Not too long ago, I wrote a post about the transition to motherhood, which got about 35,000 reads.

A popular topic!

So, I wondered, would there be as much interest in the transition to fatherhood?

I hadn't seen much written about this, so I had to do some research.

Obviously, the transition to fatherhood is one of the biggest psychological changes that occurs in a man's life.

Research has found that many men find it to be complex, unstructured, and challenging (Daiches et al., 2011), and many men express ambivalence during their partner's pregnancy (Donovan, 1995).

Contributing to these feelings may be the fact that in recent years, fathers have been expected to be more hands-on and intimate with their babies and children than in previous generations.

Or perhaps I am wrong. Maybe they have wanted to be more hands-on and more intimate with their babies and children—it's unclear which came first or whether there was a simultaneous change in expectation and desire.

And, of course, what constitutes fatherhood is ever-evolving, conceptualized and reconfigured both by the needs and wishes of fathers and mothers and by societal and cultural norms.

The research in the area is both fascinating... and troubling.

First, let's look at the hormonal influences, just as I did with the transition to motherhood: A study published in the Mayo Clinic Proceedings suggests that fathers have higher levels of estrogen, the well-known female sex hormone, than other men. The research demonstrates that men go through significant hormonal changes alongside their pregnant partners and that these changes are most likely initiated by their partner's pregnancy. The increase started 30 days before birth and continued during all 12........

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