Father’s Gene and Father’s Brain, to be Respected Time and Again

Prof. Bal Ram Singh

(Prof. Bal Ram Singh with his Kids)

My then five-year-old daughter, Renu, was putting on her lovely dress, when I lovingly cooed with her saying I wish I had a dress like that. I expected her to say, no, this is my dress, you can’t have it, or you are too big for it, it won’t fit you. Of course, she didn’t say none of that, what she said was a great lifelong lesson and learning. She said, “Dad, when you grow up you will fit in this.” That was a statement, not a plea, but perhaps an assurance. An assurance of young child that I was going to grow into her dress, or mind (metaphorically speaking) has been a discerning lesson for me considering the circumstances under which she may be correct.

(Prof. Bal Ram Singh with his Younger Daughter Dr. Renu Singh)

Physically speaking, it would be impossible to constrict the time and space for me to fit in her dress. Nevertheless, I see many instances where ego and intellect ridden ‘educated’ class of people believes ancient wisdom will fit into their narrow-minded knowledge. For example, Europeans have calisthenically convinced themselves that India got civilized through Aryans coming from Europe, trying to fit their small time with history into a long-time ancient India. Similarly, Western ‘educated’ Indian civil and academic class believes they need to civilize India’s villages with their smartized city culture.

Of course, I had another encounter with Renu much later after she already had obtained her PhD, when one day she stated that her father, that is me, was born in a different culture (India) than her (USA), and thus she cannot accept my views all the time. I wasn’t exactly thrilled with that, but needed to think about how to approach it. I finally decided to address to her as follows:

“Beta, then you just return my DNA”.

She said, “How can you say that? It is impossible to do that for a living being”

Me: Of course, you are my lovely daughter, I want you to be living and thriving in life. But since you do have my DNA, it may be a good idea for you to pay for it (pitṛ ṛṇa or parental debt), and then keep it, free from having to listen to me.

I continued, “See, a human being has 3.2 billion base pairs of DNA, half from each parent. Assuming 10 cents a base pair (although it was perhaps a lot more the year she was born), it is worth $320 million, and father’s share is $160 millions.”

Renu: “This is too much money for me to be able to pay.”

I continued, see, that really does show that parents are expensive, and it is not easy to payback the pitṛ ṛṇa. And, it is actually a global culture that children listen to parent, although this relationship has become strained since the so-called democratic system of government has established sovereignty over individuals and families. The governments throughout the world have legislated themselves to have rights over every individual, including children, in the name of human rights, children’s rights, women rights, etc.

As a father I must be caring and kind to my children, and so I offered Renu 90% discount on her payment, reducing to $16 million, which she obviously didn’t have. So, I offered her a plan under which she could just pay interest at a rate of 5% on the $16 million, which would $800,000 a year!  Being just a faculty, there was no way for her to pay $800,000 a year. So, she needed some smart way to resolve her dilemma.

She began, “Well, come to think of it, I was your grandmother in my last life, so you owe me as much anyway”, and thus ended the transactional discussion, and we acknowledged our relational link, whereby we owe each other not only for the DNA, but also for the nursing and caring, and most importantly educational contribution for values infused and reinforced within the laboratory of experiential values, or the Saṁskāras.

India that has been known for its material, spiritual, artistic, and family values (kularītī = the entire truth), and cannot be limited to a material-based values that was and is the colonial legacy to the entire world. Professor Romesh Diwan Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY, wrote in an article on Relational Wealth that human well-being depends on both “material wealth (something measured in terms of GDP),”—affluence of first kind—and “relational wealth (kula and community),” affluence of the second type. According to Diwan, “National policy objectives need to consider the maximization of not only the material wealth but also of relational wealth and its connection with material wealth” (Diwan, Romesh, 2000. “Relational wealth and the quality of life,” Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 29(4), pages 305-340, July).

