Darby Saxbe (on Dad Brain)

on Expert. I'm Dax, Randall Shepherd. I'm joined by Monica Lily Padman. - This was a big exception. As you know, UCLA and USC are rifles.

- Okay. - They're the enemy, if you went to UCLA. But I got over that so that we could host our guest, who is a professor at the University of Southern California. Clinical psychologists and tenured full professor

at the University of Southern California, Darby Saxby.

“Also my favorite name of a guest, I think we found.”

- Great name. - Every Saxby, what a fun, fun name. She has a new book out called Dad Brain, the new science of fatherhood and how it shapes men's lives. - This is really important stuff.

- Yeah, as she will tell us in this, although historically only men have been researched for medicine, which is in atrocity, mostly only women have been researched for parenthood. - Correct.

- So that's the counter-balancing disparity. And so she has studied men, thank God. And she's studied dads, and now we've learned a lot about it, and it's very exciting. - Really fascinating, chemically, like, what goes on.

- Yeah. - Dad bought, we get a scientific explanation of Dad bought it. - Oh sure, dude. - Finally.

- Please enjoy Darby. - Saxby. - Boom. (upbeat music) - Nice to meet you.

- Nice to meet you. - Nice to meet you. - Nice to meet you. - Nice to meet you. - Oh, my pleasure.

- Hi. - Hey. - Look how many items you have. - I really brought a lot of stuff. - Hi.

- Correct. - Nice to meet you. - Yeah.

- Yeah, you never know how much down time you'll have,

so I figured I could do some grading. - I think you're gonna have to. - Nice to meet you. - We're in Ohio, 'cause you know, I'm right up the street from you.

“- I think you're the guest we had to get.”

- Yes. - And were you in the shadow of Cedar Point? - Oh, of course. - Yeah. - Yeah, we're hostess Andes.

- So, so I'm from Oberlin. So it's like a small college town it's between Toledo and Cleveland. - Right. - As your sandusky.

- As his sandusky. - Yeah, yeah. - And yeah, you know your Cedar Point well. - Oh, come on. It's my religion.

- Oh, yeah. - Did you have a season's past 'cause you were so close? - You know, my parents were nerds. - So, we actually didn't go there that often, even though it's really close.

But my mom now has a house on Lake Erie. - Oh, wonderful. - And so we go every summer for like a month. And it's like one of the only things to do with the kids is take them to Cedar Point.

- How old are your kids? - There, 14 and 17. - Oh, oh. - Zeal, they run wild there. - Yeah, oh, they love it.

- She's on a stick, the cable ride. I'm so happy for them. I'm ashamed that I haven't brought my kids to Cedar Point yet. - Honestly, across my mind, I'm like,

I'm not doing a good job as a parent. - Yeah, you're failing. - Yeah.

Last year, we went to Dollywood for the first time.

- We're going in June. - You are? - Yes, so my book tour is a road trip to Dollywood. So it's a book tour college tour road trip to Dollywood. It's like a triple purpose book tour.

- Oh, this is fun. - So we're gonna drive from New York down to Tennessee. - Okay. - And stop along the way in DC, I'll do some book stuff there.

My daughter's gonna look at some colleges. - Ooh, come on, run in. - Exactly. Yeah, we're gonna go to Charlottesville, UVA, which is where my husband went.

- Great school. - Totally great school, and then we culminate at Dollywood. - This is the huge upside of being a professor. Because you have a submarine, lucky kids. Okay, so mom and dad, both doctors,

one's a surgeon, one's a... - Internist. - Okay, so as a kid, they were married to what age for you. - I was nine when they got divorced.

- Okay, how many siblings? - So I have an older half sister and then two brothers who are my full brothers. So my dad has four children all together. My mom has three.

- Okay, so when they met, he had already been married and had a child. - Exactly. - Okay, now this is very scandalous by all accounts. - Yes.

- Your mother had a patient? - Yes. - Okay, please tell us. - Yes, so she treated a patient who was dying of cancer and cancer treatment often

takes a long time and she fell in love with the patient's husband during that process. - Wow. - David.

“- And I think that was with the sort of awareness”

and consent. I don't know the full story because I was a kid. - Yeah. - And all of this happened. - This is why.

- But so they fall in love.

And my mom ultimately married David.

- Left your father for David. By the way, I have to imagine that's not an insanely and common thing in that situation. Because you are seeing a man potentially his best or worst. - Yes.

- Carrying for a dying spouse.

they're committed.

You're showing a very nice side yourself.

“- Yeah, and I think he truly did love his wife.”

- Yeah, yeah. - You know, it was tragic. So it wasn't like he was looking to move on and she just happened to be there. It was a process.

- Yeah. - How old was everyone in this situation? - So I was nine. My brother Beau was six and my brother Tom was three. - And how was your mom?

- Oh gosh. She had me when she was 31, so she was 40. - 40. - Now I'm 49, so that seems young to me. - Right, right.

- But at the time, she was super old. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Did they tell you right away what happened? - We knew that my mom was moving out.

And it was sort of a process. Like she moved to an apartment down the street. And then later that year moved across town. - Oberlin is a small small town. So across town is like two miles.

I could ride my bike between our houses. - Yeah. - And so then we did this joint custody thing. So every other week, I would switch between my mom's house and my dad's house.

But at first, my dad just got soul custody

'cause my mom was the one who laughed in the courts and Ohio were like. - Four, I'm not gonna give the kids. - The worst two women. - Yeah, yeah.

- Also were a similar age. And so I'm a child of divorce. Certainly in my neighborhood, I wanna say it was like one in every 15 houses, not half. It was still like I wasn't allowed to hang out

with certain kids 'cause they didn't like that. I had a single mom. - Yeah, like I felt like the first kid I knew whose parents were divorced. - Yeah.

- Even though, yeah, statistically it wasn't that uncommon. - How much did your dad fall into the surgeon's stereotype? 'Cause your dad's a surgeon. And there's a stereotype and we've interviewed a bunch of women. It's pretty fucking consistent.

And I'm gonna have to figure out. - So you're gonna say the stereotype is what like power, hungry. - I don't even know power hungry, but a little bit arrogant. - Yep.

- A little, I don't wanna see narcissists either wrong word, but there's this true confidence in a bit of, they feel like they've mastered something that is almost God-like. - Yes.

- Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. - I think some myopic thinking a little bit. It's crazy. So I helped my dad do surgery. We did these sort of charity trips

to the Dominican Republic when I was a teenager. And I was allowed to scrub in and kind of assist. Oh my God, I know, which is like, probably really unprofessional, actually.

I think there was one time I almost passed out. But it was the first time I'd ever saw my dad in that role. - Yeah. - And I was like, it's like a super power.

- It is. - Like you were literally cutting into a human body, saving them. And then you're moving things around. It's like a crazy whole work. - I put them back together and they work.

- Yeah, and they work. - So I was kind of blown away. - It's worthy of some confidence. - Yeah.

And I always thought my dad was a pretty humble, low-key guy.

“But in the OR, you have to be like the king.”

- Yeah. - So that's the other factor that I don't even blame them so much. Is the role is such that you are at the top of the decision-making. This is the same as a director.

Like if you've been directing movies for 25 years, guess what? You start kind of thinking everyone should value your opinion a little more than they should. It's just kind of inevitable.

- Yeah, as a professor running a lab, I work with my grad students and I'm like, they have to listen to me. - Yeah. - It's a powerful narcotic.

- Yeah, if you go home and you're like, "Oh, right, no one here gives a shit." - Oh, no, my kids could not be less impressed. - Yeah, yeah. - So if I say dad had virtually zero experience,

dad and even though he was your father, until this divorce. And he had a quite a rocky road, but he did figure it out. So just tell us what the experience was like once

my mom was out of the picture. - Yeah, and I will say that my dad having read the book thinks that he was very involved when we were little. - So in his defense.

- Sure. - And when I tried to qualify it, the book didn't make it. So, but he was, I think, an 80's dad. He was pretty hands off. He was not super involved in our daily routines, our bedtimes.

- He didn't know what time you went to school, probably, he didn't know what time your school ended. - He was doing his own thing. - Yeah, yeah. - He was going to the Masonic Lodge.

So my mom left, all of a sudden, he is the sole parent. And he had to figure a lot of stuff out. Like he made dinner for us. He cleaned the kitchen.

- He got any lunch for school. - Well, because up he packed our lunch, he actually made really good lunches. He was good at it.

“I think the meticulousness that you need to have”

where you're scrubbing in as a surgeon made him like a very natural cleaner of the kitchen. - Sure, sure, sure, yeah. - I think he kinda leaned into it. He was tracking our routines.

He was driving us to school. He became the parent. - But Andy also at moments where he like through TV sets out in the snow and stuff, right? - He had a temper.

- Yeah, yeah, yeah. - It's overwhelming. - Especially if you haven't been doing it. - Exactly. And I think he was like, what is happening here?

- His life is really falling apart. - Yeah. - And he was depressed. And, yeah, like my brother's one morning, wouldn't wake up to go to church.

And he took the TV set out of the wall

- And so it's no bad. - Yeah. - It might shock people to know how often those types of solutions cross your mind. - Yeah.

- Like when you're dead, you're just kinda like,

okay, so the problem is these iPads, easy fix.

I'll throw these fuckers in the trash. We have these impulses. I can eliminate the problem entirely. It's not the move, but I have to fight through a lot of these urges.

- Yes, I've made the threat to throw my kids phones out the window. - Yeah, yeah. - Many, many times. - Yeah, yeah.

- You then go on to get a PhD in psychology. - Yes, in clinical psych. - What's so funny is in your book, you say that all research is me search. I had never heard that term when we heard it yesterday.

- Yeah. - Oh, our Monday. - Yeah. - It is. - It is.

- Oh.

- And you guys all know that it's standard,

but I'm like, how could we have interviewed this many social scientists and not lawyers? - Two and one week, every time you interview one,

“you should be like, what's wrong with you?”

