I went down a bit of a rabbit hole this morning studying male reactions to becoming fathers, and I found this article that cites a study that states that males who have higher testosterone are more likely to become fathers, but after all males studied became fathers their T-levels dropped sharply though temporarily.
They study authors concluded that the drop is caused by the need to adjust: "having a newborn baby require many emotional, psychological and physical adjustments"...
It took a bit more digging, but I found the original study:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3182719/
... but they push that this "could indicate an anticipatory psychological component to men's T decline around the time of birth of their children"
Then they state that their results are consistent with another study of multiple bird species that show drops in T-levels for fathers that help raise their young.
I checked that study about birds, and they state, "polygynous males appear less responsive to social environmental cues than are monogamous males"
TLDR:
The authors of the study are trying to form causal link where one doesn't exist to conclude that males who have children have lower T.
This gives the headline for journalists to write headlines like the original article: "Men's Testosterone Drops Steeply When Baby Arrives" and tradcon-adjacent sites to say things like "Raising human offspring is such an effort that it is cooperative by necessity, and our study shows that human fathers are biologically wired to help with the job."
TLDR TLDR:
Want to maintain higher T-levels? Do manly things, and leave the baby stuff to your female.
Feedback and discussion is encouraged.
What if you goal in life is not to have high T levels but to be a good parent?
@shortstories If your objective in life is to have lower T levels and you are male, I do not recommend this course of action. A male can be a good parent to his children by being involved in their upbringing after they have reached the age that they are in primary school. Children only really need their mothers until then. The father's influence, in my opinion, should dominate their growth thereafter.
Investigate how it was done in Rome during the republic and the early empire.
Source: https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/234266#1