That Hot Dad At The Park Probably Has Teeny Testes, Because Science

Looks like it’s time to adjust your fantasy about that hot stay-at-home dad at the park. According to scientists, instead of ravishing you behind the public bathrooms, that attractive and attentive dad might just want to show you cell phone video of Ringlet’s last ballet class instead.

Apparently, studies have shown that the more involved a parent a man is, the lower his testosterone and “testes volume.” (That’s “ball size” in layman’s terms.)

No, I am not shitting you.

One fantastically bizarre study looked at fathers of toddlers and measured how invested they were in parenting through self-report (corroborated by the mothers) and how much the reward area of his brain was activated when he saw a photo of his child. They then compared those results to each man’s testosterone level and the sizes of his testicles.

*Record scratch* Wait, hold on. They measured these guys’ balls?

Yes. And immediately that makes me suspicious, because it takes a certain kind of man to allow a stranger to measure his balls. My husband loves me very much, but if were given the option between having a scientist measure the length and girth of his balls or seeing me murdered, he would start working on his Match.com profile.

So what does it all mean? Well, according to the study, “These results suggest…a trade-off between mating effort and parenting effort.” As a stay-at-home mother, I would like to say:

(Via Giphy)

Yeah. Whole bunch of “no shits” here. So all those great dads you see? The ones you wish your husband was more like because they love spending time with their kids so much? Well, that dude is probably putting the kids to bed, putting on his sweats, and pulling up every season of The Good Wife on Netflix before falling into bed and ignoring his partner. Just like the rest of us.

On a side note, if participating more in parenting makes a man’s sex drive go down, this is the kind of news that tired women everywhere are going to use to their advantage. “Take the kids to the park” is the new “I have a headache.”

And what do men think of this? At the time I read the Wall Street Journal article about this, eight men had commented on it. Their reactions ranged from hilarious: