"Women Are Furious About This Research." Why New Dads Suffer In Silence - Darby Saxbe

English

CChris Williamson

Transcript

00:00:00i'm sorry it's taken so long but merch is nearly here this friday the 31st of july at 12 midday

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00:00:15only got six days to be able to buy so head to mwmerch.com now most people are familiar with mum

00:00:20brain but you found that dad's brains go through a bunch of changes too exactly yeah so i've been

00:00:27looking at new fathers in my lab over the last decade plus we've scanned men when they're midway

00:00:33through their partner's pregnancy and then again after they have their first child and we find that

00:00:39the brain and i should caveat this is not a bad thing loses gray matter volume across that transition to

00:00:45fatherhood so the patterns look similar to those that have been observed in moms and they seem to

00:00:52be of smaller magnitude they're more variable and they're more tied to dad's parenting experience

00:00:59how does it differ from membrane what are the biggest differences so new moms lose about 2.5 percent of

00:01:06their gray matter volume across the transition into first time motherhood and they lose volume in parts

00:01:12of the brain that are really linked to hormones so that includes not just the cortex which if you think

00:01:17about sort of the outer layer of brain tissue that does a lot of our higher order thinking and reasoning

00:01:23it also includes what's called the subcortex which contains our amygdala our ventral striatum which

00:01:28processes reward and a number of other structures that are linked with drive and gut feelings dads change

00:01:37mostly just in the cortex which is that sort of executive functioning thinking and reasoning part of the brain

00:01:45mom's show profound changes across the whole brain and dad's changes are like i said smaller in magnitude

00:01:51so dad's is about one percent of their gray matter volume and my lab found that this was totally tied

00:01:57to dad's parenting time and investment so dads who felt more bonded with their babies before birth they

00:02:05were more motivated to take time off after birth they spent more day-to-day time with kids in the first few

00:02:11months and they reported feeling more bonded and having more pleasure in interacting with their kids those

00:02:17dads showed the biggest brain change how would you categorize the change in fatherhood over the last

00:02:22few generations there's been a dramatic change so by some estimates dad's daily time and parenting has

00:02:29tripled or even quadrupled compared to the father knows best dads of the 50s and 60s so there's been a huge

00:02:38huge uptick and what's interesting is that there was an inflection point around the pandemic where men who

00:02:44might have been commuting to an office and maybe missing a lot of the day-to-day stuff with their kids

00:02:50suddenly had the experience of being hands-on parents in a different way and a lot of people wondered whether

00:02:57that uptick would persist and it has so millennial dads are spending more time with kids than any other

00:03:03generation of u.s dads and there's evidence that gen z dads are spending even more time than millennial

00:03:11dads so there's been a pretty dramatic shift how does modern fathering differ from hunter-gatherer societies

00:03:19so it's interesting so in my book i talk about the model of hunter-gatherer fatherhood the aka

00:03:25which is a society in the congo where men spend a lot of time within hands reach of infants

00:03:32and they're very involved in infant care and what's unique about the aka and this quality is shared by a

00:03:38number of other hunter-gatherer societies is that they have a very egalitarian flat social structure and

00:03:45there's a lot of cooperative resource gathering so we know hunter-gatherer societies are the context in

00:03:50which we spent 95 of our human history so they tell us something about the environments within which

00:03:57we adapted within which we evolved and we know that women contributed a ton of calories so when people

00:04:04say it's unnatural for women to work in fact women have been economically productive for most of our human

00:04:10history but in the aka the main form of resource gathering is joint cooperative net hunting so

00:04:17couples work together to gain resources for the society and as a result really differentiated specialized

00:04:27parenting roles don't make very much sense right they would not be economically adaptive but you see

00:04:33other models even within africa i talk about another society that kipsigis which is a day's drive away

00:04:40where there are strict prohibitions against men picking babies up in the first year after birth no way so

00:04:45you'd never see a man carrying a baby outside his own home they're not supposed to share a sleeping

00:04:52surface with babies because it's considered that the the manliness of the father will disrupt the

00:04:59infant's rearing and that the infant will compromise the father's masculinity so and this is something i talk

00:05:07about a lot in my book there's so much societal and cultural variability around fatherhood what is the

00:05:16resource gathering process of the second tribe yeah so it's very different it's much more risky it's more

00:05:24hazardous it's uh slash and burn forest forestry and so it makes sense just as in the aka it makes sense not to

00:05:33specialize too strictly it makes sense in the kipsigis that dads are going to do most of the economic work

00:05:41and moms are going to do most of the caretaking and to be clear dads are very involved with older kids

00:05:46they'll teach them how to hunt they'll teach them how to provision but they are not picking babies up

00:05:53do you see parallels between uh modern society with more egalitarian access to work more female bread

00:06:00winners and the aka yeah i think there's some key distinctions but there there's more of a through

00:06:07line i think between that model of social organization and contemporary societies right because we have

00:06:12women in the workforce and our jobs no longer require upper body strength or high risk tolerance for the most

00:06:20part right so women have the opportunity to earn income and you know like i said most of human

00:06:28history we were either hunter gatherers or small family farmers so women were contributing to economic

00:06:35productivity even within those models but agricultural society has different conditions and generally demands

00:06:43more specialization there's more stability that allows you to accumulate and store wealth you need armies to

00:06:50guard your wealth and you end up with a less flexible and less egalitarian social structure so gender roles

00:06:57get a little more entrenched i think what's interesting about contemporary society is that we are in flux

00:07:03between these different models of what we expect from men and women and and men and women are changing at

00:07:11different rates yeah yeah well it makes sense that we need to be adaptable so i'm interested in the

00:07:17fact that you you choose to do the first scan of the father's brain halfway through pregnancy is there any

00:07:23reason to not is there any concern that by doing it part way through pregnancy that some changes may have

00:07:28happened already would a baseline be better i guess you're trying to get pregnant you've then decided

00:07:33to basically bet your study on a bunch of people who aren't yet parents but we promise we're really

00:07:38trying hard yeah i think if we'd had more time and more funding we probably would have done a

00:07:42preconception scan yep and so there's a really good study that came out when i was halfway through data

00:07:47collection for my dad's study it focuses on mothers and they were recruited from a fertility clinic

00:07:52so they were trying to get pregnant about half of the mothers did and about half of the mothers or

00:07:58rather about half of the women remained non-mothers and they found that the brain changed even during

00:08:03pregnancy so we didn't have the opportunity to do that because i was recruiting couples who were already

00:08:09willing to come into the lab pregnant and i wanted mothers and fathers to participate together but i think

00:08:15we might have seen some different patterns if we'd started the study earlier what happens with

00:08:20fathers to be when their partners are pregnant a lot so we see hormone changes we see new emotional

00:08:28worries and concerns we see couple relationship changes we sleep even sleep disruption that starts

00:08:34early before the baby's born and we don't know exactly the time course of brain remodeling because

00:08:40like i said my scan study started in mid-pregnancy we don't have other sources of information for the most

00:08:46part and so we're making our best guess my hunch is that what is reorganizing the brain more than anything

00:08:53else is parenting experience and the way in which that challenges the brain and the social demands

00:08:59that it places on the brain so my guess is that when we're looking at fathers we're going to see

00:09:04most of the change happening after birth but we don't know that for sure we need to replicate these

00:09:09studies and extend them right am i right in saying that there's research that shows how the relationship

00:09:15manages conflict impacts how painful the childbirth is yes my lab did that study yeah so we brought is

00:09:23is that stressing you out it's just it's it's kind of tenuous right like you've just explained that

00:09:29relationship stress happens sleep disruption happens and it that feels like quite a high

00:09:34high bar that's a that's a a big impact of pre-child uh like regulation yeah yeah i mean i think the bottom

00:09:46line is that kids are resilient humans are resilient we have survived in all kinds of different conditions

00:09:51and that's kind of our superpower as humans is our adaptability but it's a relatively new phenomenon

00:09:59for men to be present at their baby's birth right so birth is a very social process and that's unique

00:10:07for humans so most animals can deliver an infant solo no problem right birth is fairly straightforward

00:10:14we have these complicated annoying human pelvises that reshaped when we started walking upright

00:10:20and we also have these babies with these gigantic social brains and so birth can be very cumbersome

00:10:25for women and they often require assistance to steer a baby out of the birth canal so you see in most

00:10:32human births there there are helpers and in fact one theory about why we evolved to live in societies

00:10:41is so that you would have people to assist in childbirth that's one reason that we humans

00:10:46aren't just kind of you know solo uh you know roamers right like we need to be embedded in society so

00:10:53that our babies will survive but the people helping with childbirth are almost always women through

00:11:00most of human history it's a midwife it's a grandmother it's sisters and community members

00:11:06so it was really only in the 19th century that childbirth became really medicalized and you have

00:11:12doctors in hospitals who are presiding over childbirth even then dads were kept out of the delivery room

00:11:20so it was in the 60s and 70s really that dads started to advocate to be present during their baby's birth

00:11:27before that moms were under heavy anesthesia and the standard father role was basically hang out

00:11:33pass out cigars and you know get congratulated by your buddies right so we've seen this big shift

00:11:39and there hasn't been a lot of research on how the couple affects the childbirth experience and also

00:11:46what is the emotional impact for both mom and dad when dad is present at birth we now expect dads to do

00:11:52a lot of the support that might have been provided by intergenerational kin in previous eras and dads

00:11:59aren't necessarily trained for that or primed for that and so there can be emotional fallout from

