Becoming a dad changes men's brains | Hacker News Reader

Becoming a dad changes men's brains

scientificamerican.com

111 pointsmomentmaker101 comments

Exaggerating a bit, I felt like my old self was dead and I just happened to somehow have inherited his memories.

But a more concrete thing: While before I might have been saddened about bad things happening to kids, like any normal person would, after having kids myself I experience an stronger reaction:

I get almost physically ill when I hear about kids getting harmed.

I was surprised how sudden the change was - I didn't become a dad to my kid, I became a dad to all kids within sight or sound. Sure, most of the time I don't have to do anything, but I certainly notice much more now.

This. Also, the feelings have become stronger as I age.

So much stronger. I went from completely understanding the "we should have restaurants/theatres/etc. where no kids are allowed" people to finding the notion totally incompatible with a healthy society. I love kids. I want to see them thrive and grow. I want to invest my taxes into their success. I vote for affordable daycare. I vote for expanding school programs. I take kids in my complex to look at stuff with the telescope. I 3d print things with them. I ask them about their lives and wonder what they'll be like. I have so much more patience for them. They matter more than I do, now. That's about it.

Before mine was born at the workplace they complained about how long paternity leave was and how unfair it was to those without kids. Now that I'm on the other side, anybody who thinks that is a jerk. Yes likely everyone deserves more time off, but don't you dare think that paternity leave is "time off".

I agree that it's crazy to act as though parental leave is anything like a vacation. I would prefer to sleep on my vacations. It's wildly unpopular among people who don't have kids, but I've come to think we should collectively want society to invest in kids, and that means parents as well. Raising kids is hard. It benefits society tremendously when it's done well.

The best ways seem to be things kids get directly, such as school lunches, better libraries, affordable child care, equipment at schools, etc. where parents don't need to be handed cash by the government.

But you're right, people get very up in arms about it (what about us?!). Society with an uneducated/un-cared for generation of kids is terrifying, though. I'm currently watching my oldest kids head into graduation with a cohort of kids who are clearly less educated than my graduating class was, and I'm dreading the knock-on effects. I feel for the kids too, but looking at this from a societal perspective: we're all going to pay the price for this. We should have invested up front.

In this case it's not possible to be certain yet, but the primary detriments to education among this cohort are probably covid lock-down and perhaps phones/social media? We got something wrong, regardless. They are less literate than previous cohorts have been for decades, apparently. Math scores are also much lower. Rates of plagiarism are so high that it's virtually impossible to address meaningfully.

All that is to say I think we should be doing a lot to ensure families and ultimately kids are able to thrive and do their best. Society ultimately profits from it, across demographics, for decades.

Quadragesimo anno [99] goes into detail on how "equal pay for equal work" has serious problems - nobody likes considering that and it sounds so unfair to our sensibilities - and then we build systems to disable that (child tax credit, healthcare, leave, etc), because it simply can't work.

[99] https://www.vatican.va/content/pius-xi/en/encyclicals/docume...

I already feel like this and I don't have kids or want kids.

Same here, I can't even read articles on BBC about child abusers, it makes me nauseous just to skim over a title.

I was saddened by just the headline and photo of the one last week.

The BBC and UK news readers in general absolutely love stories about child abusers, so they get prominent placing (and even a live blog on the sentencing last week)

Since I have a daughter, those "thoughts" are straight violence to the next level in my head when I hear or even see children being mistreated, I'm normally not favorable for any form of violence but strangely, some crimes suddenly gets a pass and progressive decapitation becomes reasonable.

I've thought down lines like that, too. Then I ask myself how I draw the line between who's a kid and who gets decapitated, and why anyone else should trust my judgment. After that, I just feel like violence is futile in that it will always produce motivation for more violence, and probably end up hurting more kids, the opposite of what I claim I want.

Instead I reaffirm my commitment to actual sex and emotional education, and easily accessible birth control, and access to abortion. I figure threatening to decapitate people only makes people more fucked up, not less.