- What would you have to be like? - And someone finally said, when I asked that question, like, you don't study something on accident. - Yeah. - We're all training answers.

Some weird question, the ERC does sense childhood. - Right. - And that person said, yeah, well, all research is me search. And then you said it. So you were drawn into studying parenting.

Does it start specifically with father-in-art? Is just general parenting? - So originally transitioned into parenthood. And I was curious about couples and how they navigated relationships and roles.

And I worked on this big study at UCLA, which was called the Center for the Everyday Lives of Families, where we basically camped out in families' homes. - Oh boy. Like anthropologists?

- Yeah, and there were a bunch of anthropologists on the study team.

It's always this cool collaborative study.

And we track them around their houses. We barred this technique that you use for primate research, called scan sampling, where we were recording their movements. Like every 10 minutes, where is everybody,

what are they doing? And so we had this really cool, corpus of data and I worked with the cortisol data, which is stress hormone data to see, how are their physiological stress levels

tracking with their relationship quality and how they feel about their homes? And so that kind of got me interested in family stress. And then I wanted to kind of go to the source, which is when does a couple become like a triad,

when do they start a family, basically? And so when I had the chance to start my own lab at USC, I knew I wanted to do a transition to parenthood study. And I got interested in fathers, actually in part out of convenience,

which was that I knew I wanted to do a brain scanning component. And as a postdoc who was starting to plan this study, I was not allowed to go into the scanner because I was pregnant. So I was working on a neuroimaging study

and they were keeping me out of the neuroimaging suite. And you can scan pregnant women, but it's just like a couple layers of extra care.

“And so I was like, how am I gonna study women's brains?”

Well, why don't I scan the dots? And then as soon as I thought of that, I got really interested because I kind of dug into the research on fatherhood and there's so much--

- It's scammed. - And I got fascinated with that. - Yes, so historically, medical research has been extremely asymmetric and we've studied men, you know,

at a really high rate, to the detriment of a lot of women's health. But this is completely reversed, right? - Yeah, I think in the book it says, well, one in 10 journals on this topic

are about fathers, the rest are about mothers. - Exactly, so our parenting research, research on the parent child bond, research on the transition to parenthood, it's completely mother-centric.

- Right. - So we just don't really understand men's experiences of parenting as well. And I think there are emerging research programs that are attempting to answer these questions

and that was one reason I was excited to write the book. - Okay, so let's start with just mammals. Paul Frequent do mammals father their offspring. I mean, we should pick some terms, right, 'cause you can father off spring,

but we're gonna talk about the process of raising or being involved, so what should we call that father? - Yeah, so in the book I kept calling it hands-on fatherhood and then I was like, I'm talking about mammals,

so should it be like paws-on, fatherhood? - Okay. - You know, like, tendrils-on fatherhood depending on,

“so I guess active fatherhood is a good term, right?”

So you can sire off spring, but to be involved in their actual rearing turns out, humans are pretty unusual because we do have human fathers who are actually involved in day-to-day care. And so actually, if you look across all the species,

fish, males are primary parents, birds by parental, males do a ton of parenting, frogs, lots of male parenting. But in mammals, it's fairly unusual to have by parental. - Is that 'cause of mammary glands? Is that because we have a unique style of feeding our young?

- Exactly, which is where the term mammal comes from, right?

it's baked into the term that this is a mother-centric animal.

- Yeah. - And I mean, you do have some examples of primates and rodents where males are participating in rearing, but what makes humans unusual is the sort of flexibility.

And the fact that we raised children are in kind of collectively. And so that's called cooperative breeding or alloparanting, and that sort of our signature style of how we raise. - We only kind of see this in primates.

You see this in primates, to varying degrees, right? - Yeah. - Really social group animals, we're gonna have aunties helping, and you're gonna have wet nursing,

and you're gonna have a lot of different things. - Exactly, like a lot of shared care. So you kind of need a complex, social brain that can track who's safe. And the reason I think that style originates

is just because our babies require so much care. Like our human babies are so half baked when they emerge, and so you really need this tag team, and then fathers become really important. - Okay, so now let's talk about hunting and gathering groups

or societies, or whatever you wanna call it.

First we must point out, the vast majority of time

we've been here. For 300,000 years as a species, give or take. And agriculture comes around 16,000 years ago. So we're talking about 95% of the time, we have been here.

We live a certain way, which I think we regularly underestimate. I'm not gonna get in some debate sometimes,

“and I'm like, you have to accept that we were designed”

in why you're to function in a certain dynamic that we no longer do, and there's a ton of challenges that come with having left that design. - Right. - Rather left that context with the same design.

So let's talk about what parenting looks like for hunting and gathering groups. - Hunter gatherers live in these small sort of mobile bands of 20 to 30 people. There isn't a lot of private enclosed space.

We don't have our big houses in our backyards. So everybody is helping everybody,

and parenting looks pretty collective,

and that can include fathers. So there's all this cultural variability in how much men are doing, but in hunter gatherer societies, you sort of have these egalitarian social structures,

because you sort of don't wanna compete for resources because everything is shared, and you have some flexibility around gender roles, because women actually are bringing in, as many calories as men.

- A way, way more. There are response from like 90% of the calories. They are really important resource gathers, which is why it's funny when people are like, women shouldn't work.

They should just mother. They've been working since the beginning of time. - No, what's very weird is that they didn't work for a few hundred years. - Right, right.

- Like we have this strange blip where women sort of stayed home and were specialized to the domestic realm. - But again, they lost their whole support system, so kind of they had to.

- Yeah, so going back though to, I talked to an anthropologist who studied this hunter gatherer tribe called the Aaka, and the men are super hands-on, but the babies, they're holding babies,

“I think they're within arms reach of their babies,”

about 47% of the time. - They let a baby suckle from their nipple, that's not even giving milk. - Exactly, like you'll see a group of men hanging out and they're drinking wine and they're all holding babies.

- Cute. - You know, it's adorable. - But there's huge variation within hunting and gathering groups, so then the other one is what is it?

The King's, Spiggy, - Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's the Kip Siggas. And if you think about how much Fathering are men doing, it's like, well, how does the culture make its living? - In the Kip Siggas, which is a different tribe,

where there's this totally different style of Fathering, there are all these prohibitions against men picking up babies and interacting with babies too much in the first year after. - It's emasculating.

- It's unmannedly. - Exactly. - But how did that even evolve? - So there, the resource gathering is more risky, it's more hazardous and so you end up

just getting more specialization. - You're not bringing it to your old along on this hunt. - Exactly. So you might be involved as a father with older kids, right? You're gonna take older kids along to show them how to hunt,

but you are not carrying babies around the way the Ocar. - Well, think of the end of it. Only the males are hunting whale and other fish. And they're out in these canoes. You're not bringing one or two or three.

You're not bringing out a young boy until they're pretty self-sufficient.

“So in that case, it would make total sense that's how they would function.”

- Exactly. - I think there's a lot of dynamics that are worth thinking about from that hunting gathering. And we kind of already talked about it, but I often say, in my own experience parenting,

I feel so blessed that I studied Anthrop because many new parents talk about the moment they drive home from the hospital at the baby in the backseat and they're like, oh, Jesus, we don't know what we're doing. But I've watched hundreds of hours of video

of children and hunting and gathering societies.

A nine-year-olds in charge of 12 kids.

“Everyone's climbing a tree, many are falling out.”

People are breaking bones. They're so fucking resilient. It's crazy. If you get to see how we actually live for so long. So I kind of didn't have that panic

just 'cause I got to observe how we're really designed to do it. We're pretty resilient. - Yeah, kids are designed to, I think, be somewhat free range. - Having a parent who's on top of a kid at all times

is actually not always the best.

- Minimally, it's not how we live for most of the time. - Exactly, you got mixed-age playgroups. It's like the classic kind of configuration for how kids are learning. They're learning from their peers.

- Even if we had stayed a galletarian in sharing the parenting duties, it still would have become much, much different because to your earlier point, we lived in long houses.

There was always someone around to help. Everything was communal. And then we ultimately evolve into like single house dwelling with just two people. And even if both people had split it, which they didn't,

it would have been infinitely more stressful. There's a uniquely stressful way to rear kids, the way we do it. - Yeah, this is not how we evolved as humans. We need community support.

And yet we live in suburbs where a card dependent, we don't have our extended family nearby. We don't have those multi-generational networks. - If you knocked on your neighbor's door and any apartment, Ellie,

I need to watch my baby for three hours while I go to, they would hang on it, right? - Or you'd be like, something's wrong with them. - Yeah, who would trust me with your baby? - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

- It's a very bizarre way we're living in some regards. - It's like money driven, really. - Yeah. - I mean, that's part of why we live away from our parents, and stuff like we're gonna go chase success.

And even your house is an example of success. - Yeah, totally, it's this kind of late capitalist way to live. - Yes. - So you add a fall-brite fellowship, and you went to Spain in 2019,

and you got to kind of observe how they do parenting there. So what did you gather from them? 'Cause obviously there's huge cultural differences in how we're all doing it around the globe. So tell us a bit about different places

and how they're doing it. - Yeah, it was super fun. So my kids were pretty young when we did that. They were in 10, it was right before the pandemic. So it was good timing.

And we did the playground tour of Barcelona, just like every playground. And there were a lot of young parents out and about.

“And I think it's because like most countries,”

except for the US, there is really generous maternity and paternity leave. So your home, you have flexibility in those early years. And so the whole society just feels a little more oriented to what young kids need.

Public places are apartments on a square where you have the cafe where people are smoking and eating topas and you have the old guys on the bench,

gossiping and then there was always a place structure.

All the squares have a little place structure. So there are just a lot of public spaces for kids and so it feels more integrated. - And what were you observing about bothering there? - I would see men outside our apartment window,

pushing strollers around and hanging out with each other. And there was more of a sense I think of connectedness and a kind of society of fathers that you just don't see as much in the states

when you're kind of more isolated in your home. - What happens in Sweden? What's going on in Germany? - So my husband's sister lives in Sweden and raised her kids there.

