Caring, confident dads have structurally different brains - new research
Although the COVID-19 pandemic profoundly impacted all our work and living arrangements, one thing particularly stood out for dads.
Published on 15 February 2023
Although the COVID-19 pandemic profoundly impacted all our work and living arrangements, one thing particularly stood out for dads. During the nationwide lockdowns, fathers ditched the office and came home in their millions. The UK Fatherhood Institute, a thinktank, realised this was a unique social experiment and conducted research into “lockdown fathers” in spring 2020 to investigate its consequences.
The study, which surveyed 2,045 UK fathers, found that many reported spending more time than usual on childcare and education during the lockdown. Dads also predominantly indicated that they emerged from this experience more confident as parents and in better relationships with their children. Now our own new research, published in the journals Child Development and Social Neuroscience, unveils just how deeply this confidence can be traced. We found that dads who have more positive attitudes about their parenting abilities, and about fatherhood in general, show differences in their brains to those who don’t.