In today's Life! section, Suzanne Sng muses, "I do not understand why men who show the slightest affinity to children are instantly desirable. When a guy professes to liking children, most women look at them through different eyes. They somehow suddenly appear more endearing, more evolved, more nurturing, more stable, more marriageable... "

Perhaps there is a bio-chemical reason for this phenomenon. Jennifer Barone reports in my December copy of Discover that:
"after comparing the brains of [marmoset] males with offspring with brains of childless males in mating pairs, [Princeton neuroscientists] Kozorovitskiy and Gould found that fathers not only had more connections between neurons in their prefrontal cortex, a region involved in anticipating consequences and attaining goals, but they also had more receptors for vassopressin, a neurohormone linked to social interaction and bonding."

Although they haven't tested to see if male human brains develop in the same way after fatherhood, Sng's casual observation suggests that the premise is probably true. That sort of means that childless human males in a couple relationship are basically slackers and have poorer social skills.

Heyyyy...! Whatchu talkin' 'bout, Willis?