And you've got really generous. You're a plus-long maternity leave. And you also have really affordable early child care that's high quality. So the stress level there for parents, I think looks really different.

And for fathers in particular, because you have these kind of paternity leave incentive programs that are designed to normalize and destigmatize dads taking leave.

So basically, the couple gets a certain amount of leave,

some of it is earmarked for dad. If he doesn't take it, it goes away. They lose that benefit. So a lot of men take it because that's a free benefit. - Psychification days.

- Yeah, you gotta use 'em. - Totally. So you have, it's called the latte pop-as, which is like this society of guys who are like holding the little to go come in.

- Yeah, yeah. - And just walking around cities. - The Bjorns on and stuff. - Exactly. So again, it's just like a very normalized thing

that men are gonna be very hands on, 'cause it's baked into their policy. - It is so weird 'cause I feel like even here, even when there are paternity leaves. A lot of men don't take the full thing.

- Well again, it's a masculinity. It's like your buddies that work and relate, you're like, you know, like, there's this stigma about it. - And there are studies on this that men are really reluctant and they think they're gonna get punished at work.

“And I think we still have this ideal worker idea”

that you sacrifice everything for your job. And if you take time off after a baby's born, you're a slacker. - Or minimally, you're removing yourself from advancement.

Someone else will get the account. There's a lot of different pressures. - Yeah. - Okay, so when you started studying this in your lab, we had some stereotypes, right? We had this notion that mothers are natural parents

and mothers and nurturers. And then we know all these physiological changes that happened to them, both when pregnant. We know about their hormones changing. We all accept this and know this.

And then just the general assumption is like, probably nothing happens to dad.

Even I think when we first had kids,

I was susceptible to that.

“Where I was like, I think this crime is at a different volume”

to me than it is to her. I think she has better chemistry than I have currently for this. So let's talk about first what you started finding when you would look at what happens to dad between conception and birth.

'Cause there's all these documented changes from mom. What happens to dad and that? - Period. - With mom, you can literally visibly see her body changing. Right, if it's a biological pregnancy.

And with dad, there's a lot going on under the hood. So there's research that suggests that testosterone levels drop. Oxytocin levels change hormone called prolactin changes as well. - What does prolactin do?

- You can tell from the name it promotes lactation. - Okay. - So it's very good for breastfeeding,

which obviously is not that helpful for dad.

And in men surprisingly, prolactin levels before birth seem to predict, at least this is what we found in our lab, predicted dad's kind of bonding and motivation to parent in the early postpartum period.

So we found that guys with higher prolactin levels,

“prenatally had more enjoyment of the infant postpartum,”

we're spending more time with the infant postpartum. And it's interesting because in fish, and I mentioned that fish are primary caregiver fathers, if you don't prolactin into the water, fish will start acting really paternal.

So it's actually a hormone that kind of turns on fatherhood in fish. And it turns out it might work in a similar way in humans. - Wow. Well, the testosterone thing is fascinating.

And I'd like to hear what the current theory is on why that drops to me. It seems quite obvious. It's like, you're gonna need maximum patience and minimize the aggression.

- Yeah. - All right. - Exactly. - They don't want you to squeeze them pop the baby. - Yeah, like we just don't mean a ton of testosterone.

- You don't need that grip to be exactly. - When you're scared and there's a baby crying, you know, a soul of it. Do we think that's why it lowers? - Yeah, we need high testosterone if we're competing for mates.

It will help us to be competitive, to focus on our status, to be aggressive. And it's not that useful when we have a new baby. It's not as adaptive to sustain high testosterone levels. And testosterone comes at an immune cost for the body.

So having jacked up testosterone is not that helpful to us when we're in a context that doesn't require that competition. - It doesn't really work. - Exactly. And so even in birds, you see higher testosterone

at the start of breeding season. When birds are like trying to find a chick, I mean, (laughing) a female. - That's where we got it.

- testosterone levels will drop once a male has sort of completed mating and needs to take care of hatchlings. So it's like this normative change that's occurring over the transition to fatherhood.

And then there's probably a rebound, right? And then dad maybe knocks up a new bird. But it looks like you see kind of similar patterns in humans, rats, and primates as well. So testosterone levels sort of fluctuate

with your reproductive demands and also with your reproductive strategy.

“So if you want to maximize your number of offspring,”

you probably want high T. But if you want to actually do a good job of parenting, you want lower T. - And also you're not as prone to create more progeny that you would have to then care for,

but be divided because you've just had this one. And it's almost like going out asterisk a little bit for a priming. - Right, there's like this life history theory that sort of determines when does it make sense

for our hormones to change to support our different roles? - Yeah. (upbeat music) - Stay tuned for more armed share expert. If you dare, we are supported by all state.

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- Okay, now until this book, I would have thought I was, well not terribly unique, say to get some anecdotal information, but we were one time at an ultrasound appointment at the OB in their measuring Kristen's way.

And I decided to hop on that scale and I just simply hadn't been on a scale and I think four or five months. And I just looked at it and I go, holy shit, I've gained like 20 pounds

and I didn't even notice.

That's never happened in my life

or I just gained 20 pounds without noticing. And I've talked to other dads who have done that as well. Do you observe that? What's happening there? - Totally, so dad bod is a thing. It's like this humorous trope.

- Yeah, exactly. But it's a real thing, men actually do often gain weight across the transition to fatherhood. And it kind of connects back to what we were just talking about, like that normative change in testosterone

is one of the drivers of sort of out of positive or weight changes. - Yeah, reduction of muscle mass with burning less calories so there's that element working. I was more thinking of it in a nurture context which is like cheesy and like crazy.

“So I'm just joining her like, is that what's going on?”

- You see it in primates too. So they increase in body size across a mate's pregnancy. It might be because a larger body is more imposing. They can more easily pick up offspring.

And it's also like you want some reserve in case there is scarcity.

- Right, you might have to be giving your resources to another. That's really evolutionarily, poignant, right? As I need a little buffer because I'm about to share now. - Yeah, which is true, I think for why women gain weight

right because we gain more weight than our babies are gonna weigh. Like, I was super bummed when I realized that. (laughing) - Yeah, I was like, this baby is not 35. (laughing)

- Yeah, yeah. - Where does the extra wake go? But it's like you actually need some reserve because who knows there could be a famine. - Well, and you're going to be burning 2000 extra calories

a day to produce milk in breast feet. - Exactly. - Whatever the number is, it's something very hot. - Yeah, it's a high calorie demand. So it's like your body actually has to be sort of beefed up.

So it might be that there's a similar process happening for deaths. - Yeah, yeah.

“- What other things are happening in that window before baby arrives?”

So there's the body, there's the hormonal drop. What's going on, psychological behaviorally? - So the hormones are changing. So psychologically, we can see mood disorder risk. Postpartum depression is something we think of

as like a mom only phenomenon. It can totally emerge in dads. There's evidence that new dads have about twice the prevalence of depression as just men in the general population. - Oh, wow, mom's pregnant.

- It can be before birth, it can be after birth, yeah. So it's like we call it postpartum depression, but it's really perinatal. It's like across that transition. And if you think about it, it's like a lot of the same

risk factors that moms experience like sleep deprivation, increased stress, identity, conflict, role confusion, relationships, stress, and hormone changes. It's like that perfect storm. So that's the effecting men too.

- Oh my god, the moms are going to hate this. - Yeah, they love the thinking claim, the hormone changes. - I talked to a parinatal psychologist and we actually talked about this exact thing. She said she's gotten a lot of pushback

because she's tried to get postpartum depression and men more recognized. And some of the advocacy groups are like, can't moms just have this one thing. - Right.

- And she's like, yes, but also if men are struggling, that's not great for mom exactly. - No, it's helping moms to understand that. - Yeah, it's important, yeah. - Okay, again, this is very anecdotal,

but this is what I've observed. I've seen a lot of people trying to get sober, who tell themselves, I'm gonna get sober when I have a child. And then you watch them and I've watched addiction ramp up, not decrease in a very unmanageable way

as that data approaches. It's over then, so cram it in now.

And I'll even admit that during the first pregnancy,

there is a new finality on the table that is very unique. I can't undat. It's permanent. - Yeah.

“- And I think that creates some angst and some fear”

and you feel like, oh, shit, truly now I'm an adult. I see a lot of antsy behavior in expecting fathers. - Yeah, it's like getting a face tattoo. - Yeah. - But even that, you could get me.

- It's maybe the only permanent thing. - Yeah, you're gonna be a dad for the rest of your life, no matter what now. You might not be a husband for the rest of your life, you may not have a--

- Yeah, it's a little up or not, maybe you don't raise them or whatever, but you've-- - But that created-- - Exactly, exactly. - Yeah, I think it's terrifying to a lot of men. - Yeah, it's quite a ride.

- And women, yeah, yeah, yeah, everyone's scary. - Okay, how do dads experience childbirth? - It's interesting because if you think about it, men have not been present at childbirth for most of our human history.

where human women need a lot of help,

but it hasn't typically been that the helpers have been men. And so we're kind of doing this experiment in just this last like 150 years, right? Where you have males as part of the birthing experience, either as doctors or as fathers.

And stereotypically, men were kept out of-- - Well, they would tell you don't go in there. - Yeah. - Like it's better for your marriage if you don't see that.

- Totally. - Yeah, that in the '50s. - Yeah, 50s. - So you'd see the dad is handing out cigars, right? - In the weeding room.

He meets the baby once it's been washed. - Yeah, yeah. - Yeah, her makeup's on. - Exactly. - Yeah, she's washed.

- Brush her hair, yeah.

“Seeing birth, I think really rocks a lot of dad's worlds, right?”

It's like both in, I think, really good ways and also in ways that can be hard

because it's this powerful experience.

