Testosterone and Fatherhood

A scientific study done in the Philippines suggests that men who become fathers have hormonal changes that may help them to adapt to their new role - i.e., they have a drop in testosterone upon becoming fathers.   That should come as good news to those of us who already know that men can and do make excellent, nurturing parents, and who envision a world of increasing gender equity, both at work and at home.

Gender stereotypes and prejudices, backed by faulty biological assumptions, have inevitably resulted from thousands of years of history in a predominantly patriarchal culture (with fathers in the bread-winning role and mothers in the primary parenting role), and they continue to stand in the way of men in search of parenting equity at home, even as women have made tremendous strides in the workplace over the past fifty years.   This scientific study provides hope to the optimist in me that parenting equity and equality in the home will eventually catch up to, and parallel, the rapidly advancing workplace equality women have achieved, and are continuing to achieving, both in this country and throughout the developed world.

New York Times: In Study, Fatherhood Leads to Drop in Testosterone, excerpt:

          This is probably not the news most fathers want to hear.

Testosterone, that most male of hormones, takes a dive after a man becomes a parent. And the more he gets involved in caring for his children — changing diapers, jiggling the boy or girl on his knee, reading “Goodnight Moon” for the umpteenth time — the lower his testosterone drops. 

So says the first large study measuring testosterone in men when they were single and childless and several years after they had children. Experts say the research has implications for understanding the biology of fatherhood, hormone roles in men and even health issues like prostate cancer. 

“The real take-home message,” said Peter Ellison, a professor of human evolutionary biology at Harvard who was not involved in the study, is that “male parental care is important. It’s important enough that it’s actually shaped the physiology of men.” 

“Unfortunately,” Dr. Ellison added, “I think American males have been brainwashed” to believe lower testosterone means that “maybe you’re a wimp, that it’s because you’re not really a man. 

“My hope would be that this kind of research has an impact on the American male. It would make them realize that we’re meant to be active fathers and participate in the care of our offspring.” 

The study, experts say, suggests that men’s bodies evolved hormonal systems that helped them commit to their families once children were born. It also suggests that men’s behavior can affect hormonal signals their bodies send, not just that hormones influence behavior. And, experts say, it underscores that mothers were meant to have child care help.

For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

Census Bureau Reports Marriage & Divorce Statistics

The U.S. Census Bureau recently released its report "Marital Events of Americans: 2009," which is the bureau's first such report after including questions about marital events as part of its American Community Survey (ACS), beginning in 2008. The report confirms previous indications from other sources that divorce rates, and marriage rates, are higher in the South than in the Northeast, among other things.  See the bureau's report here or read the summary from Reuters.



From the Reuters news article (August 25, 2011):

....Statistics from "Marital Events of Americans: 2009," show that in the South, per 1,000 men or women, divorce rates were 10.2 and 11.1 percent.

By contrast, Northeastern men and women had divorce rates at 7.2 and 7.5 percent.The national divorce rate was almost 10 percent, at 9.2 for men and 9.7 for women.

The report is the first to examine and detail marriage, divorce and widowhood among Americans ages 15 and older, using data from the 2009 American Community Survey (ACS).

"Divorce rates tend to be higher in the South because marriage rates are also higher in the South," Diana Elliott, a family demographer at the Census Bureau, stated in the report's release.

"In contrast, in the Northeast, first marriages tend to be delayed and the marriage rates are lower, meaning there are also fewer divorces."

Fourteen states had above-average divorce rates for men and women. Southern states such as Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Texas had divorce rates above the United States average for both genders.

For the 10 or so states that had below-average divorce rates for each gender, about half were in the Northeast.

States like Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York saw fewer divorces than average for men and women.

Divorces did impact the economic well-being of families.

Three quarters of children living with a parent who divorced in 2009 lived in a household headed by their mother.

Of women who divorced in the year studied, 23 percent received public assistance, against 15 percent of recently divorced men who received such assistance.

But such women also reported less household income than recently divorced men, with 27 percent having less than $25,000 in annual household income compared to 17 percent of recently divorced males.

They also were more likely to be in poverty; 22 percent of recently divorced women compared to 11 percent of such men.

Almost 30 percent of children living with a parent who recently divorced lived in a household below the poverty level, compared with 19 percent for other children.

Historically, data on U.S. marriages and divorces were collected from marriage and divorce certificates filed at the state level. According to the report, beginning in 2008, questions about marital events were added to the ACS to fill a void in the data collected in the United States.

Previous Post on Related Issues:

 BASEBALL BRINGS DOWN THE DIVORCE RATE?

For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

Sham Marriage Scheme Busted in Vermont

Many sham marriages - fraudulent marriages which often lead to residency and ultimately citizenship benefits for immigrants - go undetected each year by the United States government.   But sometimes sham marriage immigration schemes are uncovered, as in this recent example from Vermont, as reported in the Boston Globe, A Marriage of a Dream and a Scheme, in which case illegal immigrants (mostly, if not all, from Brazil) paid Americans to marry them to get legal residency status.  According to the article, Maria-Helena Knoller, a Holyoke woman and  Brazilian immigrant responsible for the scheme, was recently prosecuted and convicted for marriage fraud and concealing and shielding illegal immigrants in the case of 32 sham marriages, and is now out free on a $100,000 bond and working in a Chicopee Donut shop while awaiting sentencing.  22 of those 32 sham marriages occurred in Brattleboro, Vermont, and half of these 32 sham marriages have already ended in divorce here in Massachusetts.   Apparently, the scheme seemed to begin and end in Massachusetts, although many of these participants were led across the Vermont border to Brattleboro for their nuptials. (There were seven other additional sham marriages revealed, but Knoller was not prosecuted for those.)

Knoller, it turned out, was a matchmaker of a special kind. For fees as high as $12,000, she would pair illegal immigrants from Brazil with Americans, arrange their marriages - and, in some cases, their subsequent divorces - after they received status as “lawful permanent residents’’ of the United States.

She pleaded guilty in February to federal charges of marriage fraud and concealing and shielding illegal immigrants for 32 of those marriages. But her prosecution is an exception, and Knoller’s case is a vivid example of how easy it is for illegal immigrants to dodge US immigration laws by getting married.

The US government estimates that of the 200,000 marriages that result in temporary or illegal immigrants receiving green cards each year, up to 30 percent are shams. And yet, while billions of federal dollars are devoted to protecting borders, enforcement efforts aimed at immigration fraud are hobbled by sparse budgets and understaffed agencies that, according to government auditors, allow an estimated 60,000 sham marriages a year to evade detection.

“The process of weeding out the fraudulent [marriages] - those arranged solely to obtain … a work permit and green card - is nearly impossible,’’ said David Seminara, a former US consular officer who wrote a 2008 study that faulted the process of identifying fraud in immigration petitions filed domestically and overseas. “Even when documentation is asked for, to show that the couple is living together, it’s easily doctored. There’s just too many applications and too few immigration officers handling these cases.’’

Taking her clients to Vermont for their nuptials made Knoller’s scam easier. Vermont does not require waiting periods or proof of identity to obtain a marriage license. While some of the 32 marriages for which Knoller was prosecuted were licensed in Connecticut and Massachusetts, 22 occurred in Brattleboro. Massachusetts, and every other state bordering Vermont, requires proof of identity.

For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.