I've been wanting to visit courts for a while, but never had the time.

I had a look at the local courts' agendas, and I was appalled by how many SA/CSAM cases there were. Probably half of them or so. Not just to children, but there's more than one case every week of that, and this is in a population of a few hundred thousand.

Still not enough reason to do all the CSAM scanning the governments want big tech to do, but it's definitely bigger than I though. (Or just easier to gather evidence on now, so that's what gets into courts...)

>Exaggerating a bit, I felt like my old self was dead and I just happened to somehow have inherited his memories.

I had a small mental breakdown anticipating that this was going to happen while my wife was pregnant with our first. It didn't. I ended up replacing the part of my life that was video escapism with kids and kept everything else the same. Three kids in, things are going great.

>I get almost physically ill when I hear about kids getting harmed.

Replace ill with enraged and I have had the same experience. The strong emotions were a bit of a surprise.

> I get almost physically ill when I hear about kids getting harmed.

This is how Israel's war radicalized me, I stopped watching videos, but they made me depressed, burned out, angry, because everytime I watched videos, my brain started asking "what would I do if this happened to my kids, would I join Hamas? probably yes"

I got burned out from these thoughts

So you think you would've hang glided into a music festival and shot at all the young people dancing? Or you would've done this: https://saturday-october-seven.com/ ?

> shot at all the young people dancing

Easy now; there's a distinct scale to these atrocities: Young lives cut short on an unimaginable scale: the 18,457 children on Gaza's list of war dead, https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2025/oct/08...

The Guardian either wilfully or ignorantly publishes stats from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry. Anyone who repeats these stats is an accessory to the terrorist regime in charge of Gaza.

It was Hamas’s war - started by a terrorist organisation butchering, abducting and raping young unarmed citizens.

The scale of the aftermath is what happens when an advanced democracy faces an existential threat from a terrorist-led neighbouring region, and must act to neutralise that threat for the safety of its citizens.

I don't think it's exagaration.unless you had kids young, before you had established yourself and some kind of identity, it does all go away. Who you were and your hopes and dreams all die after your newborn arrives. Your just a parent now trying to fit a life into 1 or 2 hours of free time.

That's how privacy-harming policies are so successful: "but think of the children !"

Some good biological imperatives at work! Beautifully Darwinian.

The Life of Dad was a good companion through the pregnancy, even if the author preaches a bit in some areas that felt off. It explains the massive mental transformation for fathers, the impact of testosterone, and why you’re “more affected” (so to speak) by being an involved father.

I had a spell of absurd anxiety. I’m not the same person in many ways. Being a dad is frekking cool and the weirdest challenge of my life.

And to your last point… I’m such a chill, no-violence dude, but once a drunk teenager walked into us and yelled at my baby. I was shocked, but 5 seconds later I only wanted to have access to a gun to shoot that teen right there and then. Yikes.

I don’t think any children should be harmed in a conflict. The knowledge of that, or of what we used to do to children in the past, are both things that can ruin a day for me.

I used to work in digital forensics and I used to occasionally see horrible things as part of that work; child abuse material, beheading videos and the like.

I’d become largely desensitised to the content, but after becoming a parent I just couldn’t deal with the CAM anymore.

Jesus dude, could you edit that to be less explicit please.

150 of em. Just gone, for no reason. That week was agonizing.

I used to watch a lot of true crime and now if child abuse is involved I just cannot do it.

> I get almost physically ill when I hear about kids getting harmed.

Same. I literally have trouble sleeping after hearing about things like this.

Becoming a dad simultaneously made me more empathetic (seeing a little person from the beginning for all they are) but also more impatient (fewer hours in the day), but beyond that not much. Given the notoriety about some of the techniques referenced in this article [0] curious if others notice anything more consistent.

0: https://academic.oup.com/brain/article/140/8/e53/4032512

Empathy, I’m not sure, but I can confirm the lack of patience.

I had less time, less energy, and my tolerance for BS plummeted accordingly.

The lack of tolerance towards BS and people being difficult in general has gone out the window for sure. In the morning, sure, you get a lot of slack, but when the kindergarten closes at 16:30 and it's now 15:30, I don't have time for people being difficult. We solve the problem, we have 30 minutes, if you're being difficult I'll ignore you. You can complain tomorrow.

The lack of tolerance towards BS is like a super power gift now! I wish I had this backbone before.

I can add to the personal experience piece. I am way more emphatic, to the point I apparently now tear up on certain movies/shows. Also yeah way more impatient and honestly more selfish now due to lack of personal time.

Songs too.

Hell, some TV commercials make me tear up.

With four kids, I think I have grown more patient with people in general. Also one who got more sentimental.

The youngest of my three is now 14. When it's come to managing developers raising kids is a superpower

After my child was born, I could no longer even look at newspaper headlines where something bad happened to a child.

Now, I can read the headlines, but I still can't read the articles.

I'm still at step one. It's just unbearable. And the rage I feel at people who are apathetic or "there's nothing we can do" is so strong.

Becoming a dad made me a sensitive snowflake crybaby :)

There were a lot of days on which I cried more than the baby. Diagnosed with anxiety disorder, but then they said it comes with ADHD and probably has little to do with the baby.

> As many as one in 10 men will experience paternal postnatal depression or anxiety. The symptoms often look different in dads—anger or sudden outbursts

Oh well.

I fully experienced postnatal depression, starting around 12-15 months, and it wasn't until relatively recently (my kid is now 18 years old) that I realized it.

We were living in a 1 bedroom in the city when we had our kid, and moved to a house in a suburb when the kid was 9 months old. My wife and I both worked, but I had a longer commute and a job that frequently required later evenings. Between the job and keeping up the house, I had a few minutes in the morning, random holidays, and part of one weekend day to really spend time. I spiraled into depression and insomnia, overwhelmed by all the work required to keep up the house while also feeling like a terrible father and husband. I was withdrawn, had angry outbursts, and my daily work routine involved sitting in my car in the train station parking lot having a good cry before heading home.

Before our kid started kindergarten, we decided to sell the house and rent a place in the city. Our apartment was about a 30 minute walk from my office with my kid's school as the 1/2 way point. I was actually able to walk my kid to school every day, coach sports that started at 5pm, and have both weekend days available to go on adventures around the city.

Thanks for sharing, I can totally relate. I'm so happy for you that things seem to have worked out.

As a dad, I have a strong compulsion to tell (bad) dad jokes. Ideally puns. All the time. I didn't used to be this way.

Literally laughing out loud to this.

I can relate.

I have always had this desire, and now I have social validation that it's part of my role ;)

Are your kids teenagers already? Telling them in front of their friends is 10x better.

Yup. The closer I am to her friends... the stronger the compulsion. It's like magnetism.

As a daughter, I approve. Hell, I'm the one telling them to my dad most of the time

my Brother in pungnaciousness.

Do any of these studies account for new parent sleep deprivation?

I slept way less and more fragmented when I was a student.

That is almost too hard to believe. Sleep less? Ok. More fragmented? Doubtful, unless your baby slept more than 4hrs straight in their infancy.

Same on my side; I was constantly working and studying with 2-3 hours sleep max for years.

Life was harder. Then again nothing breaks my brain like the cry of my daughter so probably not one to one.

Students also tend to be younger. We could all survive on 4h as young adults, I imagine.

Our kid sleeps like crap, some nights I don’t get any full cycles (~90 minutes in adults).

I’ve no idea why we’re trying for a second, send help.

I read, "Our kids sleeps like crabs" It was interesting trying to figure that out.

Your second kid only takes half the effort. Half it again for a third. New parents always try to be perfect. It takes a while for them to get pragmatic.

I hope so. People around us either share your opinion or say they compound on each other in terms of work.