There's nothing like it. It can be scary for mom. It can be scary for dad. Things can go wrong. Things can also go beautifully well.

- So there's just a lot of variability. - There's a very heightened experience. It increasingly people have emergency c-sections, which is the way it happens, certainly in LA. It's like almost every one you meet with children

on our age. It's the same story. It's like I was in labor for 14 hours, the heart rate crash emergency. - So that was my experience, right?

I'm not only seeing that, I'm also seeing my wife get operated on. I saw my wife opened up in her organs. (laughs) And it's like whoa, whoa, whoa.

- Yeah. - You're fine, I'd say the beauty of it, and I just want to flag, I'm just gonna tell my real experience, I'm really paranoid, it's gonna sound like virtue signaling,

like I'm an ideal.

“I don't want that to be, I'm just gonna tell you the truth.”

- Yeah. - The amount of respect and admiration you have for your wife when you see what they go through. In my opinion, it's not to be missed. - You go whoa, whoa, whoa.

Well, first of all, you might have the moment I had, which is like, you're so afraid you're gonna lose her. So that's its own experience. And then to see what they go through, you're gonna minimally be grateful

to that person for the rest of your life, because they went through that for this thing you love. It's very powerful.

- Yeah, it is very powerful.

My first birth was pretty straightforward, but the second one, I lost a lot of blood, it got complicated, and my husband was terrified. And I still hold that against our son, you know, every song.

- You should, you should. (laughing) - I couldn't hear room. - If he was in Nobel Peace Prize, you'd be like, okay, you're now even.

- That's right. - And you're just now even, you're out of the hole. - Yes, you've made up the dead. - Okay, so once the baby's there, that's brain changes.

- We, in our lab, scanned men, whose partner was midway through pregnancy, we then scanned them in again about six months after birth. And we found that men's brains were losing in gray matter volume, which is probably reflecting

a process of streamlining and pruning and becoming more efficient. - Yeah, it sounds kind of current too, 'cause mom's brain shrinks too. That's a little more well documented.

And you think, oh, my brain shrinks was like, no, but weirdly is working more efficiently now. - Exactly. And the brain shrinks at other windows in the lifespan too. So in early childhood, we're in this kind of stage

of lots of exploration and tons of inputs. And then as the child kind of gets ready for school age, the brain is actually losing gray matter volume, and it's becoming more streamlined and kind of can'tylized along certain pathways.

- So it reflects the process of learning. It's like you're consolidating. - It's almost like if you think about refining a product in engineer, one of their main tasks is like which of these components is redundant.

I can get rid of. Your whole goal is to keep getting at smaller and smaller

“and I guess that's what's happening in your brain.”

- Yeah, exactly. You want an efficient brain. And the parts of the brain that seem to shrink are the social cognition regions, which are linked with empathy, responsive care giving.

So that sort of supports the theory that it's not like a deficit model. Something isn't getting taken away, but it's rather this adaptive plasticity. - You presumably have sample groups,

or it's like there's varying levels of participation. Are you seeing more shrinkage increase participation? What's happening there? - Yeah, exactly. So as men are spending more time with babies,

we see more gray matter volume decrease. So it was the men in our study who said, they wanted to take more time off after birth. They were spending more day to day time with infants. They told us they enjoyed interacting more with infants.

They had stronger bonding with the babies even before birth. And then they had stronger bonding after birth. Those were the dads that seemed to show the greatest changes,

like the greatest reductions in gray matter volume. So those dads looked the most like previous studies that have focused on moms transitioning to parenthood. As men engage in parenthood, they're kind of building this parenting brain.

- I just love how flexible the human is. - I know, yeah. - It's really wild. And if he doesn't do that,

to do whatever occupation he's doing.

- We often think of the brain as like this fixed organ, but it is reshaped by our social experiences. And parenthood is one example of a window of plasticity where we wanna brain that can mold itself to serve the functions of a parent.

- You have this incredibly new and novel experience we're all having. - Yeah, the kind of goes against this idea that women are natural nurturers. That's why I think you say we debate,

but I'm saying this. I think anyone can be a nurturer. - Oh yeah, yeah, I agree. - I don't want men. - And that's exactly one of the reasons

I wanted to write this book because we sort of assume like women are built exactly parent instinctively. And it's really the opposite, it's, as we engage in parenting, we learn and then we sort of build a neurobiology that supports that.

- Yeah. - Yeah, humans are built to nerds. - Exactly. - Exactly. - We all have this sort of parenting brain

that's ready to go when we are ready to deploy it. - What happens to dad's hormones in a month's baby has a ride? It's a continuation of that lowered testosterone and so on? - Yeah.

- And you have a B for the oxytocin, yeah. Lay out your oxytocin. - I love it and I hate it. - Okay, tell us. - And it's because the research literature is a mess

on oxytocin because it's super hard to sample it well. So you've probably heard, it's the cuddle hormone, it's the love hormone. - Women get a dump of it after an orgasm. - Yeah, exactly.

If you hug for 20 seconds, you get a really bad massage. - And all of that has a grain of truth, but it's hard to sample it because by the time it gets to your bloodstream, it's already moved on. Like it's an organ that's active in the brain.

So if you really want to sample it accurately,

“you need to take cerebral spinal fluid, which, you know,”

not agree with it. - No one wants to come into the lab and do a spinal tap. It's hard to sample it accurately and then the way that you assay it in the lab, this gets kind of in the weeds,

but there are different ways to look at it

and those ways don't always track well with each other.

- I think another fairway to also look at it is, we really have only diagnosed, I don't know, six neuro-transmitter, like we only have a chemistry set of five, six hormones. And we have behavior that's in the tens of billions

of permeations. So at best you're looking at some ratio of many different hormones acting in concert to produce an outcome, right? - Yeah.

- We're so attracted to a singular cause. We'll go boom, that's it dopamine. It's causing all this. Well, it's like in conjunction with a lot of things, right? - Exactly.

We are filled with all these different inputs. And we sort of glorify oxytocinore off in here as a cortisol research. People say, "My cortisol is too high. I have to treat my cortisol."

It's like, "No, you want a high cortisol in certain contexts."

“And I think this is true with testosterone too.”

You want to be flexible. You want to have a biology that can adapt to your context. And so there's no such thing as overly high this or overly low that, it's like, how flexible are you? - Yeah, I think what they mean is that this system

has been hijacked, which does happen all the time. In your cortisol levels are responding as if you're being chased by colion, but you have a deadline, dude. You know, there's some hijacking of the system. - Yeah, because we live in these complex worlds

that don't reflect what we need to survive.

When I teach this to my undergrads, I always say,

"If I'm having a fight or a fight response "because I'm stuck in traffic, what am I gonna do "like run across the freeway, not adaptive?" So it's like having all the blood go to my large muscles. - Yes, yes.

- It's not helping. - You hit your brain pedal extra hard. - Yeah, yeah, it makes me yell at the other drivers, but that's not super adaptive either. - Right.

But the cortisol is not the problem. It's the situation that hijacked the cortisol response. - Right, it's our interpretation.

“- With that said, what's happening to Dad's cortisol?”

- Yeah. - The babies are right. - So the cortisol literature also a bit of a mixed bag. Some studies find higher cortisol and new Dad's. Some studies find lower cortisol.

It's very situational. But we do know, and I found this in my lab, that hormones like cortisol prolactic and testosterone track within couples. So it may be that dads are kind of in training

with a pregnant partner or with a new mom to sort of help jump start their own process of whether it's neurobiological remodeling or behavioral repertoire. It's like there's something about proximity to that.

- There's a mirroring, right? - Yeah. - Dad's and moms hormones are fluctuating if not at the same levels in the same patternish. - Exactly.

So there's like a synchrony within cohabiting couples. - Which is dangerous and beneficial. - Right, and actually I've found that when cortisol patterns get too strongly linked to that's a risk factor that makes couples report more dissatisfaction.

their cortisol at all times, probably. - Yeah, you need to be balancing. - I feel very blessed in that we read this. So we got this book Brain Rules for Babies

in anticipation of our first child arriving

and it may be the introduction. It says quite starkly, I'll forget the number, but it was either 60 or 70%. A child will make 60 or 70% of relationships worse. That is the data, right?

And I was like, just helpful to know. Going into this, this isn't gonna make us happier with one another per se. Odds are it's gonna make us less satisfied with our relationship.

So like, it got to be extra aware of that high probability. So let's talk about what you call the parenting crisis. - I often say to people like, if you think that having a baby will save your relationship, that idea, right?

If anything, it's gonna make it harder. - It's gonna shine a magnifying glass. - Exactly. This was true for my husband and I like you go from being fun time friends who can go catch a movie,

you're going to eat to like you're running a small business. And your product is the care and feeding of your baby.

- It's the most important product of all time.

“- But you have to strategize and trade off”

and in the middle of the night, maybe neither of you feels like getting up. There is so much more of a breeding ground for conflict when you're both tired. You're both kind of figuring out these new identities.

You don't really have the same opportunities for fun. So it is a real challenge for a lot of couples. - Yeah, it even adds to it's like the general pattern. There's lots of exceptions, but also you've probably chosen to have a child

at the moment where you felt most stable and kind of financially sorted and all these other things you were waiting to gel before you commit to that. So it's like you're probably going

from the high water mark of the relationship. - For Kristen, I was like, oh, we're starting to travel, financially, we're good. This is going to be a huge swing. - Yeah, and you're like, how can I screw this up?

- Yeah, let's see if we get a fuck this whole thing out. - This is just what my husband and I got to a place where our kids were older and could take care of themselves. We started getting pets. - Uh-uh.

- Oh, you're like, you're just eating. - Oh my God. Why do we have more things to take care of? - Have there been any studies? This would be so interesting.

Studies of couples where the father is not the biological. - Yeah, they still experience all these hormonal changes and things like that. - Totally. - Yeah, so I talk about there's one study

where they looked at adoptive parents and it was gay male couples who would adopt it a baby and then they compared them to heterosexual couples. - With adopted children.

