ManFAQ Friday: Well, I’m Ever Upper Class High Society
Originally published at Big Ugly Man Doll. You can comment here or there.
This Friday is once again answer time at the ManFAQ, and so I don my manly mantle as Sage of the Sexes, helping demystify the more malodorous gender for those of the gentler, as we add to the list of questions women have asked about men over the years. Actual questions, posed by real women, and answered by a REAL man. Like the man said, ”What could go wrong?”
Question: There’s a study out that says men with smaller testicles make better fathers. Is this true?
Answer: No. Assuming I remember my math and the commutative nature of addition, which also applies to spurious studies, if A equals B, then B also equals A, and therefore your question is actually better phrased as, do great dads have small balls?
No, no we don’t.
The study making headlines these days postulates the notion that human men with comparatively smaller testes might turn out to be, as a group, comparatively better fathers than those men with larger testes. And when I say “making headlines,” I mean there were more than 20 at my last glance, all debating the relative merits of the study with various levels of aplomb, decor, and punch lines. Most of them stick pretty closely to the standard “Testicle size linked to father role,” or “Men with smaller testicles may be more nurturing dads.” They move quickly into “Do better dads have smaller gonads?”, “Small testicles equal big parenting skills?”, and “Men with smaller testicles predisposed to hands-on parenting.” Once we’re done thinking about how anyone managed to run a headline with the words “testicles” and “hands-on” in the same line, we get to these gems: “Size Matters: Testicle Size Linked To Nurturing Skills,” “Study: Choose Dads With Smaller ‘Nads,” “Aw, nuts! Nurturing dads have smaller testicles,” and “Dudes With Smaller Balls Are Better Parents, Says Science,” as well as some that have leads of “This is nuts!”
We’re left with the perpetually feminine-leaning Huffington Post, who turns it around: “Men With Big Testicles Less Likely To Be Caring Fathers.” That’s right - it’s not that John Smallberies is a great dad, it’s that John Bigbooty is a bastard. (Like that was news, right?) The Week Magazine is the only one in their camp: “Do big testicles really make for bad fathers?” They’re at least asking it as a question; HuffPost just goes straight to “they’re all bastards.”
Now, this here study was based in Atlanta, GA, and included no more than 70 men, almost all of whom were Caucasian. What can we infer from these facts? First, what is it with those southern boys feeling up each other’s junk? Second, dudes, why so few black guys? Were they afraid to skew the results? Third, Emory University clearly has too much time on their hands. Also note this quote from the study: “We’re assuming that testes size drives how involved the fathers are … but it could also be that when men become more involved as caregivers, their testes shrink.”
This sounds a lot like a couple of academics looking to get an endowment to explain their under-endowment, as it were. They want a plus side - “But hey, at least I’m a good dad!” They want an explanation - “What? No no, they were bigger, um, just this morning, I looked, I swear - they must have shrunk as I was changing the baby!” I’d also love to hear how they recruited volunteers for this study. “Well, first they bought me dinner…”
And so I here cheerfully refute this premise, coming to my conclusion by generalizing from one example (which everyone does - or at least, I do) - to wit, the hunk with the junk can be an awesome dad as well. I leave you with some final thoughts from those paragons of brilliant parenting, AC/DC.
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