00:12:06witnessing a traumatic and stressful birth and like you mentioned the study from my lab we found that

00:12:13when couples fought in more negative ways during pregnancy the birth was more medically complex

00:12:19and riskier and both members of the couple appraised it as being more stressful that's likely just

00:12:26the impact of emotional stress on a mother's body therefore the downstream impact of that

00:12:32physiologically during childbirth is going to be negative yeah exactly so we know stress tension fear

00:12:38pain right so when you're delivering an infant your body has to release and relax you have to allow

00:12:45the infant to move down through the birth canal if you're clenched up stressed and tense it makes it harder

00:12:52and it's going to feel more painful and it's going to lead to more difficult birth outcomes

00:12:56what's been the impact of having men in the delivery room do you think it's been a good idea i think

00:13:01it's been really good for some couples and i think it's been challenging for others and it's become

00:13:06controversial right so every sports season there's a player that can't participate because he has to

00:13:12be present at his baby's birth and i think it's really valuable for moms who benefit from having a

00:13:19partner there to provide support again because we don't have these close intergenerational ties that maybe

00:13:25were normative a couple generations ago so i think having social support continuous social support

00:13:32is one of the best ways to have a positive birth experience however i think when dads are unprepared

00:13:38when they're terrified and when they haven't figured out how to communicate effectively with moms

00:13:44they can have a deleterious impact on the birth process what's cuvade syndrome so that's male pregnancy and

00:13:52it's a phenomenon by which males is a real thing well it's a controversial thing i talk about it a little

00:13:58bit in the book i think it's more anecdotal than evidence-based so the data on it there have been a

00:14:03couple studies that have that have been done but i don't fully trust the results we actually looked at

00:14:09in my sample of dads we didn't find any associations between hormones and dads self-reported pregnancy

00:14:15symptoms but it's basically like a sympathetic pregnancy and you see it in different cross-cultural

00:14:20models so men feeling like they're experiencing nausea pregnancy patterns of weight gain uh sympathetic

00:14:29labor pains and the study that was done in a uk hospital found that expectant dads reported a bunch of

00:14:36pregnancy-like symptoms during their partner's pregnancy just empathizing ladies you say that

00:14:42you need us to open up more just empathy i'm empathizing so much that i'm having period pains

00:14:46well and a lot of these pains are stress related right so if you think about things like gastrointestinal

00:14:51distress and you know difficulty sleeping those are things that come when you're really stressed and

00:14:57basically pregnant so yeah exactly basically so needless to say a lot of expectant moms are annoyed by this research

00:15:05because you know only one of you is actually puking because of the baby the other person might just be freaking out

00:15:11but i think it's interesting that we are so contagious and we soak up the emotional experiences of people around us

00:15:17what do you think couples should pay attention to as they're going through pregnancy then

00:15:21so i think they need to learn how to communicate effectively and listen to each other

00:15:25i think a lot of the time women hear each other's birth stories just like you're at a picnic and

00:15:32everybody's telling you the gnarly story of you know their third baby's birth that got really complicated

00:15:37men don't necessarily get the opportunity to hear about different kinds of birth experiences or

00:15:42watch media that portrays birth in realistic ways because our pop culture conceptions are sort of bananas

00:15:48so i think birth education that involves fathers can be really valuable to normalize

00:15:55what to expect what is the progress of labor going to be like and how can you effectively provide support

00:16:01and be a calming influence i've heard you say if you think that having a baby is going to fix your

00:16:06relationship don't do it exactly why yeah so the studies show a reliable drop in relationship

00:16:13satisfaction around the birth of a baby and it's unsurprising if you think about the challenges

00:16:19of adjusting to life with a new baby i used to joke that my husband and i went from good time pals to

00:16:26were suddenly operating a small business with a very disappointed customer right you have someone

00:16:35you have someone crying around the clock who is not pleased with anything you're doing to comfort them

00:16:41your sleep is disrupted and you're suddenly worrying about money and your living arrangements and all of

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00:17:55modernwisdom a checkout okay so why is it that becoming a father isn't enough it's becoming a caregiver that

00:18:05creates that brain so why is it that you need to actually spend time parenting yeah yeah because it

00:18:12takes practice and repetition to build the brain just like anything you learn whether you're learning an

00:18:17instrument or a new language or you know you're a london taxi driver navigating the city so i think with moms

00:18:25you have this kind of high floor of investment primed and ready to go and partially that's because

00:18:31it takes so much energy to incubate a pregnancy it's thousands of calories so moms have already devoted a

00:18:40lot of energetic resources to babies before they even arrive so in if you think about you sort of have

00:18:47a caregiving dial that can be turned up or down moms are turned all the way up by the time the baby

00:18:53arrives so the example i gave you of a village where dads don't pick up their babies in the first year

00:18:58it'd be very hard to find a village like that made up of moms who had similar prohibitions right

00:19:04moms in many ways are biologically primed to care with dads it's like the dial is set more in the middle

00:19:10and it can be turned up or down depending on culture and local contextual demands so i think what's

00:19:17really cool about dads is that they come equipped with the biology that makes them ready to adapt to

00:19:24become sensitive caregivers but whether or not they turn the dial is up to them it's up to is mom

00:19:32incapacitated is uh am i in a culture where dads are really hands-on so

00:19:40in the book i talk about this concept of facultative adaptation which is to say an adaptation that

00:19:46comes online when needed that can be very useful so you think about primates who run on four legs

00:19:52but if they need to grab something they can stand up and walk on two legs so you can grab more stuff if

00:19:59you have that ability if you can turn up the dial for fatherhood you can enrich kids lives and you can

00:20:06benefit them and provide them with better outcomes and better odds of survival presumably paternity

00:20:12uncertainty has got a role to play here as well yeah you don't want to be locked in hormonally

00:20:19neurologically to raising a child that you're not sure is yours exactly and one of the really unique

00:20:24things about humans is we conceal our ovulation so human males don't know for sure whether or not

00:20:31they've caused a pregnancy so it actually incentivizes human males to invest in courtship

00:20:37because you can't just helicopter in have sex once and know that you've made a baby you have to show

00:20:44up repeatedly if you want to be sure you have very good odds of success and so you're going to show

00:20:49up with gifts and you're going to get to know that person and and so it's adaptive to pair bond which

00:20:56is why humans have really high rates of pair bonding compared to other species so we do see that dad's

00:21:02predilection to care give again can turn that dial up or down depending on the stability of their

00:21:10relationship with the baby's mother oh so a a less stable relationship with the mother would result in

00:21:19a different parenting style from the dad it could yeah exactly yeah i would motivate different reproductive

00:21:24strategy are you familiar with the westermark effect i don't think so it's how incest avoidance

00:21:30happens inside humans so it's what's fascinating about this is um because you don't have there's no

00:21:37guarantees i suppose even even like harem style gorillas and stuff don't know that the big

00:21:44silverback is the one that's had the kid and not some young upstart that's managed to sneak in or

00:21:48whatever yeah but for the most part that would be a little bit different um what's fascinating is when

00:21:53you've got like ecologically informed uh neurological and uh behavior change hormonal behavior change

00:22:01uh it happens there's this window between the age of like one and ten and if you see primarily

00:22:08your mother but also your father giving care to another infant yeah you uh uh grow up with a

00:22:16sexual aversion to them and what was interesting i i think it's a um

00:22:23maybe uh an indian an indian culture uh that they perhaps a uh an asian culture like far east asian

00:22:32culture where they used to find future wives for their baby sons as infants and they'd raise them

00:22:39together so you would have you know a three-year-old and a three-year-old living together what they

00:22:43didn't realize is they were basically locking in this biological imprinting of that's my sister right so

00:22:50highly maladaptive yeah um but you can see where the similarity lies here that totally the father's

00:22:57level of brain adaptation is based on the behavior of how much time he spends raising the child doing

00:23:04nurturing doing caregiving and that means that you can go both ways in the same way as you could have

00:23:10a twin that was born but raised separately you would have no like imbued sexual aversion to them right

00:23:17there'll be no incest discussed yes because the behavior that brings that in so really mothers

00:23:25are the only ones that have that like locked in contract biological contract with the baby

00:23:32and everybody else from brothers sisters to aunts to uncles they're all kind of just learning as they go

00:23:38right so there's that natural variability that you see in the other parents the people who are playing

00:23:45a role in parenting and we know that as humans we evolved to be allo parents so we're what's called

00:23:50cooperative breeders which is to say we participate in collective care of offspring which is very

00:23:56adaptive because human babies are so uniquely difficult to raise we require so much intensive care and it's

00:24:04too much for any one person to provide all of the round-the-clock care so we help each other out with

00:24:10parenting and caregiving but the extent to which dads play a role is something that varies based on societal

00:24:17context what are the behaviors that most create dad brain if i was to design a menu or a daily routine

00:24:25to maximize that one percent change what would i be doing yeah you'd be picking your baby up you'd be

00:24:32caring for them you'd probably be sharing a sleeping surface with them you'd be diapering them you'd be

00:24:38feeding them you'd be bathing them so you'd be doing the kind of intensive care that helps you really

00:24:45get to know a baby and attunes you more to their physiology and to their mind because where we see

00:24:53a lot of the change happening in men's brains is in what we call the mentalizing network and that's a

00:24:58part of the brain that activates when we think about other people's minds and their intentions

00:25:04it's what reads other people's emotions and you could think about it as the seat of our empathy

