Transcript
00:00:00- What are the downsides of fatherhood for men?
00:00:02- Well, we talked about already, you know, weight gain.
00:00:06We talked about testosterone changes.
00:00:09There are also increased vulnerability to mood disorders.
00:00:14So the prevalence of depression in new dads
00:00:16is about twice that of the general population.
00:00:19There's a lot of controversy
00:00:20about whether we call it postpartum depression in dads.
00:00:24A lot of- - I've observed this.
00:00:25In your opinion, do dads get postpartum depression?
00:00:28- So in the book, I say,
00:00:30I think perinatal depression is a better word.
00:00:33That just means around the birth of a baby.
00:00:35But to me, it's semantic.
00:00:37It doesn't matter that much
00:00:38whether we call it postpartum or perinatal.
00:00:40I think some people really are attached.
00:00:42The idea of postpartum really means having given birth.
00:00:45That's not really what the term means.
00:00:47It just means occurring after the birth of a baby.
00:00:50And the fact is that a lot of the risk factors for depression
00:00:53are shared by new moms and new dads.
00:00:55You've got stress.
00:00:57You've got disrupted sleep.
00:00:59You've got relationship conflict.
00:01:00You've got new responsibilities, identity crisis,
00:01:04hormone changes, brain changes.
00:01:06So even though you're not the person
00:01:08that's physically delivered an infant,
00:01:10you are still experiencing a lot
00:01:13of the same overlapping risks.
00:01:15- What does postpartum mean?
00:01:18- So it just means after the birth of a baby,
00:01:20the time period-- - Not after your birth of a baby.
00:01:22- Yeah, it doesn't necessarily mean that you--
00:01:23- So it is a gender neutral term.
00:01:24- Yeah, it's a gender neutral term.
00:01:26It doesn't necessarily mean that you birthed the baby.
00:01:28It just means the time period that falls
00:01:30after the birth of a baby.
00:01:32That said, I don't want to antagonize the moms
00:01:35who keep coming into my Instagram comments
00:01:38to get mad at me for talking about postpartum depression.
00:01:41'Cause I understand, you know, there is--
00:01:42- Well, what are they mad about?
00:01:43Are they mad about the fact that this is our term?
00:01:46Like we want it to be,
00:01:48it needs to be like paternal postpartum depression,
00:01:51or so it needs some sort of a qualifier on it.
00:01:53It sounds to me like,
00:01:55and I saw a bunch of comments on Instagram
00:01:58talking about the same thing.
00:02:02It's not about this is a term that we care about.
00:02:05It, my best reading of it, right?
00:02:07And this is me trying to steel man it as best I can.
00:02:09- Yeah.
00:02:11- The process of childbirth for a woman
00:02:13is so arduous and traumatic and scary
00:02:18that any man who appears to be flippant or dismissive,
00:02:23or to kind of liken the challenge that he goes through
00:02:28to the one that the mom goes through,
00:02:30that is seen as being very callous,
00:02:33and it doesn't fully appreciate
00:02:35or understand the sacrifice of a mom.
00:02:38I think that's the best reading of it.
00:02:41- Yeah, I think that's a good reading.
00:02:44I think another piece of that--
00:02:45- That's me with my peaceful hat on.
00:02:46- Yes, where's your peaceful hat?
00:02:48You're missing that prop, you need a new prop.
00:02:51I would say that a lot of women legitimately feel like
00:02:55they've had to work very hard
00:02:57to get postpartum depression recognized.
00:02:59There's inadequate funding.
00:03:01There's inadequate attention paid to reproductive health
00:03:05and mood disorders in moms.
00:03:07And so if they're fighting to get access to treatment
00:03:12and to get education about their mental health,
00:03:15they feel like how can dads just sort of show up
00:03:18and make it all about them?
00:03:20That seems very unfair.
00:03:21And I'm totally sympathetic to that argument.
00:03:25I mean, I talked to a psychotherapist
00:03:27who works with new dads for my book,
00:03:29who's done a lot of advocacy
00:03:31for postpartum mental health in men.
00:03:33And she says a lot of the women's health advocates
00:03:36are just like, can't we have this one thing?
00:03:37Can't we have the postpartum period?
00:03:40This is ours.
00:03:40My peaceful hat's got taken off now.
