MEN want sex and sex leads to fatherhood. If these two statements were propositions in a syllogism, then the logical conclusion would be that men want fatherhood. Observation, however, indicates that this is not always the case. As the number of women left, literally, holding the baby shows, quite a few men run a mile from fatherhood.
Of course, the statements are not part of a syllogism, for the word “fatherhood” has different meanings in the first sentence and the second and third ones—the first meaning is biological and the second social. Moreover, there are quite a few men who do not run a mile from the social form of fatherhood. And Dario Maestripieri of the University of Chicago thinks he has found a way to tell doting dads from deadbeats in advance: check a man’s reaction when he watches a smutty movie.
The reaction Dr Maestripieri monitored was the viewer’s testosterone level, before and after. This he compared, as a control, with the same man’s responses, on a different day, to mock job interviews and mental-arithmetic tests.
This study was a follow-up to one in which Dr Maestripieri had tested the existing theory of who makes a good dad, and found it wanting. This is that the more testosterone a man has, the less likely he is to hang around to help bring up baby. Using a questionnaire which asked things like, “How much do you...Continue reading
Source: Science and technology http://ift.tt/1NPeUhX
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