00:25:10and so that is a dynamic part of the brain in new dads and also in new moms in part because when you

00:25:16are having to care for an infant who cannot communicate effectively right because they can't

00:25:22talk they just cry you have to be able to read their emotions and you have to be able to problem

00:25:27solve to figure out what they need so you're getting a lot of exercise to that empathetic part of the

00:25:32brain the executive function has been tuned down so maybe your ability to come up with novel solutions

00:25:37might be less well no because i actually think you have to problem solve quite a bit so your executive

00:25:41functioning is also gonna attune did you not say that some of the oh is it just mums

00:25:46that have got the executive function tuned down no moms both dads and moms so it's tuning up well

00:25:52it depends on whether you think of losing gray matter volume as a tune up or a tune down right

00:25:57right and the jury's a little out on that we see volume reduction which we think is about pruning

00:26:04and becoming more efficient what's lost well our short-term memory for objects that aren't our baby

00:26:12so there's some evidence that working memory gets compromised but we often use this deficit framing

00:26:19when we talk about mommy brain like oh i you know i forgot where i parked the car it actually looks

00:26:24like certain kinds of memory are enhanced and it's salience driven so it's memory for your baby's smells

00:26:32objects that are pertinent to your baby you know rodents have to figure out where they've stashed their

00:26:38babies like in a nest full of bedding so one reason the hippocampus which is the part of the brain that

00:26:44we think of as implicated in memory is also really sensitive to smell is you kind of have to smell

00:26:49your way to find the baby to retrieve your pup so the hippocampus is really plastic in new moms and new

00:26:55dads so it's like our memory is actually getting a different kind of workout but we're maybe losing our

00:27:02sharpness in some domains and improving our functioning in others better able to detect what does this small

00:27:10thing want what does it mean where did i leave things that are associated with it bottles and and diapers

00:27:17and and it itself and stuff like that yeah but maybe less so where did i leave the car where did i leave the

00:27:25keys what does the rest of my day look like outside of the baby orchestrating the operations of the rest

00:27:31of my life exactly and it's also about value right it's what domains are we motivated to optimize so

00:27:38a lot of people find both moms and dads that after they have kids they care a little bit less about

00:27:44achieving at work right which is not to say that moms and dads are bad workers if anything i actually

00:27:50think they make great contributions to organizations because of all the skills they do maybe a different

00:27:55domain to a non-parent right but priorities shift and and at least in the short term although the good

00:28:02news is that it appears that having become a parent is neuroprotective in late life so there's some work

00:28:08coming out of the uk biobank which is this big repository of scan studies from middle-aged and older adults

00:28:16that finds that when you've had more children you actually have better cognitive functioning

00:28:22and brains that look younger so if you use a machine learning algorithm to try to figure out

00:28:28how old is the brain compared to its chronological age people who've had more kids up to a certain

00:28:34point it tops off at around three kids actually have brains that the machine learning algorithm codes as

00:28:40younger what's your proposed mechanism for that so i think it's about social integration

00:28:45so the fact that it shows up in dads as well as moms tells me it's not just pregnancy hormones

00:28:50it's not just birth experience it's not just breastfeeding i think it's about and we know

00:28:55this in both men and women that being more socially connected to other people is really important for

00:28:59health even if that person is a mini version of you yeah yeah i mean even more so maybe because

00:29:04then you're especially attuned to them yeah right it's good for longevity it could so the thing that's

00:29:10coming to mind here is i wonder whether you could replicate those neuroprotective results

00:29:16by just having a really really really deep friendship with one person and i wonder whether

00:29:21you could create the same brain changes in reduction of salience networks outside of this one thing and

00:29:27increase of awareness attention etc with business or a dog like if you just dedicate because if these

00:29:35networks are as flexible as you say they are if they're as malleable as you say they are then it

00:29:40shouldn't just be a baby that's able to trigger this anything really vulnerable that you care for

00:29:44develop empathy for so empathy you might not develop that much empathy for your business maybe not or for

00:29:50your friend i mean i guess you can be very empathetic but if it was a a animal that you're caring for

00:29:56yeah absolutely and i think a lot of young people do adopt pets either in lieu of or in preparation for

00:30:02having babies and you are practicing a lot of those same kinds of skills

00:30:08is it just it's literally just the fact that salience outside that all of the mum brain stuff

00:30:12all of the dad brain stuff the things that they are reporting being confused by maybe being a little

00:30:17bit irritated by those are primarily stuff anything that's not baby related is just a little bit less

00:30:25aware to me yeah although you might find and and this is true i talked to somebody that took a

00:30:31parenting class and found that it ultimately made him a much better manager at work so i think there's

00:30:36sort of like the short term maybe downgrading of everything except the baby and then there's a long

00:30:42term building of new skills and stronger social networks ideally right when things go right that's

00:30:48not true for everybody but i think these are transferable skills so if you think about becoming

00:30:55an empathetic parent as analogous to being a good friend or a good caretaker in other domains you know

00:31:02transferable skills yeah like men who are coaches who are teachers who are guidance counselors who are

00:31:08religious leaders you know i talked to somebody for the book who said we often think about

00:31:13caregiving in very feminized ways but the fireman who pulls a family out of a burning building is a

00:31:18caregiver right the policeman who keeps the family safe is a caregiver right we can broaden our

00:31:23understanding of care to include sort of traditional masculinity and celebrate how important that is for society

00:31:31so if a dad's brain literally doesn't change unless he's hands-on with caregiving

00:31:36is it right to say like i love my kids but i'm not a hands-on guy is more a biological confession than a

00:31:44personality trait i think it depends i think it depends on what the context is and what is adaptive

00:31:51for a particular family because i think there are cultures in which having dads who aren't hands-on

00:31:59make sense for that the local demands because you have other caregivers or because dads are

00:32:06needed to do some kind of very specialized labor i think in contemporary societies where we expect a

00:32:12fairly high level of involvement from most fathers i would frame it as a missed opportunity

00:32:18um have you seen bob odenkirk talking about what it means to be a dad yeah it's so good i love bob

00:32:24odenkirk he's the man play that clip for me jared i think it's i think it's so cool who were you

00:32:28jealous of anybody who's still got little kids at home growing up oh yeah there's no question i knew

00:32:36what i was doing when i had kids growing up yeah i was being a dad i mean that was my job and i didn't

00:32:42have to ask myself what am i doing here what am i doing how can i be a part of this world how can i

00:32:48be meaningful today yeah i didn't have to ask that question because the answer is pick up everything

00:32:53between here and the door that's right and make sure they get to school and have a laugh with them

00:32:58yeah you know it was life was i understood my purpose that's the answer who were you jealous of

00:33:07i love that yeah and i think we do find that sense of meaning and purpose which is so important for our

00:33:14well-being our sense of connectedness our sense of coherence like he just talked about like feeling

00:33:20like you have a reason to do what you do every day and that life is happening according to plan that is

00:33:28so important for psychological health i'm so excited to become a father i can't wait for it so are you

00:33:35working on it uh yeah well reliably you can't do it on your own um i've heard that which is which i've

00:33:41have tried um but uh yeah that's you need somebody else to be ready at the same time yeah that's

00:33:48what you make of the deadbeat dad narrative yeah so i think it is true in some cases and it's unfair

00:33:54to dads in many other cases so in 1960 you had 88 of kids living with a father at home that dipped down

00:34:03in 2005 to 67 of kids and it's actually rebounded so today about 76 of kids in the u.s are living with

00:34:12a father at home so there's been a father or the father they're usually the father but not always so

00:34:17sometimes there's complex fatherhood where dads are living with um kids that weren't originally theirs

00:34:23but at least having a stepfather figure in the home so there's been this kind of u-shaped change and father

00:34:29presence but i think we often think about fatherhood as this binary absent dad versus present dad and

00:34:38there are a lot of shades of gradation in between so many non-residential fathers are really involved in

00:34:43caregiving i talk about this in the book but after my parents got divorced we did joint custody so my

00:34:49brothers and i were alone with our dad every other week and he went from fairly hands-off caregiver to

00:34:57suddenly the primary parent in charge of everything we needed and i watched how transformative that was

00:35:03for him so there are different ways again to turn that dial of fatherhood and i think when dads fully

00:35:10check out like i said it's a missed opportunity both for themselves and for their kid but there are a lot

00:35:16of ways to turn the dial back up i talked to a dad for the book who spent the first three years of his

00:35:22son's life in jail and was able to get out reunite with his son take parenting classes he now works at an

00:35:31organization called homeboy industries which does uh intervention for gang involved people in la

00:35:39and he directs a project fatherhood program and he said having that bond with his son was the single

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00:36:44are you aware if there's a window similar to the westermark effect of time after which an older male

00:36:52isn't able to attach to a younger child in the same way exist has um pretty sort of positive

00:37:01connotations for stepdads because it suggests that you can bond pretty much just as apart from the

00:37:09cognitive realization like this isn't mine yeah uh if you spend enough time with baby on chest you're

00:37:14probably going to get locked in but especially with stepdads and maybe fathers that are absent or

00:37:19working or whatever they might not be as available during those years and i have to assume like if i

00:37:26hang around with a 21 year old dude lots and empathize and care for him i'm probably not going

00:37:31to see him as my son just like out of the gates so it suggests to me that there's a kind of tail off

00:37:37in some way but i mean this is total bro science here so yeah this this makes me feel that's the

00:37:42bro science yeah um but you understand what i mean have you got any insight around that's true or no

