Family guy: Notre Dame anthropologist Lee Gettler broadens perspectives on fatherhood, raising healthy children
In his Hormones, Health, and Human Behavior Laboratory inside Corbett Family Hall, Lee Gettler has freezers full of saliva samples (as well as fingernail clippings) from people from around the world. By studying the chemical composition of these specimens, the associate professor of anthropology has developed several groundbreaking studies that have focused attention on — and reframed perspectives about — fatherhood. Gettler has focused on testosterone levels in men — in places as nearby as South Bend and locations as far away as the Philippines and the Republic of the Congo — and how those levels change (or don’t change) as they grow, age, and become fathers. His goal is to examine and share the diverse ways that fathers and families around the world raise children, and to support the wide range of approaches to bringing up healthy youth.