Modern anxious parenting often tries to prevent every conflict, disappointment, boredom, risk and bad feeling.

Pragmatic parenting accepts that kids need to hear:

No. Not now. That’s enough. You’ll survive. Go play. Eat what’s there. Bedtime. Sort it out. I love you, but the answer is still no.

My wife and I set up sleep shifts during the first two months. I would sleep from 9 PM to 3 AM, then we'd spend an hour all together, then she'd sleep from 4 AM to 10 AM. During a person's sleep time, they were not to be disturbed except for an emergency. We'd also sleep anytime the baby was napping.

It kept us sane. Just knowing that we would each get hours of uninterrupted sleep was great.

+1 to this method. Prior to having a reserved ~6 hour slot of sleep the lack of sleep was getting BAD.

You're not parenting alone. Good parents make sure everyone can get enough sleep.

> new parent sleep deprivation

Think the 9to5 culture make its even harder. It takes a village, probably 2 if you've got twins / triplets+. 9to5 is not something "long childhood" can be compatible with? https://onbeing.org/programs/alison-gopnik-the-evolutionary-...

The first born defenitely changed me somehow. As if some evolution gene was suddenly ordering me "You will protect this with everything in your power!" The second born, not so much. Perhaps the brain was already settled in the right configuration :)

With the first kid you sterilize everything. After that I guess you learn how much dirt they put in their mouths and don't bother.

I have 3 kids. When they started on solids: #1 got fancy home made baby food, like cheesy chicken broccoli frozen into ice cube chunks. #2 got steamed yams and crackers. #3 got whatever we were eating, ripped into baby-sized chunks. All are fine.

It's likely that your number 3 child is both the smartest and best looking. Not sure what that has to do with diet but it can't be a coincidence

This is written like a number 3 child. ;-)

I have two, both adults now. The first one, if she woke up early and I was still asleep, would politely come over and say that she was hungry.

The second one, though, she was a scavenger. I woke up to her crunching on something. She was eating pistachios -- shell and all!

Kuddos on the big family, such an accomplishment. I must note, the first strategy is better for their brain tho, actually, I dislike reasoning around the education (I count feeding in it as it's extremely important to develop the brain) about what's fine and not what's best, because it's a slippery slope where you feel that small actions don't have such an importance, but after all it's the compounding of small (and better) actions that matter the most to improve intelligence and other aspects of a future adult. It's like sending your kids to a public school, sure, it's "fine", but let's not say it's optimal and it does have an impact in the end.

I have a 2-year old daughter so I can relate in part, she just joined a pre-school now (breaks my heart to drop her) and same as your #1 - top notch nutrition, supps, probitiocs and so-on (deeply studied & argued) and chef level taste, never had once something in her mouth that isn't vouched :p

Chose breastfeeding entirely for the first 6 months (better for their brain as per my knowledge), then introduced solids progressively, I'm super grateful to be in the AI era at the same moment I've had my daughter because it allows me to study extensively everything regarding children.

>the first strategy is better for their brain tho

why/how is ice cubed food better than yams or whatever is for dinner

I understood the "thought process" behind, it's not about the ice cube or whatever, user seemed to imply that for #1, he cared much more about the details in a way (what's exactly being fed, in what form and so-on) which often leads to just better nutrition.

We know that food isn't equal, and we know that food can change your brain/energy level/memory... both as children and as adults which indirectly affect life outcomes.

Actually, anyone that has started eating properly (lower portions, never be full, always eating useful things) can attest that they are just overall a better person, healthier, fitter, sharper...

For me, my first born taught me that love is infinite, no matter how much I loved my wife, that little creature was getting all my love as well, somehow as if there were some parallel source of infinite love for the two of them.

Our second born, taught me that exact same lesson, again - that no matter what, there will always be three human beings in my life for which my love is infinite, and that I would step in front of a bullet for any one of them.