There is a way to show (as in my conversation with my lovely daughter) that the relational wealth is way and above the material wealth can ever reach, and thus relations must be celebrated not for one day, like the Father’s Day, but for many lives and forever. Interestingly, efforts to establish both Mother’s and Father’s Days were led by daughters, not sons, and both were in fact initiated by the Church (Mother May or Mothering Church for Mother’s Day and St. Joseph’s Day for Father’s Day).  While Father’s Day was established over 50 years after the Mother’s Day was already an official holiday, (in fact, after many more failed attempts at establishment than Mother’s Day) both holidays were in fact initially rejected by the US Congress, citing that establishing appreciation for parents as holidays would lead to commercialization of these occasions, reducing a heart-to-heart moment to a hand-to-hand exchange of gifts. During debates over the establishment of Father’s Day, it was common to argue that one parent (mother) cannot be recognized while the other (father) is not. The division of parents into distinct categories like “matriarchal” and “patriarchal” can be seen more from a lens perpetuated by some modern social scientists, promoted by colonial politics, than the actual truth.

Motherhood and Fatherhood stem integratively linked with parents, not only at the genetic but also at the brain and mind level. Scientists have discovered children’s cells living in mothers’ brain, suggesting deeper connection between mother and child (Robert Martone, Scientific American, December 4, 2012) . Male micro-chimerism in the human female, meaning male cells were found in the brains of women and had been living there, in some cases, for several decades.  This may actually be the chip planted in the mother’s brain that she can use to communicate with the son, the future or even at that time a father.

(Prof. Bal Ram Singh with his Elder Daughter Dr. Rashmi Singh)

It is actually believed that grandmothers may also be the source of continuing brain cells to generations, and may in fact be a better reason for culturally describing one’s mother tongue, motherland, etc. showing the matrilineage that nevertheless carries male brain-lineage!

Fathers’ brain is quite pliant subject to children’s presence. According to an article published in Brain Science (Provenzi L, et al. The Paternal Brain in Action: A Review of Human Fathers’ fMRI Brain Responses to Child-Related Stimuli. Brain Sci. 2021 Jun 20;11(6):816.), in non-human primates (i.e., marmoset), vasopressin receptor density on neurons in the prefrontal cortex was higher in fathers than in non-father counterparts. It has also recently been hypothesized that cortical networks underpinning paternal caregiving might include brain areas involved in mentalization (e.g., superior temporal sulcus, STS; prefrontal cortex, PFC), embodied simulation (e.g., anterior insula; premotor areas; inferior parietal lobule), and emotion regulation (orbitofrontal cortex, PFC; inferior frontal gyrus, IFG). 

(a) Fathers of daughters sang more, used more language related to the body and to sadness, were more attentively engaged, and used more analytical language; (b) Fathers of sons engaged in more “Rough and tumble play (RTP)” and used more achievement language. Males are exposed to higher levels of fetal testosterone, which plays an important role in brain organization, and there is literature causally linking fetal androgen exposure to rough and tumble play.

(Prof. Bal Ram Singh with his Son Dr. Rishi Singh)

According to an article by Mascaro JS, et al., (Child gender influences paternal behavior, language, and brain function. Behav Neurosci. 2017 Jun;131(3):262-273.), A whole brain exploratory analysis revealed that fathers of daughters respond more to their daughters’ happy facial expression in areas of the brain important for visual processing and for reward, emotion regulation, and face processing, including medial orbitofrontal cortex (mOFC) and lateral OFC (lOFC) and left middle frontal gyrus compared with fathers of sons. There is an affective mutuality between fathers and daughters, and most famous daughters have been closest to their fathers – Indira Gandhi, a Srimao Bhandarnayake, Hasina Wajed, Benazir Bhutto, Chandrika Kumartunga, Golda Meir, Margaret Thatcher, Hilary Clinton are some of the modern examples, in addition to Jānaki and Draupadi of Rāmāyana and Māhābhārata times.

Fathers of boys respond more robustly to their sons’ neutral facial expressions in the thalamus, mOFC, and inferior temporal sulcus. There were no significant differences between fathers of daughters and fathers of sons in the neural response to sad facial expressions.

So, the best way to celebrate Father’s Day may be celebrated by showing happy facial expressions, giving Dads brainial benefits.

Prof. Bal Ram Singh, President, Institute of Advanced Sciences, Dartmouth, USA