00:37:47it's a really interesting question sort of at what point do you maybe miss that opportunity to bond

00:37:52and i think what's key is that you have a front row seat to a child's development during some critical

00:37:57period however i think we often over emphasize early infancy and there's this idea that if we miss the

00:38:06the first hour after birth or the first three days after birth or the first month that we've somehow

00:38:13missed our chance to bond and that's not really true right we know that adoptive parents and step

00:38:19parents can have profound connections with their kids i grew up with a stepdad who i met when i was nine

00:38:25and he ended up being a really formative influence in my life and and so i think it depends on

00:38:33when the dad comes into the picture and what kind of work and practice he's willing to put in

00:38:39to make that connection but i would say as long as there's any stretch of a child's youth that a dad

00:38:45is witnessing and participating in he can play a role as a parent what about impacts on hormones in man

00:38:52yeah so we see changes in testosterone around the birth of a new baby we don't know as much about how

00:38:58hormones change in adoptive or step parents because there just isn't a lot of research about this most

00:39:04of the work is on early parenthood and most of it is focusing on biological parents

00:39:10hmm so testosterone gets tuned down does that increase with caregiving yes in fact does that happen

00:39:19without caregiving no right so it's linked as are the brain changes to dad's participation in care okay so

00:39:29we see this not just in humans we see this in animal models as well you are probably familiar with the

00:39:36challenge hypothesis the idea that we want high levels of testosterone under certain circumstances

00:39:42it's adaptive for testosterone to drop in other circumstances so birds are the classic example

00:39:49testosterone levels rise at the start of breeding season when birds are competing for mates they're

00:39:54looking to spread their seed they want as many opportunities as possible so they need status

00:39:58to try to find a partner and then after mating has been accomplished it's immunologically costly to

00:40:05maintain perpetually high levels of tea testosterone naturally decreases and the reproductive strategy is

00:40:13shifting towards more nurturing so instead of maximizing our numbers of babies that we can produce we want

00:40:22to maximize the odds that any given baby is going to survive and our hormones kind of follow suit

00:40:28and you see it in primates you see it in rodents as well as in humans you see these natural shifts

00:40:35what what are the behavior changes that happen in men based on their hormones so typically when

00:40:43testosterone decreases it's serving a function whereby dads are getting more invested in the partner relationship

00:40:51they are more interested more motivated to maintain a stable pair bond and they're less aggressive

00:40:58so a lot of the work in rodents has looked at sort of territorial aggression and you know when you see

00:41:06a new pup in the nest do you want to kill them or do you want to care for them and testosterone levels

00:41:12can sort of modulate where you end up along that continuum so we want in general if anyone is spending

00:41:21a lot of time with infants to be less motivated to kill and more motivated to care risk-taking behavior

00:41:29as well goes down and you see that you you know you you see actually in some ways health improvements we

00:41:35we can talk about dad bot at some point i'm sure but uh you see some health improvements in terms of

00:41:40less risky driving less likely to get into fights lower levels of substance use being more conscientious

00:41:48about doctor checkups so all of those behaviors that keep us alive and ready to provide for our offspring

00:41:55blame it on the testosterone shift sure blame it on the test yeah you know one of my favorite studies

00:41:59around um risk-taking behavior and uh male and female relationships looking at studies of men crossing

00:42:08the road and the distance from them to the nearest car in the presence of women or without the presence

00:42:13of women yeah dude if there's a woman there it's like three times closer i do look at how hard i am

00:42:19harder than this car um but yeah that doesn't end well a lot of the time typically in a fight between

00:42:24you and a car you usually lose yeah however the thing that's interesting that like we know that

00:42:30testosterone can change if we had um a ton of weapons on this table like axes and spears and guns and

00:42:37stuff yeah and me and the guys walked around and like picked them up and played with them our

00:42:41testosterone would go up yeah and i'd be terrified it's very good that happens after that's the way that we

00:42:47close the show out is by wielding weapons inside of okay yeah remind me to get out of here for a second

00:42:52now we're live action role playing it's the middle ages um so that sense the fact that we can be so

00:42:59reactive as men yeah we talk about how hormonal women are right and yes but reliably men much more

00:43:06unreliable yes uh similarly a lot of hormonal changes but they don't happen on the same sort of

00:43:11lunar schedule um but what that must mean i i don't know whether this will be the primary drive

00:43:16because a lot of it's like there's a girl there and i'm just going to show how how hard i am and how

00:43:21how masculine and the risk-taking yeah but also there'll probably be a bit of an increase in

00:43:25testosterone and that might push it a little bit more yeah and the same thing will be presumably

00:43:30happening here as well that there's a relational component there's the sort of top-down

00:43:34baby must be here for baby must not drive recklessly text whilst drive etc but also there is this sort of

00:43:41bottom-up environment that's being created which encourages us to behave in that way too exactly

00:43:47biology and culture work together as they do in so many ways in parenthood and and yeah i think it's

00:43:55really interesting the extent to which our culture is kind of in flux between different models of

00:44:00fatherhood and so you know are we low t dads or high t dads but there's plenty of work suggesting that you

00:44:08know in athletic competition in other opportunities for men to raise their status you see changes in

00:44:16testosterone so testosterone you know i think we can talk about testosterone supplementation and what that

00:44:24means for men who want to be dads i think to me what is adaptive about testosterone as with any other

00:44:30hormone is that it's responsive to context and we want to be flexible because we want to have a biology

00:44:39that sets us up to achieve our goals you're saying that if you were to be taking testosterone enhancement

00:44:46whilst becoming a father you think that you're able to outwit biology's uh uh a well-proven environment

00:44:55that it's trying to create inside of you and you're just plowing through it by injecting yourself with

00:44:59tea i think that's the fear that's the risk and and anecdotally i hear from moms who say yeah my

00:45:06husband's been taking tea and he has no patience with the baby who knows we need better more rigorous

00:45:13studies to see if that's actually true yeah but he's jacked but exactly so there's a baby's growing

00:45:18up with a jack dad come on and in some contexts that could be really good like if you have to fight your

00:45:25way out of a cage to get a leg of lamb for your kid then you probably want high testosterone in early

00:45:32parenthood but that might not serve the style of fatherhood that is more desired presumably as well

00:45:39if that environment was the one that you were in your body would detect it and go hey there's

00:45:45more testosterone for you as opposed to you going no shut up a thousand nanograms per deciliter is

00:45:49absolutely fine like yeah well in risk believing that you do you know better than your body does yeah

00:45:55when you're in a risky or competitive environment men want higher testosterone that's going to serve

00:45:59their goals it's not always going to serve their goals when they're in a parenting environment and

00:46:05so you know i think the thing about supplementation is we sort of have this idea that manliness is about

00:46:12maintaining perpetually high tea i think actually positive masculinity is more about adaptability being

00:46:19flexible and showing up in the way that you need to for changing situations well what a horrendous

00:46:27own goal it would be if you decided to keep your testosterone high in an attempt to show your

00:46:32masculinity and in the process ended your lineage yeah like well done dude yeah like you blew through

00:46:39all of the warning signs that you should have been tuned down from yeah so yeah i guess testosterone

00:46:45drops when men become engaged fathers right so some men will hear that and think okay so fatherhood

00:46:51makes you less of a man right do you think that the fear of losing masculinity by caregiving

00:46:57is actually driving avoidant fatherhood in some ways maybe this was something i worried about when

00:47:02writing this book and trying to summarize the science around fatherhood is that the subtitle i joked

00:47:07for a while would be fatherhood gives you a smaller brain makes you sleepier sadder fatter and have lower

00:47:14testosterone but it's really good jared it'll give you so that i don't think that would that wouldn't

00:47:20sell very many books yeah and we've talked about some of the benefits of fatherhood like an increased

00:47:25sense of meaning and purpose and neuro protection in late life i would argue that being a good dad is

00:47:31one of the most manly things you can do you're literally rearing the next generation you're guiding

00:47:37them you're protecting them you're inspiring them you're teaching them so when you think about what

00:47:41is masculinity for i would argue that in some ways it's for your ability to be a good dad so i think

00:47:49we confuse like just having a certain hormone level equals masculinity and i would counter argue

00:47:56it's more about what is your social role and how are you showing up to do the things that are needed of

00:48:02you and what is your definition of success exactly especially this is a more i'm gonna put it's a

00:48:08more controversial area uh to talk about but if you were to say for women what is your definition of

00:48:15success i think mumbrain is seen as quite a big loss by a lot of women while i'm uh executively less

00:48:23competent my ability to remember maybe i was a an assistant or a teacher or or someone who worked in

00:48:30marketing or whatever and i can't hold on to the ideas in the way that i used to you say well that

00:48:35looks like a massive loss in all of the ways that society says that a woman should be successful

00:48:42apart from the one that's most important which is being a good mom yeah and it's all about definition

00:48:46of success and if you're in a meritocratic capitalist world that says your ability to produce

00:48:51economically and to rise up through the ladder of status and prestige and socioeconomic hierarchy

00:48:57that's your primary goal that's exactly what you bring to the world yeah that looks like a loss

00:49:03apart from the fact that your kid is happier and you're more in tune with them and more in love with

00:49:06them and so again it's the same thing as the as the dad masculinity conversation i just think it's a

00:49:12it's a bit more of a minefield no i think you're right i think we we undervalue care and we don't

00:49:19prioritize it as a public social good which it certainly is and i think as a result we have

