A new study, reporting that “better” fathers have smaller testicles, is creating a stir, probably in part for the number of jokes it inspires. Time’s headline is “Study: Choose dads with smaller ‘nads.” CNN commented on the fittingness of the study’s publication in the journal known as PNAS (say it in your head and you’ll get the joke), the nickname for Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. But there’s an actual point to the study: Men make “decisions” about where to put their energy resources – into “wooing” or into parenting – and testes size does seem to have something to do with it.
The problem is that the study defines being a “good” father rather narrowly, so the study’s relevance to real life is completely up for grabs.
