The Expectant Father. Armin A. Brott

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Generally speaking, women are more vulnerable during pregnancy and parenthood than men; you can always take off, she can’t. (At the risk of sounding politically incorrect, a number of researchers have speculated that this is precisely why women have traditionally looked for men who will be “good providers.”) As a result, expectant mothers are often particularly concerned about whether their partners are going to be there for them and whether they’re really committed to being fathers. On one level, you can reassure your partner by telling her you love her, by going to all the prenatal doctor appointments, and by educating yourself and staying as involved as you possibly can. But words aren’t always enough.

      Some evolutionary psychologists have speculated recently that on a far more subconscious level, expectant dads’ physical couvade symptoms could be a chemically driven way of showing their partners just how committed they truly are. After all, you could be lying when you tell her you love her and that you’re excited about being a dad. But it’s a lot harder to fake a nosebleed or a backache or weight gain. In short, your physical symptoms may be nature’s way of giving your partner a way to evaluate your true feelings about her and the baby, as well as your reliability as a partner and fellow parent.

      A LITTLE HISTORY

      Most researchers today agree that in Western societies, couvade symptoms appear unconsciously in those expectant fathers who experience them. But as far back as 60 B.C.E. (and continuing today in many non-Western societies), couvade has been used deliberately in rituals designed to keep fathers involved in the experience of pregnancy and childbirth. Not all of these rituals, however, have been particularly friendly to women. W. R. Dawson writes that in the first century C.E. mothers were routinely ignored during childbirth, while their husbands were waited on in bed. And more recently, in Spain and elsewhere, mothers frequently gave birth in the fields where they worked. They then returned home to care for the baby’s father.

      But in some other cultures, men tried to do the same thing they try to do today: take their partner’s pain away by attracting it to themselves. In France and Germany, for example, pregnant women were given their husband’s clothes during labor in the belief that doing so would transfer the wives’ pains to their husbands. Perhaps the most bizarre couvade ritual I’ve come across is one that enabled dads-to-be to literally share the pain of childbirth. Apparently, the Huichol people of Mexico used to position the dad in a tree or on the roof above his laboring wife. Ropes were tied around his testicles and with each contraction she could yank on the ropes and give her husband a taste of what she was going through. Seems a little much to me, but I’m sure there are plenty of women who would disagree.

      Perhaps the most interesting aspect of ritual couvade is the importance attached to the supernatural bond between the father and the unborn child. Whatever the fathers did during the pregnancy was believed to have a direct impact on the unborn child. In Borneo expectant fathers ate nothing but rice and salt—a diet said to keep a new baby’s stomach from swelling. In other countries a man who hammered a nail while his wife was pregnant was thought to be dooming her to a long, painful labor, and if he split wood, he would surely have a child with a cleft lip. Afraid of making his own child blind, an expectant father wouldn’t eat meat from an animal that gives birth to blind young. He also avoided turtles—so that his child would not be born deaf, with deformed limbs (flippers), and anencephalic (with a cone-shaped head).

      While it’s pretty doubtful that couvade rituals actually reduced any woman’s childbirth pains or prevented any deformities, they do illustrate an important point: men have been trying to get—and stay—involved in pregnancy and childbirth for thousands of years. As Bronislav Malinowski noted in his 1927 book, Sex and Repression in Savage Society:

      Even the apparently absurd idea of couvade presents to us a deep meaning and a necessary function. It is of high biological value for the human family to consist of both father and mother; if the traditional customs and rules are there to establish a social situation of close moral proximity between father and child, if all such customs aim at drawing a man’s attention to his offspring, then the couvade which makes man simulate the birth-pangs and illness of maternity is of great value and provides the necessary stimulus and expression for paternal tendencies. The couvade and all the customs of its type serve to accentuate the principle of legitimacy, the child’s need of a father.

      Couvade for Adoptive and ART Dads Too? Yep.

      Given that couvade symptoms seem to be an expression of fathers’ desires to get some confirmation of their special status in their children’s lives, it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that adoptive fathers often experience them as well. In fact, according to adoption educator Patricia Irwin Johnson, “sympathetic symptoms of pregnancy” are fairly common. “One or both partners may experience repeated, and even predictably scheduled, episodes of nausea,” says Johnson. “Food cravings and significant weight gain are not unusual. One or both may complain of sleep disturbances or emotional peaks and valleys.”

      Men who are becoming fathers thanks to IVF or some other ART procedure aren’t immune to couvade symptoms either. In fact, some research suggests that fathers who have (or whose partner has) experienced infertility may actually be more susceptible than dads who conceived naturally. The same may also be true for expectant dads who were adopted as babies.

      STAYING INVOLVED

      Spilling the Beans

      Another thing (this month anyway) that will make the pregnancy seem more real is telling other people about it. By the end of the third month, I’d pretty well gotten over my fears of miscarriage or other pregnancy disasters, and we’d decided it was safe to put the word out to our family and close friends. Somehow just saying “My wife’s pregnant” (I switched to “We’re expecting” a while later) helped me realize it was true.

      The decision about when to let other people in on your pregnancy is a big one. Some people are superstitious and opt to put off making the announcement for as long as possible. Others rush to the phone or start emailing, texting, tweeting, and updating their Facebook pages before the urine is even dry on the pregnancy test stick. Even if you’re in the first category, sooner or later you’re going to have to start spreading the word—and the end of the third month is a pretty good time.

      There are, of course, advantages and disadvantages to making either an early or a late announcement. For example, if you tell people early, you’ll probably get a lot of support, reassurance, referrals, and hand-me-downs. But after a while you may start looking around for an off switch. If you tell early and something does go wrong, that support will be there for you. On the other hand, retracting good news is not an easy thing to do.

      If you decide to tell people later, you’ll have complete control over the information flow. You’ll keep from drowning in advice, but some of that advice might have been good. And if something were to go wrong, you wouldn’t have to worry about retracting the good news, but you wouldn’t have as much of a support network to lean on either.

      Ultimately, whom you decide to tell, and in what order, is your own business. But here are a few ideas you might want to keep in mind.

      FAMILY

      Unless you have some compelling reason not to, you should probably tell your family first. Your close friends will forgive you if they hear about the pregnancy from your Aunt Ida; if it happens the other way around, Aunt Ida may take real offense. There are a few cases, however, when telling your family first might not be a great idea. One couple we knew kept their pregnancy a secret from their friends for five months—and from their family for longer—hoping that the husband’s brother and sister-in-law, who had been trying to get pregnant for years, would succeed in the interim.

FRIENDS

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