The brain of man and his adaptation to fatherhood

Traditionally, raising and caring for children has been one of those areas associated with the feminine: in this case, more specifically, with the role of the mother. The realm of the maternal seems to encompass everything that is relevant to us during the first months of our life. A mother provides warmth, nourishment, affection, and the first contact with language (even before she is born, her voice is audible from the womb).

Going a little further, we could argue, as suggested by the French psychoanalyst Jacques lacan, that the look that a mother directs towards us is in itself the mirror before which we forge a very primitive idea of ​​our own “I”. In this sense, the germ of what will one day be our identity is thrown at us by a loved one.

Male fatherhood

Although it is not uncommon for psychoanalysts like Lacan to emphasize the figure of the mother, it is surprising to see to what extent the conception of the maternal as something sacred is rooted in the depths of our culture. And yet, the adult males of our species are perfectly capable of raising and educating their offspring, (and even adopted children). This is also true in cases in which the traditional nuclear family model, with father, mother and descendants does not exist.

Also, we realized long ago that the human being is a unique case of paternal care among all forms of life. This is so, basically, because in most animals in which sexual reproduction occurs, the role of the father is quite discreet. Let's see.

Evolutionary rarity

First, the normal thing in vertebrates is that the reproductive role of the male is limited to the search for a mate and copulation. Obviously, this means that the moment of "being a father" and the birth of the offspring occurs in two well differentiated phases. By the time the poor young have arrived in the world, the parent male is far away, both in time and space. The role of the "father who is going to buy tobacco" is perfectly normalized in the genetics of the animal kingdom.

Secondly, because, if we divert our gaze to other branches of the evolutionary tree in which we are included, we will have many opportunities to see the following scheme applied:

1. A strongly cohesive pair of female and calf.

2. A father figure, whose role is quite secondary, responsible for ensuring that the relationship maintained in the female-calf dyad can last long enough to raise an adult organism with full capacities.

In those cases in which the male is actively concerned about the safety of his young, his role It is usually limited to that, trying to guarantee the survival of their own against any threat. It could be said, for example, that for a large back gorilla being a parent means trying to smash anything that might upset their offspring.

As a result of this, there are very few species in which the functions between males and females in relation to the care of the young come close to symmetry. Only in birds and in some mammals in which the degree of sexual dimorphism * is low is low, the paternofilial bond will be strong... and this happens very rarely. Furthermore, at least in the rest of the animals, a strong paternal role is synonymous with monogamy **.

The funny thing about this is that these conditions are rare even in such social animals as apes. The non-extinct relatives evolutionarily closest to us whose males take care of the young are the gibbons. and the siamang, and both are primates that do not even belong to the hominid family, to which it belongs theHomo sapiens. Our closest living relatives, the chimpanzees and the bonobosThey are not monogamous and the relationships between males and their offspring are weak. The case of humans, moreover, is special, because it seems that we tend towards monogamy only partially: ours may be social monogamy, but not sexual monogamy.

Breaking the paradigm

Be that as it may, in the modern human being we find a species that presents little sexual dimorphism and a tendency, statistically at least, towards social monogamy. This means that participation in childcare is similar for fathers and mothers (although it is highly debatable whether this involvement on both sides is equal or symmetric).

This being the case, it is possible that whoever reads these lines is wondering in what exactly is based on the attachment that men feel for their children and everything related to their parental behavior (or, in other words, the "paternal instinct"). We have seen that, most likely, social monogamy is an option that has taken place recently in our chain of hominid ancestors. It has also been pointed out how rare the genuinely paternal role is in the evolutionary tree, even among species most similar to our own. Therefore, it would be reasonable to think that, biologically and psychologically, women are much better equipped to raise children, and that parenting by Parents is a circumstantial imposition to which men have no choice but to conform, a last minute "botch" in the evolution of our life. species.

To what extent is parental care of offspring central to men's behavior?Is everyone's brain ready Homo sapiens to conform to the role of father?

Although establishing a comparison between the adequacy of male and female psychology for the role of father or mother would give for an eternal debate, yes there is scientific evidence to argue that, at least in part, fatherhood changes the structure of men's brains, something that also happens to women with motherhood. During the first months of postpartum, the gray matter present in areas of the brain of the man important in the processing of social information (lateral prefrontal cortex) and parental motivation (hypothalamus, striatum and amygdala). At the same time, the brain reconfiguration affects other areas of the brain, this time reducing its volume of gray matter. This occurs in the orbitofrontal cortex, the insula, and the posterior cingulate cortex. In other words, the repertoire of new behaviors that being a parent entails is matched by a repertoire of physical changes in the brain.

All this leads one to think that, for more or less genetic, more or less social reasons, the adjustment of the man's behavior to his new role as caregiver is strongly grounded in the biology of his own brain. This explains that, as a general rule, all humans can adapt to the new responsibilities that come with having a son or daughter.

Moral overtones

Now, it could be said that the question of whether the interest shown in children has the same nature in men and in women is colored by a moral, emotional, or even visceral component. The seemingly aseptic question "can fatherhood be comparable to motherhood?" becomes “do men have the same capacity to surrender to a noble and pure love for children, as clearly happens in women? " This question, while perfectly legitimate, is difficult to answer.

We know that reality is something very complex and that it can never be covered by each of the investigations that are carried out daily. In a certain sense, translating a topic that generates personal interest into a hypothesis that can be approached from the scientific method entails leaving elements of reality out of the investigation ***. We also know that, as reality is so complicated, within the theoretical body provided by science there are always loopholes of uncertainty from which it is possible to rethink the conclusions of an investigation. In that sense, the scientific method is both a way of generating knowledge and a tool to systematically test what seems obvious to us. For the present case, this means that, for the moment, the honorable role of the father may be safe from common sense ...

However, someone could argue, for example, that the interest in offspring shown by males of some species (and its corresponding neuroanatomical adaptation) It is only a strategy to closely monitor the offspring and the female with whom he has procreated, even going so far as to deceive himself about the nature of his feelings; all this to ensure its own genetic continuity over time. It should be noted, however, that the core of this problem is not only a question of differences between the sexes, but depends on our way of understanding the interaction between genetics and our affective relationships. Feeling attached to the offspring for exclusively biological reasons is something that females could also be suspicious of.

Some people are of the opinion, not without reason, that intense and overly continuous scientific speculation can be daunting. Fortunately, along with purely scientific thinking, we are accompanied by the certainty that our own subjective feelings and states of consciousness are genuine in themselves. It would be a shame if a radically physicalistic conception of human psychology were to ruin a parent-child experience.

Author's Notes:

* Differences in appearance and size between male and female

** There is, however, a very curious case in which the male takes care of the offspring apart from the female. In the fish of the family of the signatids, to which the seahorses belong for example, the males are in charge of incubating the eggs in a cavity of their body. After the eggs hatch, the male expels the young through a series of movements resembling seizures and then disregards them... or, at least, the ones that he has not eaten to then. In short, this is not a particularly endearing case and it is better not to draw parallels between this and what happens in humans.

*** In philosophy of science, this dilemma is approached from a position called reductionism and from the philosophical approaches opposed to this.