Are Men Biologically Adapted To Nurturing?

We know that The Family: A Proclamation teaches that fathers are to preside, provide and protect, and that mothers are to nurture, and that they are to support one another in these roles. We’ve heard a number of talks in recent conferences that seem to suggest (or directly state) that mothers are more in tune with the tasks of nurturing than men.

That may be, and I do not intend in any way to refute the Proclamation, but there’s a new study published in The Proceedings of The National Academy of Sciences, and reported by the New York Times that would suggest that fathers also are biologically adapting to a more nurturing role.

Lee Gettler, an anthropologist at Northwestern University and co-author of the study said,

This should be viewed as, "Oh, it’s great, women aren’t the only ones biologically adapted to be parents."

Humans give birth to incredibly dependent infants. Historically, the idea that men were out clubbing large animals and women were staying behind with babies has been largely discredited. The only way mothers could have higly needy offspring ever couple of years is if they were getting help.

The study, which tested men before and after becoming fathers involved over 600 men in the Cebu province of the Philippines:

Testosterone was measured when the men were 21 and single, and again nearly five years later. Although testosterone naturally decreases with age, men who became fathers showed much greater declines, more than double that of childless men.

And men who spent more than three hours a day caring for children -- playing, feeding, bathing, toileting, reading or dressing them – had the lowest testosterone.

Researchers view the drop in testosterone as a positive thing for families, hormonally encouraging men to be more faithful to their families than straying.

“This is part of the guy being invested in the marriage,” said Carol Worthman, an anthropologist at Emory University who also was not involved in the study. Lower testosterone, she said, is the father’s way of saying, “’I’m here, I’m not looking around, I’m really toning things down so I can have good relationship.’”

So, it would seem there is some biological evidence that a father’s role extends beyond conception, and that the father is biologically tuned to participate in the nurture of his children.

The Law of the Letter

Dear Reader,

Ok, it’s not so much a law as a discussion.

Maybe less a discussion than a remembrance.

Recently I wrote about letters written by my lovely wife to a friend in their youth that were recently returned to her. They’ve been interesting for her to re-read. In addition to exposing the lie that was my story of when we met, the letters also reveal things my lovely wife thought about in those days and provided some insights into her character.

I’m not going to reveal any of that. Let my lovely wife write her own blog if she wants to spill all that. (Don’t hold your breath, by the way. My greatest surprise was seeing that my wife wrote actual letters at all: she really does not like to write, and I understood her remarkable sacrifice to write to me during my mission.)

But these letters do demonstrate some things my children may never know: the value of the written word – and by written word I mean word written by hand on paper and put in an envelope and mailed – not half-words typed into a telephone keypad to be sent out into the ether to be captured by another phone, consumed in seconds and deleted forever.

These letters used complete sentences, capitalization, spelling, paragraphs – all that stuff your English teachers have been trying to get you to do! These letters required some organization of thoughts, because each letter included multiple thoughts and stories (unlike texts and tweets); each letter included reflections and conclusions and even promises of what was to come.

And, perhaps most importantly now, these letters could be saved to be read later. They are historical artifacts. I suppose there may be some giant repository of electronic stuff that contains tweets and texts and Facebook status lines, but I certainly don’t know how to get at it.

Letters still have a place in our world, even beyond credit card offers that come in the mail. In my lovely wife’s family, for instance, there’s a monthly family letter to which each sibling (or spouse of sibling in the case of my lovely wife) contributes. That letter (which is emailed as an attachment, ready for printing) serves as part of an ongoing family history, recording events and milestones.

I have written specific letters to my children at key times in their lives or mine. Most of those go as e-mails now, but I hope they’re still saved for future reference. I save copies of each one. Topics range from financial planning to politics to family relations to gospel principles. Some are sent to individuals and some to the children as a group. The value of the letter over a phone call is that I can think more carefully about content, and my child can choose to read or not read, and I’ll never know the difference.

We still encourage our children to hand-write thank-you notes. It’s our small contribution to their letter-writing education.

May you engage occasionally in the great art of letter writing.

Best Regards,

Paul

Presiding with equal partners

The proclamation on the family is clear: "By divine design, fathers are to preside over their families in love and righteousness...."

But it's also clear: "In these sacred responsibilities, fathers and mothers are obligated to help one another as equal partners."

How does Dad preside when Mom is an equal partner?

We discussed this topic in our high priests' group yesterday, and although we did not resolve it, we had some good thoughts.

In his talk "Priesthood Authority in the Family and the Church," Dallin Oaks helps us understand the relationship between partnership and presiding. He says that although the structure in the church is hierarchical (we follow our "file" leaders), in the family it is patriarchal. He quote the partnership line from the Proclamation as I have above, and he quote President Kimball who urges wives to have a full partnership with their husbands, not a limited or silent one. He reiterates that the concept of partnership between husbands and wives is not the cultural norm all around the world, but that it is ordained of God. And he quotes Doctrine & Convenants 121:

No power or influence can or ought to be maintained by virtue of the priesthood, only by persuasion, by long-suffering, by gentleness and meekness, and by love unfeigned; By kindness, and pure knowledge (verses 41-42)

declaring, "When priesthood authority is exercised in that way in the patriarchal family, we achieve the 'full partnership' President Kimball taught."

As I listened to the discussion, I thought about what I've heard about how the Quorum of the Twelve functions -- that they and the First Presidency consider matters of policy for some time, that they have open discussions, and that they often carry over those discussions for weeks in order to allow all members to come to consensus. This certainly seems to be the process described in Edward Kimball's biography of his father's presidency of the church (Lengthen Your Stride) when President Kimball discussed his revelation regarding extension of the priesthood to all worthy male members of the church (see OD2).

And I thought of an example in our family from the past week. We have a particular delicate issue that my wife and I are trying to works through with one of our children. There is no easy answer, and we are not personally equipped to resolve it on our own. We have discussed the matter a number of times over the past months, and in the last few days it has become more acute. We agreed to pray separately and together. We have been discussing the promptings we have received (some in the moment we need them). Our path to consensus has been bumpy. At some moments we've been completely aligned and at others we've appeared to be diametrically opposed to one another. But we continue to counsel together to find a solution.

In this matter, I would never assume that as "presider" I had the sole right to revelation on the matter. Nor would I want to "delegate" the matter to my lovely wife -- not because she is not capable, for she is! -- but because I would not want to ask her to bear the burden alone.

We have not come out on the other side of the tunnel, yet, and we may not for some time. But I'm grateful for an equal partner who is sensitive to the promptings of the Spirit and who is gracious in how she shares the burdens of parenthood.

It was all a lie!

I learned this morning that I’ve been living a lie.

And it’s the fault of those friends I blogged about earlier this week.

Turns out our friends brought my lovely wife a packet full of letters that she wrote to her friend, including letters from my wife’s first year at college. Some of those letters from our first year in college mention me. And how we met.

(Here’s comes the lie.)

I have for years (35 of them, in fact) been telling the story that we met on the first Friday of our freshman year. Say it out loud. First Friday of our freshman year. See how nicely it rolls off the tongue? First Friday of our freshman year.

Except it’s not true.

In a letter dated September 12, my lovely wife (then my lovely wife-to-be, though neither of us knew that then) told her friend that we met when my college roommate and I visited her apartment on the first Saturday of our freshman year.

You can see why I’m upset. Our whole history is based on our romantic beginning on the first Friday of our freshman year. And now, after 35 years, I learn it was a lie.

Well, a mistake.

Oh, and I’ve always gotten the date right: September 4, 1976. And, yep. That’s a Saturday.

So this coming Sunday, when we celebrate the 35th anniversary of our meeting, at least we’ll know we got the date right. And I’ll have to look for a new alliterative way to tell our story.

How about the first Saturday of September?

Old Friends Made New Again

We had a delightful surprise last week. The son of good friends we knew in college (and my dear wife knew in high school) is beginning grad school at a university near us, and so son and his wife and baby, AND their parents (our old friends) spent nearly a week with us while son and his family were finding a place to live and getting settled.

Old friends are remarkable. When we got together it was like we'd lived next door to one another instead of having decades between us and our last visit. We found we still share many interests in common, and we've even had preferred TV shows, books and movies in common after all these years.

And it's not like our paths have been similar. I'm a career corporate guy and my wife is a SAHM; our friends are fiercely entrepreneurial, carpe diem kinds of folks. Yes, we've all stayed active in the church, but even our church experience has been unique because of where we've lived.

But still, the things that make us friends, the shared history (even if long ago) and the ties of love and friendship still endure all these years later.

It's made me reflect on why some friendships last (like this one) and others seem to fade as our circles of shared interest or activity migrate away from one another. To be sure some friendships fade because the bonds were never in place; they may have been driven by a shared activity or geography but never deepened enough to withstand distance and time apart. Others may fade because one or the other person changes enough to strain the common bonds -- a change in political views or religious practice may make the relationship too uncomfortable for one or the other.

I yearn for close friendships. Seeing our old friends this week, and staying up late into the night each night despite the need to get up for work the next morning, reminded me of the happiness of shared experience, shared trust, shared love and support. The bond we have with these friends is unique for us. Though we have other friends, I don't know that our other friendships will ever stand the test of time and space that this one does.

How fortunate to have these friends to bless our lives.

Open Your Heart -- or Surviving the Youth Sunday School Class

I taught my son’s Sunday School class this week. It was The Dreaded Fourteen And Fifteen Year-Old Class. And I survived. In fact, it was pretty cool. I was bishop to many of these kids when they were baptized; maybe that’s why they went easy on me.

Of course we use the same manual and same scripture blocks in the youth classes as in Gospel Doctrine. I prepared but didn’t quite know what to expect. I probably over-prepared. (Ok, I certainly over prepared, but I was glad I did.) When I teach a youth class, I like to have lots of arrows in the quiver just in case I need them.

The lesson this week was on Paul’s second missionary journey. We looked at the maps of his journeys, and we had the kids draw a world map on the board so we could talk about to what “world” the apostles were carrying the gospel. We reminded them of the story of Saul / Paul (and they loved playing dumb about it…). We then talked specifically about how Paul had to listen to the spirit to know where to go on his journey, and that the spirit constrained him from going some places, and led him to others.

