How Marriage and Fatherhood Regulate Men’s Sexual Energy

Scholar George Gilder opens his classic and important work Men and Marriage with this fundamental truth about humanity: “The crucial process of civilization is the subordination of male sexual impulses and biology to the long-term horizons of female sexuality.”

He is precisely right and adds, “The prime fact of life is the sexual superiority of women” and “it is male behavior that must be changed to create a civilized order.”

This idea did not originate with Gilder. God has known it all along and has designed humanity in such a way to control for it. It can be found in our fundamental wiring as humans.

Scientists are just discovering how profound this is, however.

In the last few decades, endocrinologists have learned that natural marriage and involved fatherhood lower men’s testosterone levels which bring their sex drives under greater control. It is just one of the ways that marriage and fatherhood settle men down. As Nobel Prize winning scholar George Akerlof wrote some years ago, “men settle down when they get married: if they fail to get married they fail to settle down.”

A team of researchers at Harvard University investigate this, explaining that controlling for age, married fathers have markedly lower T levels compare to their unmarried peers and slightly lower levels compared to married men without children.

This chart shows the distinction.

Longitudinal evidence conducted by scholars at Northwestern University finds that once the men in their study population “entered stable partnerships and became new fathers, they subsequently experienced a large decline in T…” They add that it is not only the status of being a father, but being an involved father that makes the greatest difference. These scholars state, “fathers who were most involved in childcare had lower T compared with fathers who did not participate in care.”

The Northwestern scholars clarify how testosterone levels properly fluctuate for men through the life-course of seeking a mate, living as a settled-down married men, then as a father,

Using longitudinal data, these results demonstrate that high T not only predicts mating success (i.e., partnering with a female and fathering a child) in human males but that T is then greatly reduced after men enter stable relationships and become fathers.

Additional Harvard research states specifically, the “T level of fathers, all of whom were married, were 42% lower than unpaired men” adding their “data provide more evidence suggesting this is a robust phenomenon.”

A long-term study of Danish men observed that “men who went from unmarried to married experienced the largest decline in circulating T levels over a ten year period,” compared to peers of other relationship status.

The lowering of testosterone helps the man’s sexual drive move in a more domestic-friendly direction as his responsibilities to wife and child increase. As a 2015 study explains, “testosterone plays an important role in men when they are seeking mating opportunities with women … [h]owever, a decrease in levels of testosterone in men when they are no longer seeking new relationships has clear adaptive benefits.”

This invisible hormonal shift helps married fathers stay focused on their family.

Serious Commitment to a Woman Makes the Difference

Interestingly, it is the seriousness of the man’s relationship to one woman, as in marriage, that makes the difference.

The just-cited 2015 research references earlier investigations which “found that single men and men who categorized themselves as ‘casually partnered’ did not differ in levels of testosterone, but both had greater levels of testosterone than men who categorized themselves as ‘long-term partnered.’”

For instance, these scholars explain that “men in polyamorous relationships (with multiple committed partners) have greater levels of testosterone than those in monogamous relationships.” And natural marriage between a man and woman promotes monogamy like no other arrangement.

This additional study comparing natural marital relationships with other alternative relational forms explains,

Finally, we found that polyamorous men with multiple partners had similar levels of T to polyamorous men who at time of testing did not have multiple partners, suggesting that interest in multiple partners influenced T rather than presence of multiple partners.

Married men are not likely to be on the prowl like single men or those in “committed” polyamorous relationships.

Additional research examining men in same-sex relationships and “marriages” revealed that it is the mysterious connection of a man to a woman that creates this civilizing change in men.

Yale University research published in 2018 explains “we did not find evidence for differences in testosterone levels between gay father and non-fathers” and they cite additional research examining same-sex attracted men that “concluded that the relationship between partner status and testosterone is only seen in individuals who partner with women.”

In fact, this study the Yale investigators refer to states bluntly that their data “suggests that the relationship between T and partner status is only seen in individuals who are interested in, and partner with, women.”

Men do not tend to settle other men down. Wives and mothers do this for men for exactly the reasons George Gilder explained: Female sexuality and biology are more family focused. The influential exchange between men and women is something that family health and longevity require. Research from leading universities around the world tell us this happens at a very intimate and invisible hormonal level between men and women.

We are indeed fearfully and wonderfully made.

Image from Shutterstock.