“- I think they were all biological parents.”

- Okay, great. - Yeah, you had this adoptive sample. And they had in the heterosexual couples like a primary caregiver and a secondary caregiver.

I think they basically treated mom as primary data secondary.

And then in the gay male couples, they said, who's the primary caregiver? Who's the secondary caregiver? And what was cool was that the primary caregiver gay male dads looked just like moms.

If you looked at their brain responses to baby. And the secondary caregiver dads looked like heterosexual, they were. - So it kinda shows you how, again, adaptable, the brain can be, right?

- But men can build these primary caregiver brains. - Yeah. - Okay, so part of this crisis in you said is like, you have this whole new list of chores. So when you're observing outcomes,

is this crisis less or more when things are split more equitably? - Yeah, so it seems like couples fare better when they have a more egalitarian balance. But what's interesting is that parents are pretty bad for dictators of what that's gonna look like.

We did a study where we brought couples into the lab. These were the couples in our longitudinal sample.

“And we said, what's your plan for splitting up baby care?”

We gave them a worksheet. We asked them to sort of estimate on a scale for each of 10 different baby care tasks. And then we brought them back six months after birth and said, well, who's doing what?

And in every case, they had overestimated how much dad was gonna do before birth. And I guess too, did they even agree about how much mom and dad were doing when asked six months later?

- Dad thought that he was gonna do more. And then after birth, he thought that he was doing more. - That's right, yeah. - So dad's sort of estimating a higher contribution at both time points.

But the couple was also just overestimating how much of an even split they were gonna achieve. - Yes, so this is tricky. And I think it's like it's so generational, right? So when I compare my parenting to my fathers,

I mean, A, he split when I was three, but even when he was there for my brother up till eight, I'm doing a thousand acts of what he did. It's really hard to quantify what's happening.

like my goals were like, I wanna do half the feedings.

So at night, we both have to wake up four times. I wanted to do two of those diapers. I was helping on every other one, I'm gonna do it. There's some aspect that kids do go to mom. There is something primitive going on

that needs to be acknowledged, even though I'm very progressive and I want to list to happen. There's some realities to once you have a kid. It's like, we were both present nonstop,

but in the car, Linko would be like, Mama, yes, honey. Mama, Yahan, Mama, she just loves saying Mama over and over again. There is a pull on mom, even if all the chores are split evenly. There's an emotional drain that is really hard to write size.

“Yes, and I think it's hard to optimize a balance ahead of time.”

We were not surprised, actually, that mom's ended up doing more after birth.

Because there are a lot of reasons for that. If she's breastfeeding, the baby gets more comfortable with her early on. Mom's also have this head start of pregnancy to kind of develop that bond. And moms may even just have more time off from work. And so moms themselves may want to be the primary parent.

It doesn't necessarily mean that there's something wrong. But we did find that the more dads were doing, the happier they actually were with parenting. So dads who were participating more had lower parenting stress, and moms had better relationships satisfaction.

Yeah, this is where I'll say that there's a go against any fear. I have a virtue signaling. I reverse engineered selfishly why I wanted to do in my mind half. I didn't do half. I'm sure I didn't do half.

And I'm sure I overestimated what I did, and I'm sure she has a better account of what I did. But my reasoning was, I'm very opinionated. I care a lot about what decisions we make about the school and the sleep schedule and all the stuff. I can't sit idly by and just have my partner make all those decisions.

It felt very important. And I knew I needed to earn my seat at the table. I'm like there's no way I can blow in at night and kiss them good night

“and then tell them what approach I think we need to use because she'll go bullshit.”

You don't even know of them. You don't know what they're like. They melt down over this. And so I just selfishly very much wanted to make decisions together. And I just knew you don't get that right if you're sitting it out.

So that would be my call to dad. It's like if you want to say in this, you got to fucking earn the say. Yeah, and I think a lot of men increasingly, because you flagged a really important thing when you said you're doing so much more

than your dad did or then your grandfather did. Contemporary men are doing way more hands-on child care than men of previous generations of US. And I think men themselves, if you say what are the most meaningful things you do in your life. Being a parent is up there and it's a similar number of men will rate that as their highest priority as women. Yeah, yeah.

So it's also like not only demand want to be involved, it's like there's a value. A pride, yeah. Yeah. I know we live in LA and we send our kids to a charter school. It's pretty progressive.

But and I might be mis-evaluating it, but I do drop off every morning. And if it's not 50, 50, it's probably 30, 70. There's dads everywhere.

But when I was a kid in elementary school, I never saw a child's dad once in my life.

You know, let's mama's in the house, middle or something. So relative, I can a little bit understand why you guys of this generation are overestimating. Our output is like it's so drastically different.

“Well, women are also working so much more that you have to decide who's taking the kid to school.”

It's not a given, but my parents both work. So it was a split. Whoever could do it often was my dad because she also was gone. So I think as women have become much more in upred winter position, it's helped with a lot of this egalitarian nature of parenting.

Yeah, exactly. It's the thing happen when I was home in Georgia. I was with all my friends. They all of kids. Last weekend.

Yeah, last weekend. All the kids were running around. And these two, their dad and their mom were sitting next to each other. They came up to the table and said, Mom, can dad take us to the grocery store? And I started laughing so hard.

And even he said, why aren't you just asking me? He was sitting right next to her. It was so funny. That was the instinct it was to ask mom's permission. It's been really sad to learn that's the default.

Yeah, a lot of the time. Well, also it might be game theory, right? So they know mom says, yes, more than dad, if they ask dad to go to the store. He's going to say, no, but if they ask mom, they're used to getting a yes. So maybe mom will be able to get dad to say, yes, there's a lot of strategy going on.

Yeah, maybe if they were separated. But the fact that they're right next to each other, it was such a stark. Yeah, like clearly, that's the person that's right. But in our house, we have domains, right? There's stuff that's no problem for me to say no to.

There's stuff for her that's no problem to say no. And they just know if they want this thing, they go to me.

Yeah, they're clever, little monkey.

They know who to ask. Yeah, my kids know who to ask for takeout. That's good as much more likely to order.

“Are there ideal roles for dad in regards to parenting?”

I'm thinking about play and sports. And I know for my girls like wrestling, they just love to wrestle me. Mom did not want to fight and wrestle. I love to wrestle. Are there roles that we are more geared to take on?

Yeah, the kind of rough housing parent, the play parent. So dads do a lot of what's called proprioceptive touch, which is like moving babies around in space, ready for moving a child around, like picking them up, throw a little baby there, chasing them, tickling them. And so there's a lot of evidence that dads just gravitate to that style of play.

And that style of play is really rewarding for kids. Kids seek it out, they benefit from it, it builds their confidence, it builds their risk tolerance. Their balance, their agility. Yeah, and I think the sports dad is kind of a continuation of that. It's a domain that a lot of dads feel comfortable, kind of having mastery of.

Yeah, I think we always get into these murky waters of what we're supposed to be doing

versus what kind of yields better outcomes. Are there domains that are best served by mom or dad? I mean, plays one of them, but can you think of others?

“Yeah, and I think even with play, like I'm always careful to not be too gender-essentialist, right?”

Because there are totally moms that love to wrestle in our physical, and there are totally dads that are the more cerebral parent or the more affectionate parent. But I think what works best for kids is when each parent has their own relationship. And the kid gets exposed to different styles, right? You can have a really secure attachment to more than one parent.

And the research suggests that dads and moms don't actually have dramatically different levels of attachment to their kids. So it's healthy for kids to realize there are safe secure caregivers that I can depend on.

And if this person isn't available, I can go to this person.

Sometimes that's a child-care provider, sometimes that's mom or grandparents or a dad. Different people have their own style, and kids again learn to be adaptable. They learn to be flexible. But there's no dead end streets or are there, and we're just afraid to admit that. Like what would a dead end street be?

I don't know. I just think of this imperative someone said, and it's just proven to be true,

“which is like, you should not teach your kids to do stuff.”

If you want to take them skiing, bring in an outsider. They don't do well listening to you for that kind of thing. Or if you want to teach them piano lessons, get someone else that doesn't have all this murky. So I just wonder if we're trying to encourage men or women to do things that like, it's not really going to bear the outcome we want.

Yeah, I do think because we don't have the collective network of caregivers that maybe we evolve to have a lot of pressure is on mom and dad, the nuclear family. And they're trying to play all roles in a kid's life. And I think as to whether parents can be good teachers, I know for my kids definitely not. They don't want to listen to me.

My son is in a phase where he wants to make hip-hop beats all day long. My husband is a music producer. And you think, yeah, it's like, you know, dad does this for a living. He could advise on your beats, like, no interest. I think it's good for kids to have their own things.

Again, a brand new concept with the exception of when someone's partner died. The step parent is like an entirely new construct. Stay tuned for our share expert if you dare. You yourself had a kind of a fun arc with Dave that I'd like to hear about. And tell me what the role of a step parent is a father.

I've had only bad ex, well, the last one was good, but I've had really bad experiences. Yeah, I had a sort of bad experience that became good. I did not want my parents to get divorced, I blamed my step father. And we had a really combat of relationship when I was a teenager. Lots of fighting tears yelling and he was a really good cook.

So that was actually one thing that helped me forge a connection with him. But beyond that, if you would ask me when I was like a 14 year old, I would have said my step dad sucks. And it was really only as I got older that I appreciated. He was a poet, he was a writer, he was a translator, he was an English professor.

At Oberlin where I grew up and was this like source of wisdom,

It sounds like the antithesis of your father who's a surgeon in many ways. Yeah, different vibes.

“And I think I got a lot from both of those relationships.”

When I became an academic, it was partially because I had seen David. I mean, basically his job just seemed fun. He could come home early after teaching a class and play Nintendo baseball. And he just seemed like he had a really chill job.

And my parents were always working.

