Researchers at Muhlenberg College in Pennsylvania are conducting a survey and they need your help. They need moms and dads (over 18-years-old) to take this secure survey so they can collect dat on “peer interactions and relationships throughout childhood and adolescence.”

Do it. FOR SCIENCE!

It turns out the “delayed bonding” I experienced when my sons were born is more common than I thought — so common, in fact, that the University of Birmingham conducted a study to determine ways fathers could more easily bond with their new baby.

The study (PDF) found that ultrasounds helped make the pregnancy feel more “real” for dads, but didn’t do anything to create an emotional connection. That is remedied, however, by simply naming the child and knowing the gender.

Dr. Jonathan Ives, who conducted the research, said, “Discovering the gender of their child, and giving him/her a name … tended to enable men to feel emotionally connected, because it allowed them to think of the unborn child as a person whom one can father, and with whom a relationship could be developed and a future imagined.”

I think my problem is that my wife was not keen on the names I originally picked out for my boys: Voltron and Spider-Man.

Once a baby is born, dads get smoking hot… in their own mind.

So claims a recent study published in the Journal of Gender Studies. While the scope of the study seems somewhat limited (182 participants, all newlyweds with no previous children), the findings are interesting. The study’s lead author, UCSB Professor Alicia Cast, was quoted by the Vancouver Sun:

I was talking about this paper with my husband and he commented on the attention he got when he was seen in public holding our son after he was born. Like, “Aren’t you a good dad,” “Look at that new dad with his baby.”

The study also offers this little nugget about what happened during the three interviews that took place over the course of the study:

Wives who had a child in their first year of marriage start out with less positive views of their attractiveness compared to wives who did not have a child between [the first and second interviews].

So, guys think they’re more attractive, women (at least the ones who had they babies early) feel less attractive. Interestingly, though, that confidence in men wears off after a year, probably because being puked on and shit on for 12 months tends to deflate your ego.

Well, this is troubling considering newborns always add stress to a family dynamic. It seems fighting parents can affect a baby’s brain function, even if the fights happen when that baby is asleep. All this is according to a recent University of Oregon study.

The researchers found that infants from high-conflict homes showed greater reactivity to very angry tone of voice in brain areas linked to stress and emotion regulation

The report theorizes that exposing infants to angry voices could affect they way they process stress later in life. It could also inspire a love of old Sam Kinison routines.

It’s not enough that babies are racist. No, now they’re out to break up your marriage, too. It turns out 30% of surveyed couples in a recent study ended their marriage as a direct result of their baby’s crying.

The real culprit, however, is lack of sleep. The crying just causes the lack, which, according to the study, leads to more confrontations between partners, which leads to Splitsville. It also adds up to some shady behavior on the part of the parents. The study showed…

11 percent of spouses pretended to sleep in when a child cried so their partner would take care of it.

Heh, heh… um… GUILTY!

Anyway, keep this in mind the next time you new parents want to lay into you partner for not hanging up the dish towel or whatever. Try to get some sleep, if you can.