The Male Brain by Louann Brizendine Page A

little care . Hadza dads, who give more hands-on care, had lower testosterone levels than the dads in the Datoga tribe. Datoga dads have very little contact with their children, and they had higher testosterone, closer to the levels of the single men in that tribe. No one knows for sure whether the different hormone levels cause the behavior or whether the hands-on fathering suppresses testosterone.
than uninvolved fathers.
two different hunter-gatherer

A DAD IS MADE
    A week after Michelle's due date, Tim rushed her to the hospital as her contractions intensified. For the next thirty-six hours, he stayed awake, helping her to breathe through the contractions and trying to make her feel more comfortable, which seemed like an impossible task. During the birth itself, Tim couldn't believe how hard Michelle had to work. He was never so glad to be a man. Twice he felt he might faint. And then suddenly he could see the crown of the baby's head, and he became completely transfixed as the entire head and shoulders began to emerge. When the doctor handed Tim his newborn son, tears welled up in his eyes as he snuggled naked little Blake against the bare skin of his chest and neck.
    "When he looked into my eyes, I think he knew I was his dad and I would always protect him," Tim later told me. The skin-to-skin contact between father and son had worked its biological charms on both of them, calming them and promoting bonding .
    Because infants require round-the-clock care for survival, Mother Nature has forged a nearly unbreakable biological bond between parent and child. It's as if she waves her magic wand over the parents' brains and they fall head over heels in love with their baby, as Tim and Michelle were discovering. Scientists have learned that the same brain circuits that were activated when Tim and Michelle fell in love were now being hijacked to make sure they fell in love with Blake . Cupid's arrows were being dipped in powerful neurochemicals like dopamine and oxytocin. Just as in romantic love, the connections between the baby's and parents' brain circuits are reinforced by skin-to-skin contact and gazing into each other's eyes and faces . And researchers have shown that a baby's face, with its soft, pudgy cheeks and large eyes, activates a special brain area called the parental-instinct area within a seventh of a second . Tim and Michelle's instincts were turned on full blast.

DAD'S TENDING INSTINCT
    "That little fellow sure has a good set of lungs," Blake's grandfather said as his daughter swooped into the room and popped the pacifier back into Blake's wailing mouth. Crying is a universal caretaking cue, but it stimulates the brains of fathers and mothers differently. Fathers' and mothers' brains light up in similar areas when they hear a baby cry. But the mommy brain activates more intensely, which may be why she's compelled to stop the crying before the dad feels compelled . So when Blake cried, Michelle almost always got to him first, even if Tim was closer. He was astonished by how quickly she heard and responded to their son's every whimper. But Tim's tending instinct and response to Blake's cries were improving daily.
    As it turns out, the tending instinct is prewired into all human brains, not just mothers'. If we could have taken a brain-scan camera inside Tim's head as he cared for Blake, we'd have seen his amygdala, his worrywart ACC, and his insula--the area for gut feelings--light up as he heard Blake crying . Then, as Tim playfully changed Blake's diaper and kissed his soft stomach, the gleeful smile on his son's face would trigger his brain's reward center, the NAc, or nucleus accumbens. At this moment, all the circuits of Tim's daddy brain would be pulsing with the joy of fatherhood. Tim's brain was being stimulated to make new connections to reinforce his tending instinct. And each new connection in his brain helped him to get more in sync with his son.

FATHER-INFANT SYNCHRONY
    New fathers are often