So I was like, well, obviously being a professor is great. Yeah, that's my plan. Yeah, I think you're right. I think I was like, I know how hard it would have been to get there. But now it's great, but he really inspired me.

I think I learned a lot from him. It's a tough role. It's totally hard. You both don't want to supplant the parent, but then also you are acting as a parent. So it's just a breeding ground.

You're like a vegetable substitute teacher. Yeah, totally.

But there rewards for stepfathers.

Do we observe those? Then the same way we see the biological fathers?

“Yeah, I think our framing around stepparent head has been so negative that people see”

the bad stepfather, the bad stepmother, and even in fairy tales like the evil stepmother. And if you look at the research, a lot of kids who grow up with stepparents say this relationship is really valuable. And so to whatever extent a real bond can form, it can serve a lot of the same positive functions that a biological parent bond can form, right?

Like we don't need to be biologically related to a kid in order to take care of a kid. That kind of goes with the whole out-of-parenting idea. We evolve to sort of know how to take care of each other. And that could be through adoption, through stepparenthood, or through biological parenthood. Tell me how fatherhood would best be seen as a public good.

How would we all benefit from that? The more we can kind of empower men to participate fully in care, the more we can value care as something that isn't just the domain of one gender. That requires some investment.

“I think it requires really smart policy.”

And it requires kind of cultural change, right, to kind of see men as natural caregivers. I think it's interesting. We're living in this era where it feels like there's a resurgence of neo-traditional gender roles. The Tradwife and the sort of breadwinner male to me that runs a little counter to our evolutionary history, which is about flexibility and not about getting locked in.

To this is the job of moms and this is the job of dads. So I really think that if we were a society that really valued the welfare of young kids, we would be a society that champions fathers. Not to the exclusion of mothers, but fathers are really important for mothers well-being too. And we would be a society that really puts its resources into how do we nurture

the next generation of humans. Do we have any proof of concept elsewhere that we can say this is a worthy investment that yields some kind of a result we all want or benefit from? Yeah, definitely. Because you're an employer and you don't have kids, you don't care about kids and you're anything about kids. I can see that being a tough sell unless we have

some data that would say somehow the whole tide lives. But yeah, what do we have to demonstrate? The research is finding that when companies have parental leave, paternity leave, it's good for retention, it's good for employee well-being. It's actually unfortunate just in the last few weeks there have been some headlines that some big companies are actually cutting their parental leave programs. Sort of a cost-cutting

thing. But it's really good for worker loyalty and for worker productivity. And then we have these international models where we have more generously lives in other countries and you do see that as dads are getting more access to federally funded paid paternity leave, they're getting more involved, it's better for the couple relationship, it's better for mom's health outcomes, it's better for the kids health outcomes,

and it's better for the father himself. Yeah, so let's talk about the fun benefits, the kind of long-term impact that fathering has on men. In the short-term, right, you're losing gray matter volume, your hormones are changing, it's the set of challenges. In the long-term, the evidence is that becoming a parent is neuroprotective. So work on both fathers and mothers finds that if you look at how the brain is aging, you have markers of a younger looking brain

when you have children. And so these are big scan studies that look at thousands of people in

later life, and they find you can use like a computer machine learning algorithm to basically

gauge the age of a brain, and people's brains look younger relative to chronological age if they are parents. And you see that for fathers as well as for mothers, which tells me it's not

also know from longitudinal work that the quality of a man's relationships is what's really

important for his health and well-being in life. They're meant to be lonely. Yes, right. Men are at risk for social isolation, which we know is a factor in all-cause mortality. Morrison's muggy? Yep, it is super bad for you, and we know this from the longest-running longitudinal study, which was done at Harvard, they recruited men who were undergrads, and a comparison sample of inner-city Boston teens. They followed them through the ends of their

lives and are now following their grandkids, so this is like a hundred-year study. And they found that more than your income, your job prestige, it was the quality of your relationships with people

“close to you that predicted a longer healthier life. So the more I think we can encourage men to”

invest in relationships, the more we can benefit their health. We have this manosphere idea

that men need to be making lots of money, dating lots of women. Driving lots of Lamborghini. Lots of Lamborghinis, that is not really what's good for men or anyone or for society. Well, let's try it out before we decide. I guess it's worth a shot. I'm trying it. How many Lamborghinis can you drive? Exactly. One study that came out that made headlines last year that thrilled me to know end was this impact on men having daughters specifically. Are you

aware this one? It's cumulative as well. And so on average, it was like 1.7 years longer of man lives per daughter and there doesn't seem to be an end of that. So if the man has five

daughters, he's looking at like eight and a half years extra life. Yeah. Well, I think it's

that social connection. Do you have a support system in later life? Do you feel like you're part of a community? And we know that that is so important for human health. Yeah, this would

“definitely be kind of more of a psychological analysis of it. But I think men interacting with”

little girls allows them to embrace a whole side of themselves that has been excluded to them. Yeah. For a lack of a better word, the sweetness of the exchange has to be restorative. It's just such a beautiful feeling. I could cry thinking about like just what my little girls give me, what they allow me to experience. I don't know where else I go get that. Right. We don't really let men have a lot of variability in how they express themselves. We have very strong opinions,

culturally, about what makes a man masculine. And dressing up like a princess and doing a tea party, usually it's not part of that. But I think a lot of men enjoy playing with different sides of themselves. Yeah. And that's totally healthy and fun. I also think when you have a son in your man in this country in 2026, you still have this notion like I've got a tough in this kid up. Right. Like that's my role here is to present him to the world capable of taking on any challengers.

That's not the funnest way to parent. Like making a kid tough and then feel good, known in joys it. Whereas you don't walk in with that ridiculous notion with your daughter, I have to make them both savvy and aware of the world. But I don't think they need to punch other guys out at the bar at any point. You know, let's hope not. Yeah, tell a coworker to fuck up. Like all these things we think we have to pass on to men that we don't necessarily

think we have to pass on the girls. Right. Like we're a tough on our sons in a way that we're not.

“I think we can lead to the end of it. It's good. It's good. It's good.”

Please go to a playground and watch how parents handle boys versus girls. There's a lot more grabbing them by the yarn. We're still pretty rough on boys. Boys need a lot of love and care and nurturing. Maybe the most. Yeah, maybe the most. Yeah, they're instinct is to smash everything with a stick. You got to be like extra on them to show them a different way. I just want to finish on this because I write your New York Times article that I really really liked. It was just kind of a

general call to ignore your kids to some degree. So just tell us a little bit about what's happening and what we could adopt maybe from honey and gathering. Yeah, totally. And the idea for that uped came actually from research for the dad brain book, which was that I was interviewing this guy Barry Hulid, who was the anthropologist that studies the hunter gatherer of fathers. And he was just telling me about childhood in this society. The model of parenting is just different because it's

about learning less through direct instruction like you're in a classroom and more about modeling, like you're following adults around and you're emulating what they do. And I think we've got it

our lives that are molded around their interests. We're taking our kids to tons of activities,

we're putting our kids in special classes. Kids actually aren't getting the opportunity to watch adults work. Our jobs are so atomized and hard for kids to grasp because they're happening on screens that kids aren't moving around the adult world very often with the sense of cares what I can imitate and what I can be. So my argument was that parents should just do boring things with kids because actually it's good for kids to learn how to be patient and watch other

people and maybe that means taking them on social calls or to the gym or to the bank. I remember going to the hardware store for my parents as a kid before it out of my mind. So you know talking to a neighbor, you make stuck with your mom talking to the neighbor. How do a person? When is this going to end?

Yes, like having tea with the 90-year-old woman down the street, having to sit there, that's how you

learn how to talk to other people, how to take turns at a conversation and so everything is crafted around the kid. How are you not going to produce an narcissist? If you were the center of the world literally and then you leave the house and you find out very abruptly, oh no, you're not the center

“of the world. You have to join other people's worlds. Right. That's how it works. That's how it works.”

Better for kids to learn how to go along with a group, how to be an observer, how to integrate yourself. And I think we sort of do try to create these kids who just the whole universe is revolving around them and it's not normal in the grand scope of human history. No. And despite being a parent who, as I wrote in that op-ed, things that parents should let their kids chill out. I somehow

have gotten sucked into the team sports baseball club team. Well, it's a good idea. Thank you.

Yeah. And it's like my husband's thinking he loves it. He plays baseball. He's a coach. I got no problem with someone whose kid desires to do something and you support that. That's not my issue at all. My issue is the kid doesn't like soccer. I have the people there. I see it. When our kids were in soccer, ours hated it. And then I have the other kids hate it. I'm like, what do we all do? Why are we insisting that this is something that has to be done? No one

years enjoying this. Is that for the ones that are into it? Yeah. Now, but then that becomes a finish what you start. I mean, there's so many layers to all of this. I do think a lot of kids are like, I want to play soccer. Johnny's playing soccer. We're going to do it together. They start and they're like, I hate it. But I do see a value and well, you're a part of this team. And you got to see this through. You don't ever have to do this again. But we're seeing it through.

“I, I understand. That's how we handle it all. We just didn't come back for the second.”

Yeah. That's fine. But it's like, team sports are real. They teach you things. And they teach you that. You've committed to this. But we had a great expert on mind when a child had psychologist who was saying, it's also important to figure out what it is your kid likes about it. Because you could not be diagnosing the right thing. Like a lot of kids at like soccer, they like being outside. Or they like being with friends. It might not be soccer they like.

You got to actually figure out what is the thing that they are craving. It might not be the obvious thing. Yeah. And another cultural context that could just be them running wild with band of kids. That's right. It's members and some males. Yeah. So all that stuff. Well, Darby. This has been delightful. This is a great book. I'm really glad you're studying this. I think to your point, the more we appreciate that the ads are designed to do this, too. I think that'll help further

an expectation that they should do it. I can't see an outcome that's worse with dads being more and more involved in taking on more things. And feeling like no, they're designed to as well.