00:03:43That is fucking stupid.
00:03:45But because what you're saying is,
00:03:47can we not not support men
00:03:50because we want women to have most of the attention?
00:03:52You go, well, hang on a second.
00:03:53Are you most concerned about owning this area
00:03:55of cognitive real estate?
00:03:56Like it's some sort of cultural appropriation by men?
00:03:59Or do you care about the outcome of the kid
00:04:01and of the mom?
00:04:02Right.
00:04:02Because if you don't treat the mental health of the father,
00:04:04how do you think the mom's going to feel?
00:04:06And how do you think the child's going to grow up?
00:04:08So what you're saying is,
00:04:09you would rather be intellectually superior,
00:04:13but in the real world have negative side effects.
00:04:16Like that is the outcome.
00:04:18Whether that's what they know
00:04:19or what they mean doesn't matter.
00:04:21Like it's not my job to sugarcoat the fact
00:04:24that you trying to own some area of cognitive real estate
00:04:28is having a negative impact on men.
00:04:32That should be enough.
00:04:33But also on mom,
00:04:35if the men thing wasn't enough
00:04:36and if that's not enough on baby too.
00:04:38So like not recognizing,
00:04:40and if you did this in reverse, right?
00:04:42And this is true for a very, very, very long time.
00:04:44There was all research was done on men.
00:04:47It was just the male body standard
00:04:48inside of the medical industry.
00:04:51No one said, well, this is cancer.
00:04:54That's men's thing.
00:04:55You go, no, this is not a fucking gendered issue.
00:04:58So, I mean, I've got, I got a video to show you.
00:05:00I got a video from the times that you've probably seen
00:05:03that I think is very interesting.
00:05:05And the videos interesting in the comments are way more interesting.
00:05:09So it's this one, it's this one on TikTok, Jared.
00:05:11I had post-natal depression.
00:05:13Yes, dads can get it too.
00:05:15In 2021, when my daughter Aurelia was about a month old,
00:05:19my wife turned to me in bed one morning and she asked,
00:05:22how much do you love her?
00:05:23I froze, I kind of gritted my teeth and said,
00:05:26yeah, I really love her.
00:05:28But inside I knew it wasn't there yet.
00:05:30I struggled to bond with my baby,
00:05:32felt disconnected and had growing shame that I was not being
00:05:35the natural father I thought I would be.
00:05:38About six months into fatherhood, I opened up to my wife.
00:05:41I wanted to be a rock to Chessie who had had a complicated pregnancy.
00:05:45Eventually, I got therapy, but postnatal depression was never raised.
00:05:49It wasn't until Aurelia was a year old that I came across an article about men's PND
00:05:54that everything started to make sense.
00:05:56About 10% of new dads will experience depressive symptoms during the perinatal period
00:06:01and first year of a child's life.
00:06:04For me and my wife, it was a Eureka moment.
00:06:07Men are not routinely screed for PND.
00:06:09So many cases go undiagnosed.
00:06:11I think the system is not changing quickly enough to offer support
00:06:15and spot the signs of depression in dads.
00:06:17My bond with Aurelia is now incredible.
00:06:20And with new understanding and support, I hope I won't suffer from PND again,
00:06:24but I think new dads should know they might not have that emotional bond straight away.
00:06:29All right, let me pause it there, Jared.
00:06:32I love that.
00:06:33Just press on the comments on the right-hand side for me.
00:06:35Oh no, I don't think I want to see the comments.
00:06:38Matt, please, I already had a long day.
00:06:39How do I make this about myself?
00:06:41Thank you for telling us that's Tom Scarvo.
00:06:43Oh Matt, it's not the same thing.
00:06:44This isn't depression, it's discomfort and uncertainty.
00:06:46Postpartum depression is linked to the dramatic hormonal changes
00:06:49that happen after childbirth, such as sudden drops in estrogen and progesterone.
00:06:52Not sure how this affects the father.
00:06:53Time of irritation, 1:41 p.m.
00:06:56Playing on my device.
00:06:57Yes, however, calling it postnatal depression isn't the right phase.
00:07:00I think he ultimately just didn't like all the attention in the relationship
00:07:02shifting to the baby.
00:07:04Please, I'm already annoyed today.
00:07:06How can I make this about me too?
00:07:07I feel left out.