00:49:27this whole discourse around bouncing back after baby you know how quickly can you get your pre

00:49:33baby body back how quickly can you get your pre baby brain back and in fact it's supposed to be

00:49:40transformative you have a whole new role to play and i think we want to celebrate that weird kind of

00:49:46denial of the preciousness of parenthood yeah it's a real middle finger to that to go i had this

00:49:55inconvenience for a while i was kind of afflicted with motherhood or fatherhood and my goal is to get

00:50:03back to what i was before as opposed to become something new yeah exactly and i will say as a

00:50:09parent of teens i don't want to go back to my pre baby self because i was clueless i think you learn

00:50:15a lot and figure a lot of things out i can use that as my excuse as a parent as a not as a non-parent

00:50:21my cluelessness is exclusively because of my lack of child that's right does the dad brain and the mum

00:50:28brain does that happen again and again does it re-kick start do you regrow how does how do multiple

00:50:34children play into this so there's some really interesting new research about this and i should

00:50:38preface by saying the research literature is really scant part of why i wrote the book is because i want

00:50:43more studies to get funded and more studies to get done in both dads and moms so there's one study that

00:50:48i know of that looks at what happens to the brain when you have a second kid it was done in moms it was

00:50:54done in the netherlands and what happens is the brain shrinks again but it actually shrinks in some

00:50:59different ways and in some different places so there's some rebound so we actually think maternal

00:51:05brain change and i'm guessing paternal brain change too when we have more longitudinal data points is

00:51:11actually u-shaped so you lose volume and then you regain so be adaptive which is adaptive exactly because

00:51:18you don't necessarily want to end up with a much smaller brain after having had many more kids

00:51:22so you get some rebound but then 10 kids and you can't function the kids are looking after you yeah

00:51:27you're walking around like the guy in beetlejuice with the tiny shrunken head right um yeah you don't

00:51:32want that to happen but you end up actually where you lose gray matter volume with a second pregnancy

00:51:40is actually in areas that are tied more to deploying uh let's see what's a good way to say this

00:51:48like managing multiple inputs so those are areas that if you streamline and tune them they're actually

00:51:55salient for taking care of multiple kids so it's kind of like task switching okay yeah and being

00:52:01oriented cognitively to variable demands those are the places where you see that sharpening of

00:52:07functioning you know what i would love second time moms you know i'd love to see i'd love to see a

00:52:12comparison between that and mothers who have twins or triplets yeah i don't know wouldn't that be

00:52:17so cool yes and the studies unfortunately exclude twin and triplet moms because they're going to add too

00:52:23much complexity yeah but if you did a study specifically on them it's a really interesting paradigm

00:52:30right because you kind of get double the dose of parenting experience and you get more parenting hormones too

00:52:34do you have yeah more time on skin i mean both dad and mum will be really at the upper limit of that

00:52:40one to two point five percent range yeah but also i wonder if you basically speed run level one and

00:52:46go straight to level two as mum where you've got the the multitasking like baby juggling skill yeah um

00:52:53you might advance to that second time brain a little faster yeah so and my guess is also with twins and

00:52:58triplets dad gets more involved so again you're talking about tuning the dial up that turns fatherhood

00:53:04behavior on when you have multiples you need dad more because you need more help to yeah you basically

00:53:11had a baby with leverage yeah right you invested you invested at like two or three x starting capital in

00:53:18the beginning that's right i read about the daughter effect yeah is that real which say say what you mean by it

00:53:23when uh fathers have daughters their behavior changes in unique ways that wouldn't have done with a son

00:53:31yeah so i'm glad you asked that because my lab literally just wrote a paper over the weekend

00:53:36we do these paper in a day retreats where we all get together and we write chunks of a paper together

00:53:41and we looked at how men's behavior and well-being and hormones change when they have either a son or a

00:53:49daughter so we found that when men have daughters and this is from our longitudinal sample they show more

00:53:55of a drop in testosterone across the transition to that parenthood and they also spend less time caring

00:54:03for their babies and they report more parenting stress and worse bonding so it's kind of bad news for girls

00:54:11actually uh and we need to figure out what modulates that and you know how to offset it but it suggests

00:54:18that when men are expecting girls they might be in need of some additional coaching and preparation to

00:54:25figure out how they can show up as effective parents does the sex of the baby change how the brain adapts

00:54:32in the other direction then so we don't know because there haven't been enough studies of this i've

00:54:37looked at this a little bit in our data it should be pretty easy to do right was it boy was it girl

00:54:42compare groups but you're cutting your sample in half so if you already have an underpowered sample

00:54:46then you know you're losing your ability to pick up on it put the hat on and just throw some some

00:54:51hypotheses yeah i um i know of a little bit of work suggesting that it shifts uh certain brain responses

00:55:00like i think um there was a study actually it was done at emory in atlanta that found that uh the the

00:55:08brain was more primed to happy facial expressions from girls and distressed expressions from boys and so

00:55:15there were some different patterns of brain responses but the literature is tiny we don't

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00:56:25increase reduction of testosterone around girls is because rough and tumble play more protection

00:56:33needed for child but it's interesting right because you would also assume that

00:56:39the small boy would become physically stronger sooner as well so more protection from the outside

00:56:49world might require more testosterone but less risk taking and less aggression toward the inside world

00:56:56requires less testosterone so there's a strange balance that's going on do you understand yeah

00:57:00yeah i think that's an interesting hunch i mean i think our time course was just from mid pregnancy to

00:57:04the first six months so we didn't really have enough you know the babies aren't even more money

00:57:09to give you a ton of money thank you from your lips to god's ears right give us more grants we'll

00:57:13study this long we're actually doing a seven-year follow-up right now so we'll see what happens when

00:57:18the kids are hitting first and second grade we're collecting that data as we speak but our hunch is

00:57:23exactly what you said first which is that we think that dads might behaviorally be interacting

00:57:29with new babies differently depending on whether they're a boy or a girl and there's evidence that

00:57:33even before babies are born if you ask parents what are the traits of your new child they are shaped

00:57:40by knowing the sex of the baby so new parents tend to describe a baby girl as being more delicate

00:57:47more vulnerable they might yes sweet soft they might describe a baby boy as rambunctious or mischievous or

00:57:57tough and strong and so it may be that dads are getting more active and are playing with girls in

00:58:04a way that's more about cuddling and nurturing and are playing with boys in a way that's more about

00:58:09playing and activating and we know that in fact dads do have these kind of signature styles of playing

00:58:15with kids they do tend to engage in more of what's called proprioceptive touch which is like picking

00:58:20babies up moving them around in space like really active exploratory kind of boundary pushing play

00:58:27and it may just be that dads are doing more of that when they've got a baby boy and that is why

00:58:32their testosterone isn't falling in exactly the same way also that the behavior of the boys and the girls

00:58:38will be the boy is more likely to want to play with trucks linear objects etc and the girl is more likely

00:58:46to want to do the caregiving stuff although again these are six month old babies so they can't even

00:58:50pick up a truck that's true i was thinking i was thinking more about when you get to sort of two

00:58:54three four i had a joyce benenson on the show is just the best and uh she was saying she looked at the

00:59:03playground of kindergartners like three four years old and you know there's not been a massive amount of

00:59:10time to socialize you into your gender role already and all of the girls were playing a game where they

00:59:17had to keep something alive and all of the boys were playing a game where they had to fight something

00:59:22in a war fighting something in a war is also keeping something alive that's true that is true but i would

00:59:31say like i would actually push back on that a little bit and say there is a role for socialization even

00:59:35in very young kids so in the book i talked about an experiment that was done by the bbc where they

00:59:40brought a bunch of toddlers into a playroom and they got these adult volunteers and they switched the

00:59:46toddlers names and outfits so they had a little girl they put her in boy clothes and gave her a

00:59:52boy's name they were trying to trick these playmate these adult playmate volunteers so took a little

00:59:57boy put him in a dress gave him a girl's name and they found that the volunteers played totally

01:00:02differently with the the i think these were two-year-olds depending on the name and the outfit and they

01:00:10sort of appraised the play differently so you know they taped these sessions and with the boy who's

01:00:17dressed as a little girl oh you know she loves the pink dolly and with the girl who's dressed as a

01:00:24little boy you know he wants to push the truck so i do think we have this way of sort of self-fulfilling

01:00:29prophecy boys and girls and so it's you know like with everything it's a mix of biology and culture

01:00:33there's some biological propensity there but we amplify it through our culture and through the

01:00:38way we socialize and i think that leads to more divergent outcomes that's like the dartmouth scar

01:00:44uh study but done on kids yeah totally kind of hilarious yeah uh what was the housework and

01:00:50cortisol research so this was work i did in my graduate training this was part of my dissertation so we looked at

01:00:58dual income couples who were followed around their homes for a week this was like a week in the life

01:01:04study of these middle class couples in la and we recorded how much time they were spending in

01:01:12common household activities so we looked at housework time leisure time child care time other kinds of

01:01:18activities i found that housework is bad for your health which i think anyone could have told you so

01:01:25the more time you spend doing housework on you know as part of a typical week the less cortisol recovery

01:01:33you have at the end of the day so we looked at the magnitude of cortisol change from the afternoon into

01:01:38the evening and you want this drop in cortisol levels at the end of the day so cortisol has a diurnal rhythm

01:01:45has kind of a circadian pattern you want to start high and you want to end low and when people were

01:01:50doing more housework in the evenings they had less of that nadir that they were hitting at bedtime

