Men Are Weaker at Lifting... Babies

A big, strong man might be able to carry a great many things — like the wood he’s chopped, the boulder he’s rolled up a hill and every last bag of groceries he’s stuffed in his trunk. He might, though, want to draw the line at a teeny-tiny little baby.  

That’s because when a new study assessed how much energy men and women expend while carrying infants on a walk, they found that women are more efficient at it.

Researchers monitored mothers and fathers who carried their babies on their backs, on their sides or on the front of their bodies, all in a sling. After walking about a kilometer through the woods and tracking the metabolic cost of moving with the baby, “women carry the babies for a lower energetic cost than men at all conditions,” Cara M. Wall-Scheffler, author of the paper, concluded. (It’s worth noting that carrying infants on your back like a JanSport is the most energy-conserving carrying position — even if you’re a big lug of a man.)

So there you have it, boys — it’s back to the gym with you. At least until you can answer “a seven-pound infant” to whomever asks how much you can lift.