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This content does not have an Arabic version. See more conditions. Request Appointment. Healthy Lifestyle Pregnancy week by week. Products and services. What can you tell me about couvade? Can men really experience sympathetic pregnancy symptoms?
Answer From Daniel K. With Daniel K. See Subscription Options. Discover World-Changing Science. Read more from this special report: The Science of Fatherhood. She offers the following explanation: When pregnancy symptoms such as nausea, weight gain, mood swings and bloating occur in men, the condition is called couvade, or sympathetic pregnancy. Get smart. Sign up for our email newsletter. Sign Up. Support science journalism. Knowledge awaits. See Subscription Options Already a subscriber?
Create Account See Subscription Options. Continue reading with a Scientific American subscription. Subscribe Now You may cancel at any time. Psychological symptoms range from reduced libido and restlessness to anxiety and depression. Opinions vary dramatically concerning how many men are affected with Couvade syndrome-related symptoms. Reflecting this lack of consensus, Kristina Mixer, M.
Determining Couvade syndrome's genesis is an exercise in educated guesswork. Mental health professionals have considered a range of hypotheses, from a man's jealousy over the inability to carry a child to possible guilt over having caused this transformation in his partner.
One psychosocial theory points to the marginalization of men during the woman's pregnancy, a societal gender split whereby expectant "women have their maternity careers endorsed commercially, socially, and medically," while dads-to-be largely do not. Other theories abound, with no clear medical consensus.
Attachment theory proposes that the more a man is preparing for fatherhood—including participating in prenatal classes—the likelier he is to present with Couvade symptoms. And despite the dearth of research dedicated to this subject, the syndrome also appears to have some association with fluctuations in certain hormones , including testosterone levels, during a partner's pregnancy.
One supposition is, perhaps, prescient in its simplicity: Paternal transitional theory proposes that pending fatherhood —especially first-time fatherhood, as was my case—involves highly disruptive interpersonal struggles that are intensely stressful.
It basically says that the mixed emotions and identities evoked by our partners' steadily swelling baby bumps—from pride-filled papa to homebound prisoner, and everything in-between—messes with our minds and through it our bodies. Why some men experience Couvade symptoms while others do not is, like the root cause of the syndrome itself, not a known entity; or, rather, the circumstances are too varied for a one-size-fits-all diagnosis. Gottesfeld, M.
He kept thinking of a family story, from when his mother was pregnant with him, and his father gained weight in parallel. In , three decades later, Gruenberg was having a similar experience, though it went beyond overeating. Gruenberg, who today leads an organization that runs support programs for fathers called Love, Dad, felt brushed off by his friends. Discouraged and alone, he began to research couvade syndrome, in which men experience pregnancy symptoms.
The term couvade first appeared in a book by a British anthropologist, Edward Burnett Tylor, in It comes from the French word couver , to brood or hatch. In its earliest documentation in the scientific literature, male pregnancy symptoms were seen as purely psychosomatic.
But couvade, as it is commonly referred to, has appeared in the United States, China, Thailand, and other countries, according to Arthur Brennan, a British labor-and-delivery nurse turned lecturer at Kingston University, in the United Kingdom. In , he published a small study of 14 men at a teaching hospital in London. The fathers-to-be experienced a variety of ailments, including stomach problems, appetite issues, and various aches. In this paper and in subsequent research, the symptom list has seemed to include almost everything: diarrhea, constipation, leg cramps, a sore throat, depression, insomnia, weight gain, weight loss, tiredness, toothaches, sore gums.
The symptoms also seemed to follow a pattern similar to a physical pregnancy: peaking during the first and third trimesters, and in many cases disappearing after the birth of the child. Regardless of when couvade arrived, it seemed to carry a stigma. Yet the symptoms keep appearing.
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