00:07:08Is there poo in my AirPods?
00:07:10Oh my gosh.
00:07:11Like...
00:07:12Yeah, I've been fighting in the comments sections like these for a while now.
00:07:16And, you know, people really come out of the woodwork to be frustrated
00:07:20with this kind of material.
00:07:21And I think there's a gatekeeping around perinatal depression that is unfortunate.
00:07:27Because mental health is a family system.
00:07:30You need the best possible team around a baby.
00:07:33And the best predictor actually of mom's mental health is the support that she gets
00:07:37from her partner.
00:07:38So if dad is not well, dad is not showing up mom's mental health either.
00:07:43I think the idea that this is a fixed pie or that it's a zero-sum game,
00:07:47like there's a finite amount of resources that are going to go to a parent's mental health,
00:07:52and they need to be directed solely to mom, I think is really limited.
00:07:57We need to be thinking about how do moms work together with dads
00:08:01to make sure that the baby is getting well cared for
00:08:04and that everybody's mental health needs are getting met.
00:08:07Having a zero-sum view of empathy is like one of the dumbest,
00:08:11especially with something like this.
00:08:13It's just a guy going, "I went through this really hard thing."
00:08:17And people are going, "No, you didn't.
00:08:18No, you didn't."
00:08:19Or, "I went through something that was way worse than that."
00:08:20Yeah, why are we gaslighting dads?
00:08:22And why are we pitting dads against moms?
00:08:24And my response to that is, if we want to have a society where men are stepping up as parents,
00:08:30and they're fully participating in caretaking, they're waking up with the baby,
00:08:35they're doing the hard parts of care,
00:08:37we need to recognize that that's going to have mental health consequences.
00:08:40It's going to be taxing.
00:08:42It's going to be isolating.
00:08:43It's going to be draining.
00:08:44And if we really want men to participate,
00:08:46we have to respect that their mental health matters too.
00:08:50We can't guard it as though it's the sole domain of new moms,
00:08:53because we want dads to act more like primary caregivers,
00:08:57but we're not willing to accept that they're going to have vulnerability tied to that.
00:09:01Bingo. You're saying different things in the same breath,
00:09:08which is, we want dads to be fully involved,
00:09:10but we don't believe that they can have the negative outcomes
00:09:12that other people who've been fully involved for all of history have.
00:09:15Right.
00:09:15What's the rate of postnatal depression in women?
00:09:19It's a little higher in new moms than it is in new dads.
00:09:22I think it ranges across studies, but like 19 to 21 percent.
00:09:26It's about double.
00:09:26It's about 10 percent.
00:09:27Which is nearly the same as the change in brain.
00:09:31One percent to two, two and a half.
00:09:32Yes.
00:09:33And I think important context is that women have about
00:09:36twice the rate of anxiety and depression in the general population.
00:09:39As a base rate.
00:09:40So it tracks with that overall base rate.
00:09:43Wow.
00:09:44Yeah.
00:09:45That's a spicy realization.
00:09:47Yeah.
00:09:47That it could just be an increase in whatever your predisposition was,
00:09:52and that dads are actually getting it at the same rate as moms.
00:09:55And now that we've got more involved caregiving,
00:09:58which is the primary enforcement mechanism for the change,
00:10:00I'm going to guess postpartum depression in fathers is mediated by the amount of caregiving that they do.
00:10:08Right.
00:10:08And that's the other thing.
00:10:09So you're telling me like that's brutal that any dad that's listening to this now knows
00:10:14the more that I care for my baby, the higher my likelihood of getting postnatal depression is.
00:10:19Jared, you ever considered that you might have a drinking problem?
00:10:22I don't consider a lot, Chris.
00:10:24Well, you drank an entire case of Athletic Brewing Co. last night.
00:10:28But they're non-alcoholic.
00:10:31And that's not a problem?
00:10:32Sorry, man.
00:10:34I just kept chugging, waiting for the regret to creep in.
00:10:37Never happened.
00:10:38See, most people, like Jared, don't want to change what they drink.
00:10:42They just don't want the next day to be a complete write-off.
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00:10:48They make the best NA brews on the planet.
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00:11:19Bottoms up.
00:11:26Congratulations, you made it to the end of a clip.
00:11:28And the full-length episode is available right here.
00:11:33Go on.