“I agree. I think does can feel empowered that they actually do know what they're doing and can learn.”

Okay. So the book is called Dad Brain, the New Science of Fatherhood and how it shapes men's lives. Thank you so much for coming in. And I look forward to reading all the work you do in the future. Thanks. This was super fun. Hi there. This is Hermy and Hermy. You like that. You're going to love the fact that Miss Morgan. Cute, sure. Thank you. I'm wearing one of our new merch items. It's very cute.

It's so cute. It's like a butter, like a very light yellow. Mm-hmm. And it has a really cute craft. It's very 80s. Yeah. It has like the 80s graphic. And it fits really well. I really like the fit on it. It's got a nice, nice fit. Kind of cropped. Not really, but just yeah. I think it's a little strongkin. Yeah. No. It's very cute. It's so crazy happening yesterday night. For both of us, you don't even know yet. Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah. This is going to be a, no, you go.

Because as I didn't even know this, they got more of unfold. Wow. Yeah. There was a huge crash.

you, I'd made dinner. So it felt like this was coming from the kitchen. Mm-hmm.

“And it was a enormous crash. And did you think at any moment there had been a vehicle crash”

outside your house? No. No. It was definitely in my house. Okay. Yeah. It just was so loud and thunderous. Yes. And then I went out there and there's a full mirror in my bathroom. Like, size of the whole wall. Size of the entire wall mirror completely crashed all over the ground. I didn't say it last night, but there's got to be a couple hundred years of bad luck. I mean, that's a, that's an enormous mirror. If one little mirror, that's a crazy thing to say to me.

That was again. I was like, oh, there's so many broken shots. There's so much broken mirror. Yeah.

So that sucked. Uh, it's because right, you had to sink a temporary sink. A temporary sink.

I had a temporary sink in and they had taken it out yesterday to put in the new, the real sink prepared for that like today or tomorrow or Monday or whatever. And that sink was the underestimated how much that sink was holding up the mirror. Okay. I have a really interesting pickle. Hmm. I have to go really quickly to sign something. Okay. Is that okay? No.

“Or I will fit. Yeah. I didn't have to sign it actually. What are you doing at?”

But I caught him. What was it? A DHL package. But what was in the package? Boots that I got from an auction. Oh, okay. You were involved in a boot auction. Well, I went to Lake's auction. I did all right. All right. And I went these boots. I just got delivered. And you normally have to sign for DHL. Yeah. They are strict about that. But you're not necessarily running. He was already in this. The ban was on. Oh. How did you do this? You were waiting

your arms. Yeah. You were like, I am here. I can't say anything. I didn't even need anything. I left it at the door. Yeah. So I had spent delivered. Yeah. I don't want to interact with you. It's already delivered. Yeah. So that was. Okay. Back to your mirror. Oh, yeah. You took it really well. Yeah. Oh, I as I said, I'm privileged. Uh-huh. I'm very privileged. Yeah. Because I

will first I called our accident. My dad built my uncle Joe. And I said, well,

“this just happened. Um, I think must have been doing more than.”

Into the water. Exactly. And uh, Bill called, you're just like, oh my god. You know, he was very, sorry and Joe and same with Joe. Um, and I was just laughing. Yeah. Good. It just really, but again, that is very privileged. I mean, at first I looked at it and I was like, oh, what, how do I do that? How do I clean this up? Exactly. You know, you're, you're in the sweet spot of the just finish your house. So they're gonna respond. Yeah. They're finishing it. Yeah. Where it gets dicey

is like, in one year if that mirror falls off, right? Or in three years. Like, at what point do these builders are no longer responsible for you know, in 15 years? And that's, that's where my story takes place. Okay. So yes, I thought, well, fuck, I wish I had a husband here who would deal with this. Um, but I don't. So I just told Joe, I was like, I'm just leaving it. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just going to leave it. He said, yes, leave it. We'll take care of it tomorrow.

Perfect. Um, and so yeah, that's extremely privileged. I had, I knew I really wasn't going to have to deal with it. I, of course, am having to deal with it in other ways. I now we need new mirror. Now we need, you know, that's a whole annoying to do. He just texted me. Very, Sam. Oh, my gosh. Um, yeah, it was just very startling. Very loud. Very scary. Very scary. Thank God you weren't in there popping a zet. Or right, or even on the toilet, it, I mean, it was, it was

classes everywhere. Everywhere. And your child and her friends had come over like 20 minutes before that. It might have caused it with their energy. They had crazy energy. We're leaving over three of them teenagers. They were fucking all gotten in these crazy outfits. They painted their whole face. And he's so relate to this. This was me at the same. They just wanted to go out and make a little noise. You know, they want to stir up the world. They're trouble,

but really not, not really. Yeah. They're not ready to. Yeah. They got a response that they should get. Yeah. And then they're like, oh, with these boys, I crazy. I'm like, girls, look at yourself.

Exactly. They all look like a rainbow bride or something. They looked nuts. It was really

“cute and fun. They came over and I did think, oh my God, what if one of those kids was in the”

bathroom when that happened? And then I get sued. What if I sued you? Yeah, you sued me. But you took your as well. I was really impressed with how chill you were about it. Yeah. I, um, again, that's privilege. It is privilege. In my journal this morning, I wrote, I'm dying under the weight of my position because we were in Nashville last weekend. And I really went there because I had a boat lift installed in my dock so that I can get my boat out of the water.

It doesn't get all fucked up. Yeah. They put it in two shallow. Boat guts stuck on the thing.

Going to my bus to get something. The bus inversive collapses is huge. The inverters have stopped

all the batteries of now. That's a huge project and not cheap. That whole weekend was like, I came to just fix one thing and I left with like eight things I had to fix. Yeah. So I'm not going to bore you with the list. But while we were there, the sprinkler's fire suppression system in Christen's office started leaking. Okay. And it's hardwood. Right. I'm front of that. Right. It warped all the wood,

ran down the plaster wall, fucked that all up. It's all pushed out. They had tear out all the wood. You know, it sucks. It sucks. It gives you the same anxiety. It's like, I don't know, the fucking thing leaked that time. It's only a year old or two years old. What is it going to leak again in two years? Well, we'll be out, you know, whatever. So I'm already like stressed to the max. Go to bed last night. I was up pre late researching our guests today. Three a.m.

Christen, no, maybe Delta got sent upstairs. Back, come downstairs. There's water leaking out of the ceiling at 3 a.m. Go down into the bedroom. They're sleeping in. Sure enough, there's a fucking like 36 inch slice in the drywall of the ceiling. And it's just leaking water out. I'm like, where the fuck is that water coming from? I'm like,

“step out as I'm looking. Oh, my rooms above it. But it's, is my bathroom. Oh, I think my dresser's above”

that pull a panel out of the ceiling really is, oh, the air condition coil system is in there. It has sprung a leak and it's spraying water and it's three in the morning. And you're like, okay, how do I shut all this down? Like turning the air off. It's still not shutting off. I'm going to mean the breaker. Now the whole all the air is off and it's still leaking and we buckets under the thing. And it's three and I'm like, I got a fucking wake up at six to drive Delta's

school. And I got back in bed. I was like, listen, to dream, known home. It is. And it's also, it's stressful. By the time I laid down at 4 or 30 in the morning to go back to sleep,

I was like, I'm going to move into a one bedroom apart. Like second these girls are out of school.

And I'm going to have no worries. Right. But that's not true. No, because I want all the upside. But sometimes when it rains it pours. Yeah. And two ceiling leaks in a week with massive damage.

“That sucks. I wouldn't feel bad for me. I have too much shit. That's what I was kind of saying.”

This morning was like, yeah, you got you too much shit. I know. Yeah, it is, you know, I just, I so rarely feel like, oh fuck, I wish, and not even necessarily like, I wish I had a husband. I mean, that was the joke. That's a joke I made on Instagram. But like, I wish somebody else was here right now. I don't feel that all that often. But I did, in, in moments like that, do wish somebody else was around. Uh huh. That's what it activates. I mean, a little.

Nothing crazy. I texted just by he's, he would have come over, but he's in Texas. Uh huh. And also what's he going to do? I know it's not about it. It's not about that. Yeah. I'm back in my mail way of seeing like, what can I fix? Not about that. It's just about sharing the experience. Okay, you're ready for this. This is from a commenter C. B. 911 207. M. D. Here. The women, the reason women often have diarrhea when they are starting their periods

is due to the release of posts. Suggestoron? No, postag landins, which cause smooth muscle contraction in the uterus, but also cause smooth muscle in the intestines to contract. Interesting. So we got an M. D. Answering your belly issues every time you're on your periods. Wow, then how come everyone doesn't have it? Not everyone has. Maybe they're being secretive about it and they're too shy. Maybe they're embarrassed that they have bottom issues when they have

their. Wow. Okay, well, that's good. I thought you'd want that update. It's not you. It's the partying of her awareness. Yeah. That's it's still me, though. You know, I mean, so happening to you,

my car. I can't just be like, well, it's the pro-lacted end. That's what I just tell. Like, if you were in your car doing it, and someone saw you. Oh, great. You know, well, it's a

“pro-lacted end. Yeah. Why them? Yeah. Judgmental. I think the first time it happened was all”

so around that. I do think it was sort of connected to my period. So you just want to, I think you want to be mindful of your calendar. Yeah. I'm surprised and not do a lot of big cross-tone

appointments. Like, just try that on those three days. Just go like, I never and more,

the PMS symptoms are for a full week. Minor. Okay. So for that week, we never, we never get more in a mile away from home. No, I can't live like that. Okay. Then put a trash bag in your car. Are you excited for summer? Kids are getting on a school, not mine, but many kids are out. Well, you know, Lincoln got out. They'll be still in, yeah. I am so excited for summer when I was this morning. Your child, as previously mentioned, was wrapping up her sleep over.

