterile relationship with no connection to the future?
> It is not for the faint of heart.
Almost anyone can handle it. Nutrient-deprived illiterate cavemen have been doing it for hundreds of thousands of years without much issue - anyone doing it today is probably fine.
Suffering is a choice I suppose, just go into it with both eyes open. That’s my thesis. You can have a great life without having kids. Unpartnered older childfree women are one of the happiest cohorts, for example.
How in the world did you get that from anything I said?
I can't pick out any part of my comment that could be construed to mean that.
Marginal life is (as of now) more or less strictly positive EV, as is the expected internalized and externalized outcome of most of the people on this site having kids.
> Unpartnered older childfree women are one of the happiest cohorts
I really really doubt this is the case. Typically for sociology research, there are tons of papers claiming strong effect sizes of child-rearing on life satisfaction in both directions. However, older women are by far the subpopulation most dependent on psychoactive drugs such as antidepressants. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db377.htm I unfortunately can't find any studies that break down antidepressant use rates by parental status at all, or a fortiori by age/marriage/parental status individually.
Sounds like you might need a little therapy
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1563020169160851456
It won't be overpopulated, though Thanos-type NIMBYs think it will.
- if the brain shrinks again after the 2nd kid
- if the change is permanent, or if the brain expands 5 years after having a child.
that's a big assumption. we'd like to think that all people that have become parents wanted to be parents, but not everyone that's a parent wanted it. obviously, certain actions could have been taken to help prevent that. however, even if both parents were in agreement neither wanted to be parents, their options are less and less with each month's passing.
If anything, this is how I'd imagine real science being done. Doing something like this to get results at a scale that isn't quite funded, but enough to get attention. Later, someone else recreates the study at a larger scale to see if it is reproducible and hold as it scales.