Then we read in Acts 16:14 about Lydia: “And a certain woman named Lydia, a seller of purple, of the city of Thyatira, which worshipped God, heard us: whose heart the Lord opened, that she attended unto the things which were spoken of Paul” (emphasis mine).

We stuck on this idea of opening one’s heart for most of the lesson. We probably used that phrase “open heart” about three dozen times. We talked about what it meant to have a closed heart and an open heart. We compared the closed heart feeling to how the class members felt about their little siblings who had messed with their stuff or their rooms or told on them. We suggested the closed heart was in a box under the bed, in a safe, or in a Swiss bank account (all their ideas). We talked about how an open heart might feel different from that and how. And we talked about how they might open their hearts to spiritual things.

I remember being 15. It was like I was on the dark side of the moon, out of radio contact with spiritual things. Even though as a younger kid I was really tuned into what I thought was the spirit, at 15, I was aloof, and trying my best to be a little rebellious. I see the same thing in my own son, and I’ve seen it before. Part of my goal as a dad, as a bishop and as a friend to some of these kids, has been to do what I can to keep the gravitational pull of the spirit strong enough so that when they return from the dark side of the moon, they’ll be swept up in it and feel it again.

So we didn’t talk about Thessalonians. And we didn’t talk about Paul’s different missionary companions. And we didn’t talk about signs of the second coming. Frankly, most of the lesson was left on the cutting room floor, except for this idea of opening our hearts to the spirit.

By the time it was done, I felt pretty good about myself. Until I got home later and my son reported that I hadn’t done too bad. “Thanks,” I said. “What was the point of the lesson?”

He thought for a while. “Well, I drew a map of the world.”

Me: “Yeah…”

Son: “And we talked about Paul.”

Me: “Yeah…”

Son: “What?”

Me: “What about the point? That I said about three dozen times?”

Son: “What?”

Me: (moving my hands in an opening gesture)

Son: “What?”

Me: (still gesturing) “Open….”

Son: “Oh, open, uh, open…”

Me: “Open…your…”

Son: “Oh, yeah. Open your heart.”

Radio silence? You bet. (Sigh.)

Mission Moments: Unexpected Meetings

My nephew is serving his mission in Arizona where several of my wife’s siblings (and therefore his aunts and uncles) live. He is presenting living and working close to all of them, and they see him on the street pretty often. He is, by all accounts, an outstanding missionary, and there’s no evidence that his occasional brushes with his extended family are distracting in any way. Reading recently of their sightings of said missionary made me think of the very few times I bumped into people I knew from home while I was on my mission.

I served in Germany over three decades ago. When I went, I assumed I would be in a completely different world from friends and family I left behind. (My brother had served in Kentucky, and was never more than a day’s drive from our home his whole mission.)

To my surprise I did see people I knew from before my mission a few times. The first was most startling. My companion and I were changing trains in Mainz, trying to make a quick connection to get back to our city of Bad Kreuznach. We were running for our next train when I heard someone call my first and last name. A female someone.

I’d been out more than a year and no one had used my first name except in letters, so just the hearing of it startled me. I did not recognize the voice, but stopped and began to look around. A few feet away on the platform was a girl I’d gone to high school with. We had been good friends and had many friends in common. She was not a member of the church, but she knew I was, and probably knew that I was a missionary. As we chatted briefly (we missed our connecting train, of course), she introduced my companion and me to her male friend who was with her. The two of them were distributing Bibles for their Christian group, and had been in Europe for a while.

After a few minutes, we shook hands (I was a missionary, after all, and in Germany everyone shook hands) and went our separate ways. The chance meeting was no big deal to my companion, except for the great coincidence; nor was it a big deal for me. I think my reaction was helped by the fact that I was well into my second year; I don’t know if I would have been more distracted by such a meeting earlier in my mission.

Within weeks of that experience, I had another chance meeting. I had just put my companion on a train to go on an exchange, and I was waiting for my temporary companion to arrive. Since I had an hour to wait, I decided to walk home. As I was leaving the station, a young man showed up at my side and called me by my first name. Turns out he was a kid I’d gone to church with in my youth. He was the only member in his family and had slipped into inactivity, and was in Bad Kreuznach to visit his brother who was in the US Army. We chatted until I got to my apartment.

The last one came a few weeks later, when my stake president and his wife dropped by my apartment on a P-Day. They were in Germany visiting their daughter whose husband was stationed at a base not too far from where I was assigned. When the bell rang, and we let them up, I was surprised to see them, and even more surprised when she gave me a big hug, saying, “I probably shouldn’t do this, but I promised your mother I would!” I didn’t mind. And I’m sure my mother wouldn’t have minded, either. They stayed just a few minutes.

These chance meetings, each quite brief, were actually blessings to me. They helped me to see even more clearly how much I was on my mission. They were little blips, pleasant moments, but not distractions. I knew what I was there to do, and I was happy to be about the work I was doing.