Sex and Second Chances

“It takes two.”

— Sonny and Cher

It all starts with sex. Sex is the starting point of our physical existence. Sex is also the original empathic act. The design is awesome. Body to body, skin to skin, we are driven to co-create something bigger. What if we designed home and work to look more like sex? You’ve always known sex was important, didn’t you?

There are so many great things about sex that it is easy to lose sight of its most profound role — to make another human being. Survival of our species was clearly part of the original plan. We are driven to propagate. We are driven to bring forth the next generation. Co-creation at its most … ehm, naked … feels good. Thank goodness, because without sex, where would we be? Our species couldn’t continue without it. Ask the Shakers. Getting rid of sex was a deal breaker for them. Have you met any lately? Neither have we.

The creation of another human being, despite our flaws and imperfect intentions, is a co-creative miracle within our capabilities but beyond our deepest understanding. Here is what we do know.

Immaculate conception aside, for as long as there have been Homo sapiens, it has taken male sperm plus a female egg to make a human baby. Some animals are capable of parthenogenesis or “virgin births” — Komodo dragons for example — but so far that’s not the normal way for humans.

Flora, a Komodo dragon, was able to conceive without the help of a mate, only the second time that the phenomenon of parthenogenesis has been seen in a Komodo dragon.

These days, baby making can happen in a multitude of ways, but there is no getting around the need for at least two people at the outset of conception. Biologically speaking, the creation of a human being is a partnership.

And an equal partnership at that. Babies get 50% of their DNA from the egg and 50% from the sperm. It is absolutely egalitarian, down to the decimal. There is no boss. There is no lead parent. Everyone matters equally. Biologically anyway. Co-creative sex is not a matriarchy, and it’s not a patriarchy. No one gets exclusive rights. Power plays and manipulation of sex for profit are man-made mix-ups. Nothing divine about that.

Yet, at the end of the day, despite the baby having half of its genetics from an egg and half from a sperm, the baby is both and neither. Try to wrap your head around that. The baby is greater than the sum of its parts. It’s something new, unique. A third. It exists in the space between.

“Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you,

And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.” [5]

— From “Children” by Khalil Gibran

… AND SECOND CHANCES

And sex can mark another kind of pivot point — a second chance at growing empathy.

Much has been written on the importance of consistent parental presence during the early years — for our children. Remember, it gives them an “internal pot of gold … of healthy empathy.” But equally important, time at home with our babies is an opportunity for us, as parents,to grow our empathy. For those of us who may not have gotten enough empathy the first time around as children, or maybe had it educated or worked out of us, parenting is a second chance. A do-over. An opportunity to rewire that part of our brain.

Because even when babies cry, throw up, and pee all over us, our overriding drive is to love and protect them. We are built that way, from the inside out. Empathy grows within the context of our most primal relationships. It’s a feeling thing, not a cognitive exercise you can acquire through training at work. And if empathy is the game you are playing, this is a step you can’t afford to skip.

The conscious experience of parenting, for men as well as women, gets embedded in the physical body. We can literally grow our capacity for empathy. Boys and men (and women who forgot) … can literally grow mirror neurons! Oh, yes, we can.

SURPRISE! DADS CAN GROW EMPATHY, TOO

Remember that research showing hands-on parenting increases empathy in the brain? Here’s the secret: It works for men, too! That’s right. In men — as well as women — hormones, infant cues, and time invested in caretaking reconfigure neural networks. The work happens through skin- to-skin contact. This is good news for people without a uterus or breasts! This is good news for men. Yep, men have skin in this game.

Scientists thought of that, too, and tested new dads for levels of these empathy-related hormones as well, finding that they increased as men cohabited with moms during pregnancy, and then while holding their newborns to their bare chests after they were born. Skin to skin. Remember pheromones? Those sexy molecules infused into perfume in the 1980s? Scientists believe pheromones carry these nonverbal messages, affecting the behavior and physiology of moms and dads and babies.

But wait — there’s more. In the last five years, they gave fathers a turn in the fMRI machine. A slew of research showed that the brain circuits associated with empathy are engaged when fathers are exposed to their baby’s cries or image. This research is quickly putting to rest the myth that only mothers can do empathy with their children. Scientist have also observed parents — both mothers AND fathers — as they interacted with their infants and babies in real time. These studies showed that the more hands-on, interactive behavior that parents engaged in, the higher their oxytocin levels. They found correlations not just with the type of behaviors parents engaged in but also in the amount of time parents spent with their children.

Empathy is a contact sport. And men get to play too. The more contact, the more empathy.

As you would expect, it’s a two-way street. Kids don’t learn empathy as a subject in school; they learn relationally. Early on, they absorb it, literally, in their bodies. From physical contact with parents, especially the affective part of empathy. Wonder why? As primatologist Frans de Waal puts it: “Children read ‘hearts’ well before they read minds.”

THERE’S STILL TIME

It may be the bottom of the ninth with bases loaded and two men out, but there is still time for men to turn this game around if we let biology teach us. Sex is a template for empathy. Here’s Rifkin again: “Empathy requires a porous boundary between I and thou that allows the identity of two beings to mingle in a shared mental space.” Sounds a lot like sex to us.

What if we followed the divine, wonderful, co-creative power of biological sex as a template for how to raise our children and live our personal and professional lives? What if leadership was like sex — an equal partnership with co-creation as the goal, based in mutuality, not power? What if the evolutionary game was not so much survival of the fittest as “we are better together than alone”? Might we somehow be better off? And what would that life look like?

Excerpt from Acho/Basilion: “Empathy Deficit Disorder: Healing from Our Mix-ups about Work, Home, and Sex”