Is the New Dad Looking Kind of Chunky?

If you think your partner has been getting a little chunky since the beginning of your pregnancy, it’s probably more than a result of him eating with you for company. He may be going through some changes designed to keep him closer to home and make him more nurturing.

A recent Slate article by Emily Anthes recounts recent research into old attitudes about pregnancy and fatherhood:

•  Historically, when men did more than donate sperm to a pregnancy—by suffering physical ailments along with their wives—they got called crazy. The condition labeled “sympathetic pregnancy,” or couvade syndrome (from the French word couver, or “to incubate”), describes expectant fathers who are stricken with some combination of weight gain, nausea, food cravings, backaches, insomnia, and other delights familiar to pregnant women everywhere. Until recently, couvade was relegated to the overwrought TV medical drama as a “psychosomatic” curiosity, with a list of potential causes that would please any Freudian (identification with the fetus, pregnancy envy, pseudo-sibling rivalry).

New research, however, suggests that couvade may actually be hormonally-driven:

• …dads-to-be have elevated levels of cortisol and prolactin, hormones that are also present in high levels among mothers who are attached and responsive to their children. A father’s testosterone level also drops by about a third, on average, in the first three weeks after his child is born. These hormonal shifts, which are likely sparked by exposure to the pregnant woman’s hormones (there is correlational evidence that dads who spend time with moms experience the changes), mirror those experienced by mothers and may similarly prepare men for parenthood. Men who have relatively little testosterone have been shown, for instance, to hold baby dolls longer than men who are flooded with the sex hormone. High levels of testosterone, on the other hand, are associated with “incompatible non-nurturing behaviors,” as one researcher put it. If dads roared along on their usual levels of the hormone, the theory goes, they’d be too busy fighting other men and seducing other women to do much diaper-changing.