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Male hormone affects the manifestation of paternal concern
Last reviewed: 01.07.2025
American scientists, in the course of their research, decided to establish whether a high level of testosterone in a man’s body really affects the desire to take part in raising their own children.
At the beginning of the 20th century, a theory was put forward that both fathers and mothers should make an equal contribution to the upbringing of their children. But in the second half of the 20th century, men's attitudes toward the upbringing of their own children changed - they began to pay less attention to it. Scientists were interested in the question of why men do not want to take part in raising children. Researchers came up with an interesting theory: high levels of testosterone in the blood increase the tendency to polygamy; if a man is married, the chances of destroying a family increase several times. Low levels of testosterone reduce aggressiveness and weaken sexual desire. As a result, such men have a desire to take care of children and are more emotional about them.
A group of scientists decided to conduct experiments and prove the reliability of the proposed theory. The goal of the specialists was to find out how a man's desire to take care of his children is connected with the level of male hormone in the body, as well as the size of the testicles, which significantly affects the quantitative and qualitative composition of sperm, but whether their size is connected with the manifestation of paternal feelings and the desire to take care of children, was to be found out. The studies involved 70 men, whose average age was around 33 years, 65 people were married and all participants in the experiment had children, whose age was from one to two years.
First of all, the scientists had to find out whether the father's desire to participate in the upbringing process really has an inverse relationship with the level of the main male hormone and the size of his testicles. The degree of paternal care was assessed using tests (written by the husband and wife). Questions such as who bathes the child, who gets up to him at night, who visits the clinic, had to be assessed on a five-point scale, where 1 is the mother, 5 is the father. The couples' answers were almost identical. The questionnaire also included questions about the father's desire to spend more time with his children in order to exclude inaccuracies that could occur as a result of an increase in the level of the male hormone due to stress or external factors.
Activity in the corresponding area of the brain during crying or a photograph of a child is stronger in the mother, and especially increases after the birth of the baby.
All men who took part in the experiment were shown several photographs of an unfamiliar adult, a stranger's child, and their own children, and the emotional state of those depicted in the photographs was the same. The response in the corresponding area of the brain to the photograph of their child was more active in men who were more caring towards their children.
As for the relationship between paternal care and testicle size, the theory was only partially confirmed, but the level of male hormone in the body did not affect the desire to care for children.
Despite the fact that the results of the experiment were quite accurate, the project manager Jennifer Mascaro assures that research in this area should not be stopped. During the experiments, inaccuracies could have appeared due to the physiological state of the man due to external factors.
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