01:01:58and we also found that uh when you entered moms and dads time used together in the same model

01:02:05moms benefited in terms of their cortisol when dads were doing more housework and dads benefited when

01:02:11they had more leisure time and their partners had less leisure time so kind of a mixed bag of results

01:02:17where it's sort of you know if you're a mom you want your partner to be helping with housework

01:02:23and if you're a dad you want to be sitting back and relaxing while your partner is taking care of

01:02:27business it's a bit zero sum yeah yeah it's sort of depressing yeah yeah it is what's stress contagion

01:02:35so stress contagion is when couples influence each other's hormone levels so i found that you see

01:02:41linked cortisol levels in cohabitating couples and i've looked at this in moms and dads i've also looked

01:02:48at this in non-parent male and female couples so when one person has higher cortisol their partner has higher

01:02:56than usual cortisol as well and it seems like when the relationship quality is compromised when you have

01:03:02more conflict you have more tightly linked patterns of cortisol so people are actually increasing each

01:03:08other's stress rather than helping to balance or modulate it how do you fix that you help people

01:03:16communicate better and fight more effectively so that they can calm each other down rather than amp each

01:03:22other up right i think when you're frustrated and stressed and you have a partner who's exacerbating

01:03:27that it's very hard to recover if you have a partner who can help to talk you down and sort of balance out

01:03:34your irritated state with a calm state then you can better recover in terms of your biology

01:03:44what are the downsides of fatherhood for men well we talked about already you know weight gain um we

01:03:50talked about testosterone changes there are also increased vulnerability to mood disorders so the

01:03:58prevalence of depression in new dads is about twice that of the general population there's a lot of

01:04:04controversy about whether we call it postpartum depression in dads a lot of observed this in your

01:04:10opinion yes do dads get postpartum depression so in the book i say i think perinatal depression is a

01:04:16better word that just means around the birth of a baby okay but to me it's semantic it doesn't

01:04:22matter that much whether we call it postpartum or perinatal i think some people really are attached

01:04:26the idea of postpartum really means having given birth that's not really what the term means it just

01:04:31means occurring after the birth of a baby and the fact is that a lot of the risk factors for depression

01:04:37are shared by new moms and new dads you've got stress you've got disrupted sleep you've got

01:04:43relationship conflict you've got new responsibilities identity crisis hormone changes brain changes so

01:04:51even though you're not the person that's physically delivered an infant you are still experiencing a

01:04:57lot of the same overlapping risks what does postpartum mean so it just means after the birth of a baby

01:05:04the time after your birth of a baby yeah it doesn't necessarily mean that is a gender neutral yeah

01:05:09it's a gender neutral term it doesn't necessarily mean that you birthed the baby it just means the

01:05:13time period that falls after the birth of a baby that said i don't want to antagonize the moms who

01:05:19keep coming into my instagram uh comments to get mad at me for talking about postpartum depression

01:05:25because i understand you know what are they mad about are they mad about the fact that this is our term

01:05:30like we want it to be it needs to be like paternal postpartum depression or so it needs some sort

01:05:36of a qualifier on it it sounds to me like and i saw a bunch of comments on instagram talking about

01:05:42the same thing uh it's not about this is a term that we care about it my best reading of it right

01:05:51and this is me trying to steal man it as best i can yeah the process of childbirth for a woman is so

01:05:58arduous and traumatic and scary that any man who appears to be flippant or dismissive or to kind

01:06:08of liken the challenge that he goes through to the one that the mom goes through that is seen as being

01:06:15very callous and and it doesn't fully appreciate or understand the sacrifice of a of a mom i think

01:06:23that's the best reading of it yeah i think that's a good reading i think another piece of that that's

01:06:29me with my peaceful hat yes where's your peaceful hat you're missing that prop you need to you need a

01:06:34new prop i would say that a lot of women legitimately feel like they've had to work very hard to get

01:06:41postpartum depression recognized there's inadequate funding there's inadequate attention paid to

01:06:48reproductive health and mood disorders and moms and so if they're fighting to get access to treatment

01:06:56and to get education about their mental health they feel like how can dads just sort of show up and

01:07:03make it all about them that seems very unfair and i'm totally sympathetic to that argument i mean i

01:07:09talked to a psychotherapist who works with new dads for my book who's done a lot of advocacy for

01:07:15postpartum mental health and men and she says a lot of the women's health advocates are just like can't

01:07:20we have this one thing can't we have the postpartum period this is ours right i mean that my peaceful

01:07:26hats got taken off now that is stupid but because what you're saying is can we not

01:07:33not support men because we want women to have most of the attention you go well hang on a second are

01:07:37you most concerned about owning this area of cognitive real estate like it's some sort of

01:07:41cultural appropriation by men or do you care about the outcome of the kid and of the mom right because

01:07:47if you don't treat the mental health of the father how do you think the mom's going to feel and how do

01:07:50you think the child's going to grow up so what you're saying is you would rather be intellectually

01:07:55superior but in the real world have negative side effects like that is the outcome whether

01:08:02that's what they know or what they mean doesn't matter like it's not my job to sugarcoat the fact

01:08:08that you trying to own some area of cognitive real estate is having a negative impact on men

01:08:16that should be enough but also on mum if the men thing wasn't enough and if that's not enough on

01:08:21baby too so like not recognizing and if you did this in reverse right and this is true for a very

01:08:27very very long time there was all research was done on men it was just the male body standard inside of

01:08:32the medical industry no one said well this is cancer that's men's thing you go no this is not a

01:08:41gendered issue so i mean i've got i got a video to show you i got video from the times that you've

01:08:46probably seen that i think is very interesting and the video is interesting in the comments are way

01:08:52more interesting yeah so it's this one it's this one on tick tock jared i had postnatal depression

01:08:57yes dads can get it too in 2021 when my daughter aurelia was about a month old my wife turned to me in

01:09:04bed one morning and she asked how much do you love her i froze i kind of gritted my teeth and said

01:09:10yeah i really love her but inside i knew it wasn't there yet i struggled to bond with my baby

01:09:16felt disconnected and had growing shame that i was not being the natural father i thought i would be

01:09:22about six months into fatherhood i opened up to my wife i wanted to be a rock to chessie who had had

01:09:28a complicated pregnancy eventually i got therapy but postnatal depression was never raised it wasn't

01:09:34until aurelia was a year old that i came across an article about men's pnd that everything started to

01:09:40make sense about 10 of new dads will experience depressive symptoms during the perinatal period

01:09:46and first year of a child's life for me and my wife it was a eureka moment men are not routinely

01:09:52screened for pnd so many cases go undiagnosed i think the system is not changing quickly enough to

01:09:58offer support and spot the signs of depression in dads my bond with aurelia is now incredible and with

01:10:05new understanding and support i hope i won't suffer from pnd again but i think new dads should know they

01:10:11might not have that emotional bond straight away all right we can pause it there jared i love that

01:10:17just look at the car just press on the comments on the right hand side for me i don't think i want

01:10:20to see the comments uh matt please i already had a long day how do i make this about myself thank you

01:10:26for telling us that's tom scarvo oh matt it's not the same thing this isn't depression it's discomfort

01:10:30and uncertainty postpartum depression is linked to the dramatic hormonal changes that happen after

01:10:34childbirth such as sudden drops in estrogen progesterone not sure how this affects the father time of

01:10:38irritation 141 pm playing on my device yes however calling it postnatal depression isn't the right

01:10:43phase i think he ultimately just didn't like all the attention in the relationship shifting to the

01:10:47baby please i'm already annoyed today how can i make this about me too i feel left out is there poo in

01:10:53my airpods gosh like yeah i've been i've been fighting in the comment sections like these for a while now

01:11:00and uh you know people really come out of the woodwork to be frustrated with this kind of material

01:11:05and i think there's a gatekeeping around perinatal depression that is unfortunate because mental

01:11:12health is a family system you need the best possible team around a baby and the best predictor actually

01:11:19of mom's mental health is the support that she gets from her partner so if dad is not well

01:11:24dad is not showing up mom's mental health either i think the idea that this is a fixed pie or that it's a

01:11:31zero-sum game like there's a finite amount of resources that are going to go to a parent's mental

01:11:36health and they need to be directed solely to mom i think is really limited we need to be thinking about

01:11:42how do moms work together with dads to make sure that the baby is getting well cared for and that

01:11:48everybody's mental health needs are getting met having a zero-sum view of empathy is like one of

01:11:55the dumbest especially with something like this it's just a guy going i went through this really hard

01:12:00thing and people going no you didn't no you didn't or i went through something that was way worse than

01:12:04that yeah why are we gaslighting dads and why are we pitting dads against moms and my response to that

01:12:10is if we want to have a society where men are stepping up as parents and they're fully participating

01:12:16in caretaking they're waking up with the baby they're doing the hard parts of care we need to

01:12:21recognize that that's going to have mental health consequences it's going to be taxing it's going to

01:12:26be isolating it's going to be draining and if we really want men to participate we have to respect

01:12:32that their mental health matters too we can't guard it as though it's the sole domain of new moms because

01:12:38we want dads to act more like primary caregivers but we're not willing to accept that they're going

01:12:44to have vulnerability tied to that bingo yeah you saying the same thing in two different i would

01:12:50saying different things in the same breath which is we want dads to be fully involved but we don't

01:12:54believe that they can have the negative outcomes that other people who've been fully involved for

01:12:58all of history have right what's the rate of postnatal depression in women it's a little higher in