Whereas before it all went down, I was pretty much all alone, now I know for sure there are 3 other human beings I will want to say goodbye to, properly, some day.

For me is the fact that before I was worry free, and now I'll be worried until the grave.

Or, you'll have someone who loves you and trusts you, and you trust them, holding your hand as you step into that grave.

I mean, one can hope.

This mental shift can also occur before your first born.

Some men who are fathers now had to jump in early as the older sibling due to unreliable parents. Some of those men also chose not to be fathers. Taking responsibility for others is a broad range of experiences.

For all that is said about "dysfunctional" families, sometimes adulting early leads to better outcomes because you were given more time to think.

the only thing that I noticed that changed in me was my sudden understanding of what "fear" really is.

I had not experienced fear prior to becoming a father. The thought of one of my children being ... i'm not even going to say anything more. Use your imagination. That kind of thing scares me so much more than it did before I was a father.

One of our tech leads at work tried to do a team building exercise where we'd go around the table and name our greatest fear.

I was very glad to have been late to that particular meeting. It would have been pretty awkward for everyone if I'd started crying at the table.

Fascinating how things that are most relevant to continuing your species are the things with the hardest coded behaviors.

and yet: paternal filial cannibalism

Don’t do that

Cronus is not supposed to be a role model!

Becoming a new parent I knew I'd sleep less and be tired all the time but what I didn't know was simultaneously how much energy I'd have to keep going. It's almost like low grade, months long adrenalin rush. Very strange.

I had nightmares about bad things happening to me before. Like, getting ran over by a car, or falling off a cliff.

When my wife got pregnant, it stopped. I started having nightmares about bad things happening to my son instead.

Fun.

About 2-3 months after the birth of my first child, I started “seeing” the baby’s face vividly whenever I would close my eyes, when I was falling asleep but other times during the day as well. It was not a conscious-voluntary imagination, more like an artifact of my brain rewiring priority numero uno. Our second child is now 3 months old and I have not experienced similar, perhaps because the brain changes already settled down before his birth.

Tetris effect, but with the baby!

https://archive.ph/UwObv

The changed I noticed is twofold: + If a situation would not be acceptable for my son (bullying) then I shouldn't have to tolerate it at work (workplace bullying)

+ Priorities shift dramatically. I see director level people running around like chickens without heads trying to fill in an excel sheet because one of the higher ups has sent down a directive; without them realizing that the time spent doing so is meaningless dribble that doesn't matter. It's like things that were not obvious time sinks are now very obvious and I'm less patient (of nonsense) because I have something more important to care about.

Previously related:

Dad brains: How fatherhood rewires the male mind

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47820046

Yeah, it gives them a superiority complex --- you're all still ants, now there are more, lovely.

I have 3 teenagers and this claim seems plainly obvious to me.

A previous discussion on this topic which doesn't require a subscription to read: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47820046

learning or doing anything "changes your brain". that's how learning works.

i hate this phrase and how it's generally used for scare-mongering headlines.

This is not mere learning, must have some kind of pre-wired special mechanism because it's very quick and very strong.

First, this is true - learning or doing anything does change your brain. This article isn't talking about just that.

I personally don't think it's meant to scare-monger, either - although I'm sure opinions may differ on the subject.

What is unique about being a dad is having a living breathing creature depend on you. There are hormones exchanged. AND you're learning and doing something. AND you're remembering (and having to deal with) your own childhood memories. And realizing that in your memories, you were the kid ... now you're the adult. It's different.

Read the whole article expecting it to explain how it would have changed, was disappointed to not read that.

Iliza Shlesinger has a great bit about how men discover that "woman is person too" when they have a baby daughter.

Best not go overboard on this whole thing about fathers and increased empathy, though.

Elon Musk has a father, after all. So did Donald Trump.

The Roblox CEO has children. Magical universal father empathy is clearly not working out there, or he would shut down his business and give any remaining money to charities.

No wonder Magnus lost 4 times in a row.

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