01:13:05new moms than is in new dads i think it's it ranges across studies but like 19 to 21 percent it's about

01:13:10about 10 percent which is nearly the same as the change in brain one percent to two and a half and

01:13:17i think important context is that women have about twice the rate of anxiety and depression in the

01:13:22general population so it tracks with that overall base rate wow that's a spicy realization yeah it could

01:13:32just be an increase in whatever your predisposition was and that dads are actually getting it at the

01:13:38same rate as mums and now that we've got more involved caregiving which is the primary enforcement

01:13:43mechanism for the change i'm gonna guess postpartum depression in fathers is mediated by the amount of

01:13:51caregiving that they do right and that's the other thing so you're telling me like that's brutal that

01:13:56any dad that's listening to this now knows the more that i care for my baby the higher my likelihood of

01:14:02getting postnatal depression is well let's keep in mind it's still a low rate and a lot of people

01:14:09experience baby blues that don't turn into full-blown debilitating depression right there's a continuum so you can

01:14:17have depressive symptoms without necessarily becoming somebody who's incapacitated by depression

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01:15:28at checkout why is there an adaptive explanation for postpartum depression in women so i actually think

01:15:36probably not i think it's more of a sign of an evolutionary cultural mismatch which is this

01:15:44going back to this idea that we as humans are cooperative breeders and we evolved to have a lot

01:15:51of support around caregiving so we evolved to trade off care to share care with people in the community

01:15:58with our kin i think we now place a lot of pressure on individual parents and on the individual nuclear

01:16:04family to serve the roles that dozens of people used to serve when there was a lot more proximity and

01:16:11people helped each other out a lot more with care so we isolate new parents we don't value their work

01:16:19we've already talked about you know the incentives of a very late capitalist society where we want people

01:16:24to be ambitious drivers and we want them to move on quickly from this interruption of birth

01:16:32and and so we're not providing the support you know in this country we don't have universal paid

01:16:37maternity leave or paternity leave so a lot of women go back to work probably before they feel like

01:16:43they're ready a lot of men do too we don't give inadequate or we don't give adequate time and protection

01:16:50and we you know we create an uphill battle where parents feel isolated and drained so

01:16:58is there any evidence of postpartum in hunter-gatherer societies not that i know of but i'm also not

01:17:04sure how well it's been tracked or measured yeah okay but i think trying to see if this mismatch hypothesis

01:17:11yeah kind of it can just be split tested across like civilizations yeah i mean i i think there's a

01:17:16really really interesting question and depression in general you know hasn't been observed as much in

01:17:22those populations so it's a really interesting question but you know in hunter-gatherer societies

01:17:29when a woman becomes a mother she becomes if anything more socially integrated into the life of the

01:17:35community in contemporary society when a woman becomes a mother she often becomes more isolated we have

01:17:41all of these public spaces that you know don't bring the baby to a wedding don't bring the baby to a

01:17:49restaurant don't bring the baby to a cafe to work people don't want to yeah to work right like a

01:17:54hunter-gatherer mom can actually still go to work she can still be wearing the baby she can function

01:18:01economically grab some berries yeah had a good day in the office she can occupy a high status social role

01:18:07and and she can be you know fully integrated into the community that's interesting so this what is

01:18:14rewarded socioeconomically at the moment specifically for women uh is not baby

01:18:22accommodating we have this kind of sharp divide between work and home which i think is a legacy of

01:18:27the industrial revolution right we before that work generally happened at home dads were around

01:18:32a lot moms were around a lot kids were raised as workers they were contributing to the family

01:18:38business the family economy jared if you brought your kid in here and they were able to write good cop if

01:18:43your eight month old was able to write good youtube copy i'd be down but i would be i would be absolutely

01:18:48fine i mean you're allowed to come as long as you contribute but yeah yeah he's trying yeah good way

01:18:54to hone those skills what i'm interested what do you think's the best advice for dads like trying to be

01:19:01great father great husband still take care of themselves while supporting a mom who's going

01:19:07through postpartum give yourself grace don't expect that it will be easy forewarned is forearmed so you

01:19:14know know that this is going to rock your world and it's going to be transformative but it's supposed

01:19:18to be transformative and i would say steer away from the myth that dads don't have any innate wiring to

01:19:26know how to take care of a baby i think we have this idea that moms are just born knowing what to do

01:19:31when a baby arrives and men are going to be helpless and useless does that help mom's postpartum i don't

01:19:36think so because i will say when i had my kids i was like what am i supposed to do with these people

01:19:41you know you have to learn and you figure it out and it's about your motivation and your willingness

01:19:46to practice more than it's about just you know having some inborn reflex that's telling you how to

01:19:54care for a child and dads have that capacity to care and to build those empathetic responsive

01:20:00caregiving brains i've got two potential hypotheses in my mind uh first one is like postpartum contagion

01:20:09i have to assume that if the mom is dealing with it it's more likely that the dad's going to deal

01:20:13with it but i wonder if level of paternal child caring decreases the likelihood of uh female postpartum

01:20:28depression yeah do we know do we know what levels of household setup can increase or decrease the

01:20:37likelihood so there is some research on this and it corroborates both of your hunches dude don't test

01:20:43me don't test me on this so you can keep the the bro science hat off yeah you don't need it um good

01:20:50instincts but there's research that depressive symptoms are correlated within moms and dads so if

01:20:57mom is more depressed dad's more likely to be depressed if dad's depressed mom's more likely to be depressed

01:21:02and if one partner is well and can support the other partner that's also a huge resilience factor that's

01:21:07a buffer so they track together yep and there's also evidence that when dads are more involved moms

01:21:14benefit so one really cool study tested a paternity leave reform program in sweden where they were

01:21:20expanding flexibility of paternity leave for dads they found that if you look at babies born right before

01:21:26and right after that policy intervention you actually see lower rates of anti-anxiety medication

01:21:33prescriptions were filled less often by the new moms so if dads have more access to leave moms actually

01:21:40show this population level mental health benefit and my lab has done similar work and we found that if

01:21:46you look at prenatal to postpartum trajectories of depressive symptoms when dads get access to paid paternity

01:21:52leave moms are less likely to get depressed after the birth of a baby so it seems like

01:21:59for postpartum depression maybe for dads as well as moms one of the key drivers is

01:22:07social integration level of social integration does that mean that if you're struggling with

01:22:12postpartum depression you should try and like turn on the the socialization taps a little bit do

01:22:18mommy daddy daycare meetup things yeah that seems like an intervention that might work exactly and

01:22:24that goes back to the evolutionary mismatch idea right we're supposed to be embedded in social

01:22:29networks that help us care for our kids we're not supposed to do it alone it's postpartum basically

01:22:34like this is a lot and i'm overwhelmed yeah i mean that's part of it yeah compounded with sleep loss

01:22:43identity challenges relationship strain money and life worries and your brain and hormones getting totally

01:22:52you know disrupted does that mean

01:22:58does that mean that there is a

01:23:02socioeconomic predictor for postpartum depression because people who are more wealthy are more likely to

01:23:08have child care which means that they have more assistance less pressure and better sleep yes dude

01:23:13yeah yes so there is a socioeconomic link between postpartum depression risk and part of it is you

01:23:21know there are moms in the u.s who go back to work less than two weeks after the birth of a baby

01:23:27so if you're a shift worker if you're a gig worker if you're at walmart you are probably not getting time to rest

01:23:33recover and bond and that's really stressful and really taxing to your ability to adjust to parenthood

01:23:40so that's part of it it's also like what are the community resources that are available to you

01:23:45can you afford support in child care but some of the best interventions for postpartum depression are

01:23:51around shoring up your social support networks so helping get people to be more proactive about asking

01:23:58for help helping to invest in your relationships and you can even do preventive intervention before a

01:24:04baby's born to say and we actually do this my lab leads psychoeducation workshops with a big

01:24:11hospital system that serves low-income new parents we say we have them make a social support map so we

01:24:18say who are you going to be able to ask for help in different domains after the baby comes you know maybe

01:24:23your older brother isn't going to be that helpful when it comes to taking the baby for a nap but he can

01:24:31help with your lawn care you know so how do you plug different people in your life into different roles

01:24:37to make sure that your social support needs are are met and we try to coach people to be more assertive

01:24:44for about asking for help because i think we're conditioned in our society to be independent agency

01:24:50yeah yeah i learned from louise perry that in uh like renaissance england there was a period called

01:25:00lying in laying in yeah where for two weeks the mother didn't move after childbirth waited on hand and

01:25:08foot yeah anything that was needed all she did was hold baby and and like feed baby and everything else

01:25:15done right the whole family comes in and and desists and you just you know you physically traumatic things

01:25:21happen to you like it just seems it seems very contrary to this like hyper speed

01:25:35productivity engine thing and it's it's kind of strange right because i my original background was a

01:25:41productivity dork um which i still have vestiges of and the way that i started the show was trying to

01:25:49learn life hacks and memorization tools and how to have a great to-do list manager and stuff like that

01:25:54because that was what i thought was real important to me and i think i always just assumed that at some

01:25:59point you become an adult and you sort of grow out of that but that really is one of the drugs of

01:26:05the 21st century this hyper optimized efficiency culture get more out and there's no reason it was

01:26:12kind of naive of me to think that oh well just when you become a parent you forget about that or you

01:26:18realize that other things are more important like my parents did my parents were never afflicted with

01:26:22productivity culture beforehand right so that's interesting and then this other story that it really

01:26:28it gets me every and i mentioned to you i just finished this silent meditation retreat so my uh heart is

01:26:34particularly tender but i i went to a meetup when i first moved to austin about four years ago and it

01:26:41was a bunch of business owners millionaires and deca millionaire like a couple of center millionaires

01:26:46in there and everyone was a founder i was by far the poorest person in the room and uh they were all

01:26:51talking about um what they were doing with their businesses and plans and i know a guy that can get

01:26:57you in at target and so on and so forth and i was like sat kind of silently the white belt at the back of the

01:27:01class and um it was a circle thing and then someone dinged the glass and said um well we'll have a

01:27:08little brainstorming session if you've got a problem that you're dealing with at the moment put your

01:27:12hand in the air there's a lot of competent people in the room we'll see if we can help you and i'm

01:27:16thinking some guy's gonna go i've got a massive problem with the irs i'm like trying to get my

01:27:19offshore accounts working but the cayman islands don't like some other stuff this guy just went his hand

01:27:25straight in the air he said my wife's six months pregnant and i don't feel anything and i'm scared

01:27:32that i'm going to be a bad dad and i'm not going to love the baby and she keeps asking me about how

01:27:37i feel and there's nothing there and i i feel so guilty and ashamed about the fact that i really want

01:27:45this and i love my wife and i want to be a good dad and i'm terrified that i'm going to be i'm

01:27:48terrified i'm going to be a bad dad i'm terrified i'm not going to be able to support her i've got guilt and

01:27:51shame her out i've got this secret i feel like i'm keeping a secret from her the room was like

01:27:58it wasn't what we were expecting one of the guys over the far side straight away went dude don't

01:28:01worry about it happened to me happens every single another dad was like every single time always

01:28:05happens wait six months it'll all be fixed like wait six months lie with it on your chest for a

01:28:10while it gave all of the dad hacks i guess i just remember thinking like fuck like this guy's in a room

01:28:17surrounded by really impressive business people and he was one too and he was competent all the rest of

01:28:22it he could have asked anything that he wanted about his business but the most salient thing in

01:28:26his entire life was the fact that he was watching his wife go through the hormonal changes that make

01:28:34a mother right pregnancy doesn't just make a baby it also makes a mother yeah but pregnancy doesn't make

01:28:39a father in the same way right right i i it makes him in some negative ways sorry the lack of sleep

01:28:45and the stress and you know you've got the pouvet syndrome or whatever it's called yeah um but it

01:28:51doesn't it doesn't prepare you in that way and then when you layer on top our ability to judge

01:28:59our own competence in these things we think well what are you judging on judging how good of a dad i think i

01:29:06might be maybe i wasn't cut out for this i wasn't a dad before yeah and i bet if you were to look at

01:29:12what could we call this like uh potential parent guilt um if you were to look at potential parent

01:29:18guilt or potential paternal guilt might be better um i bet that it doesn't happen on second kid

01:29:27yeah i think this is a common thing that i hear from expectant dads that they're terrified that they're not

01:29:34going to know what to do that they're not going to be good at it and i think we expect men to be highly

01:29:40competent you know women too but we really socialize men to be good at things and it's hard to be

01:29:48really good at taking care of a baby in the abstract because it's all about what does your particular baby

01:29:54need and how do you get to know your baby and that's individual and it depends on your time and your

01:30:00motivation and your practice but i think that idea that men are sort of flailing around really uncertain

01:30:09i talked to a guy whose whole career is talking to startup entrepreneurs in silicon valley and he

01:30:15says very similar story as yours he's talked to men who are great at all kinds of you know conquering the business world

01:30:23and yet when you get them onto the subject of their kids they're all totally worried that they don't know

01:30:30what they're doing right it's a domain where we don't have that same sense of of skill and power and

01:30:37it's harder to optimize and i would say you know you mentioned this kind of self-optimization culture and

01:30:43productivity and it's interesting if you watch the kind of like get ready with me videos or here are all

01:30:50the you know here's my regimen here are all the things i do to completely you know biohack my way to

01:30:55success frequently they're of someone who's alone and they take a lot of time and they take a lot of solitary

01:31:02activity and they're not necessarily about being connected they're not about giving to other people

01:31:09they're not about caring for someone who's vulnerable and i would say when you think about

01:31:15what makes life worth living a lot of it is about our relationship health you know that's

01:31:20what the best studies of longevity have told us that's what work on men has told us that

01:31:24you know when men are socially isolated in late life that's a real risk factor for early mortality

01:31:29so how can men get more connected well part of it is by devoting yourself to learning how to care

01:31:36for other people and so again going back to this idea of how do we reframe masculinity in more pro-social

01:31:42ways it's manly to take care of vulnerable people well i hope that when baby life does begin for me

01:31:52that everybody is ready for me to shove it down their throat for ages it's just going to be an endless and

01:31:57like a sickening barrage of fatherhood content i can't wait it's gonna be it's gonna be fantastic

01:32:02you're gonna be the new doctor becky uh that's yeah yeah yeah we'll see about that um what do you

01:32:10think is the worst advice that new dads get well we already talked about you know you can fix your

01:32:15relationship by having a baby so definitely that's very bad advice the worst advice that potential dads

01:32:21could get yeah i think other bad advice is just you know dads don't know what they're doing so keep

01:32:27your distance and i think there are these preconceptions around should we invest in paternity leave for new

01:32:34dads well dads are useless in the early months these they've got nothing to contribute and i think that

01:32:40is bad advice because as with moms dads are capable of learning and their neurobiology is going to come

01:32:47along for the ride as they learn how to take care of kids i think the other thing is we sometimes

01:32:52privilege early infancy as the sort of only time for dads to shine and i talked to richard reeves who's

01:33:01written a lot about healthy masculinity he said he thinks that men should be able to take paternity

01:33:07leave up to their kids 14th or maybe even 18th birthday yeah well there's some roles especially for

01:33:13dads with girls around puberty yeah that are more important yeah than perhaps in early life yeah and

01:33:20he told me he was a stay-at-home dad to his sons for a period when they were school age and that was a

01:33:25great experience and he loves taking his kids on trips and excursions and so i think there's a lot of

01:33:30value that dads can add at different stages along the lifespan and i think when we decide that men

01:33:36don't know what they're doing and we kind of opt them out of a key parenting role we're losing that

01:33:42opportunity and we're not giving them the windows in which to build their competence i love it dobby

01:33:48saxby ladies and gentlemen you're great i love your work i think it's fantastic it's brave to do

01:33:53this stuff and to talk about it and i think the world's a better place for having you in it so

01:33:56i appreciate you thank you a real pleasure talking to you all right goodbye everybody

01:34:01yes you did it yay fun that was great congratulations you made it to the end of a full podcast episode you

01:34:09are not so tick tock brain that you've completely dissolved into nothingness why not watch another one

01:34:16Right.

01:34:18Go on.

01:34:19Press it.

Description

Dr Darby Saxbe is a clinical psychologist, professor at USC, and author. Do dads get postpartum depression? Mothers face enormous physical and emotional changes after childbirth, but fathers can struggle too, often in silence. So what happens to men when they become dads, why does it affect some so deeply, and how can they adapt to a new life that nature has thrust upon them? Expect to learn what actually happens to dads after moms give birth, the physiological changes that happen to dads after birth, which behaviors create the effect known as “dad brain”, the biggest upsides and downsides of fatherhood for men, why postpartum depression in fathers goes unrecognized, the worst advice dads get, and much more… - Modern Wisdom Merch available this Friday at https://www.mwmerch.com/ Get 160+ lab tests for just $365 and save an extra $25 at https://functionhealth.com/modernwisdom Get a Free Sample Pack of LMNT’s most popular flavours with your first purchase at https://drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period from Shopify at https://shopify.com/modernwisdom Get 35% off your first subscription on the best supplements from Momentous at ⁠https://livemomentous.com/modernwisdom⁠ Get ChatGPT to explore ideas, solve problems, and learn faster at ⁠⁠https://chatgpt.com - 0:19 What is Dad Brain? 2:18 How Fatherhood Has Changed Over Time 8:18 What Happens to Men During Pregnancy? 12:57 Should Fathers Be in the Delivery Room? 13:47 Are Sympathetic Pregnancies Real? 15:17 What Couples Should Focus on During Pregnancy 17:56 The Real Cause of Dad Brain 24:18 The Top Behaviours That Trigger Dad Brain 31:31 Biology or Choice: What Makes a “Hands-On” Dad? 33:48 The Truth Behind the Deadbeat Dad Narrative 36:44 Can Fathers Bond at Any Age? 38:50 How Fatherhood Changes Male Hormones 46:44 Why Becoming a Father Is the Ultimate Masculine Role 50:25 Does Dad Brain Get Worse With More Kids? 53:19 How Daughters Change Fathers 1:00:48 Does Housework Ruin Cortisol Recovery? 1:03:43 Do Dads Experience Postpartum Depression? 1:15:29 Why Postpartum Depression Happens in Women 1:18:55 How to Support a Partner Through Postpartum Depression 1:31:09 The Worst Advice New Dads Hear - Get access to every episode 10 hours before YouTube by subscribing for free on Spotify - https://spoti.fi/2LSimPn or Apple Podcasts - https://apple.co/2MNqIgw Get my free Reading List of 100 life-changing books here - https://chriswillx.com/books/ Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic here - https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom - Get in touch in the comments below or head to... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact/

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