It was so cute. They were playing outside some time for them. And Anna was there and I was like,

“"Man, I'm so jealous. I'm so jealous of them." Right. But what specific? Yeah. It's the level of”

carefree. You are never going to have it again. Yeah. Yeah. The kids know the ceilings all fucked up,

but they're not worried about that. They have to worry about for too much. Well, you know what they do have to worry about? That'd be easy to like, to, to, to, to, to, misremember how powerful it is. The amount of angst in preoccupation they have about who's going to who's birthday party and were wrong of that latter. Like, I got to drive everyone to dinner last. Not everyone. I got to drive the three teens to dinner. You know, I was hearing him in the back. My favorite thing in the

world is to drive them places with their friends because they forget I'm there. And I went, what? Just a stomach rout. Oh. It wasn't a fart. Oh, yeah. I sent you a picture of the mirror and you said, "What happened? Did you finally fart?" And I did laugh really hard. No, very money. Okay. Anyway, they were in your back seat. Yeah. And just, you do forget the amount of anxiety that that you were carrying about all the social pressure. That's it, a peak. In,

in you and I aren't sit like, this just happened, right? You were like, "Oh, you're going to the Hanceses Memorial Day party." I'm like, "Oh, I wasn't invited." And you're like, "I'm sure you

were." And then we both, we both looked and we, we hadn't been sent the invite. That never happened.

Chris didn't have an item. It was just a mix-up. But it's not because your name was showed up on my, on the list you can see who's been invited and both of you were invited. Was it through E-Vite? I don't know. Where do you see my name? Like, on the group email or on the, on the, on the, table is put, whatever. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So that never, never got to me. Yeah, my being your spam. No, no, I looked. I looked everywhere. I, I don't, it did not get to me for whatever.

You're going to take this up with Amy because she is like, "Yeah, I sent it to him."

“I believe that. Okay. All the, all of it's true. She sent it. It didn't come. So maybe I've blocked”

paperless posts. Oh, yeah. Okay. Whatever the reason is, I didn't have it. I searched everywhere. Right. And, and Chris didn't have it. Okay. So neither of us had it. And I was like, "Oh, maybe we weren't invited." And literally, we're like, "Okay, that's fine." Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And we hadn't invited. It would rattle me. And now I'm like, "Yeah, if, if I'm not,

so I'm just a, I mean, a party, fine." That's still rare. Sure. I'm only saying I used to be plagued by where am I who invited me? What am I missing out on? So that's an anxiety I had. Yeah. And although we don't have plain on the trampoline, what I have that, that offset that was like, it doesn't bother me if I'm not invited to the hands of party. For whatever reason they thought, there's too many people or I whatever they thought, I'm fine with it. But don't you think like,

this is interesting. But I guess I feel like maybe I wish you did care. Like, I mean, you were invited. So this is, this is why I can, I can do this thought experiment. It's like, if all of a sudden they stopped inviting you to things, if they stopped inviting me to things, I would, I would be like, what happened? These are my close friends that I used to be invited to all of their things. If they decided to stop, that means something has happened. I've done something

or they, something's gone on. Yeah. And I care about these people. So I'd like to figure out

what did I do? My, all of my only thought is like, whatever reason they didn't want to invite me,

it's kind of, I don't, it's in my business. They decided for whatever reason not to invite me. I know we haven't had a falling out. I don't know if he weirds happen. I'm sure I'm going to see

“him next week. I'm not, I'm not doing any of that stuff where I think like something must be wrong.”

I'm just like, oh, whatever, you have a party. You didn't invite me. I have parties. I invite some people. And I don't invite all people. There's no comment on whether I want to be friends with those people or not. It's just like, on that day, I had these four people over. And I don't know if you saw it on Instagram and your upset and you're filling in all these blanks that there's issues now.

That's the all on you. Well, again, that's right. It's agree. But yeah, yeah. I guess all I'm saying

is I now at 51 have the internal security of I'm not really worried about thinking about what I'm not invited to. And if someone doesn't want me to be at their party, that's totally fine with me. I don't want to be at someone's party that didn't want to be there. But Laura, it's deeper than just being at the party. It's, is this relationship good? And if you value the relationship, I would think you'd want it to be good. If I text Amy, and she didn't get back to me, and then I text her again,

and she didn't get back to me. Now I'd be concerned, because we have a personal relationship that we respond to each other. If I don't go to one of her parties, that's not how I'm evaluating whether we're connected or not, if we have a good friendship. It's more, when I reach out to you, do you respond, do we reciprocate? Are we good? Whether I'm at your birthday party or your Halloween party, it's, I don't know. That's not what I came for. All right, all right. All right. Yeah.

“So anyways, I'm just saying, I think I have other concerns and worries, but I've also been completely”

liberated from a big bunch of concerns that used to be bothering me. Well, I just thought, like, oh, man, they just have nothing, they have nothing to think about for two months, nothing hanging over their head, no homework, no work. Even if you don't have work for two months, it's like, when will I ever? When I get back to work, what are we going to have to do? Will I ever work again? Well, there's a lot of people thinking about the future when you're an adult, and that doesn't,

I don't think that ends. And then you just, you don't get those summers back, you don't get those summers back. So I was jealous, but I'm also so happy for her, and it looked so fun and sleepovers are so fun. And I miss them. I do a lot of playing in the, like, I feel, I said this to you out in the yard. I feel like them in the summer. Right. Like, I have that sense of I'm waking up in today. I'm going to play with my friends in my plays different. I'm like on a boat instead of a

trampoline or I'm on a dirt bike in my yard or I'm playing pickleball. Whatever it is, I do have that sense of like, oh, it's, it's play time. What's good? Yeah. That's great. Yeah. One is in fact. Yeah, let's do some back. Stay tuned for more armchair expert. If you dare. Darby Saxby. Does it in sound like that could be a character in a fun English? Yes. It sounds like it's from, well, it sounds like it's from fight of the concords, because Darby is, is one of the actors, I'm not sure. But I'm

more picturing like a little girl in a rain slicker in London. Yeah. That's cute. Darby Saxby. It is. Meet Darby Saxby. She loves her parents, but not her own go-mike. What are our own go-mike? Oh, go-mike is a chimney sweep who gets dust these all over her favorite stuffies. Oh, no. Do you see what now we got a story? I love it. I bought it. I want to know more. Oh, well, she addresses it. She's going to be more about Darby, but you know, she's going to be

me and her uncle, Mike, and her uncle, Mike's just sweeping a chimney. And then wants to play with

“her stuffies, because he's lonely. That's what she's going to figure out. Compass, she's going to”

learn compassion from her Mike by the end. Yeah. Hopefully it's like three or four books. Her stuffy will tell her we don't mind getting dirty if it's to keep someone happy and feeling loved and then she's going to give her uncle, Mike, a big hug at the end. Oh, and he's going to go.

Oh, Darby, I wasn't expecting that. You've never given me a hug and she's going to hug him,

and then he's going to cry with such joy that the tears will wash away all the stuffy. All the dirt. Oh, I love that ending. It's a tear bath. Listen, the one thing though I don't like about that story is that the stuffies are like, they are being codependent. Only if they mind.

Like they don't care. Oh, I like the dirt. You're the better. They know Darby doesn't like it,

and they know like it. Itches them. Oh, well, I don't know. Yeah, dirt itches. If you're you have your an animal, and you have dermis, these are stuffies. Okay, but they talk. So, you know,

“so we're playing it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think they have feelings like physical and emotional.”

Okay. You know, one time I got dirt. Unless shit, tea. No, stuck. Okay. This is so gross. I'm sure I've told you that I got dirt stuck in the dirt. I think you're talking about your stuffies, but you're, you this whole time you've been talking about yourself. You're okay. I got a rewind. You don't like hugging chimney sweeps. You don't like, I got it. No, I'm saying, I'm saying, I feel for these stuffies because I know what it says. Dirt stuck in your neck. How did that happen?

And it couldn't be cleaned. How long was this dirt in your neck? You had a dirty neck for a while? Yeah. How long? What's going on? What happened to your neck? Okay. I was like 10 or 11 or god, I hope not well. Yeah. And I was at my, we were at a family event. My grandparents

“us and my mom was like, looked at me and it was like, what's on something like, what's wrong with you?”

Something was like wrong with my neck. Yeah. Now, I have a huge crease across my neck. I've had it

like high cholesterol since I was a baby. Okay. I hated it. Okay. But I've always had it. And

it was really dark. You have been accumulating some dirt when stuff in the fold. Yes. Yeah. That's natural. She, they all laughed at me because they realized it was, you know, she was nervous. Yeah. She came over. Yeah. Exactly. And then she's touching it and dirt's coming on. Getting everywhere probably. Yeah. Like all the stuff is, you know. And then they all laughed at me. I didn't clean my neck. And I have to clean my neck. Monika, you got to clean your neck.

And I was really embarrassed. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sure I cried. Have you seen this video of Malala talking to and quote Indian mom? I don't think so. It's so great. It's like an Indian therapist in Malala's like, yes. So I got shot. Okay. I'm hearing you got shot. A lot of people get shot. You know? Like not taking it. Yes. Everything she says is like, does that mean a baby? Yeah. And that might be your fault. Yeah. And it sounds to me like a lot of poor me, you know?

Just stopping a victim. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's so fun. You've not seen this clip. No, I haven't. It's really good. I'm trying to think who's sent it to me. That's very funny. Yeah. You know, my mom will do that. She for a long time. It's like I complained about something that was like from them. Yeah. You know, she would be like, what are you going to like, when are you going to understand your own person? Like, we're not basically like, we're not

responsible for any of your damage. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Which like, I respect it. I guess I get it. But she did laugh at me when I'd do it on my neck. I'm probably because I was taking a bath

“with by myself way too young. That's what you think. And you didn't know to clean that crease.”

No one taught me. Okay. Who's supposed to teach me? Well, I bet you're not me. I bet that

crease has never been dirty again. That is right. Now it's all dried up. Because I could

have just soap in there. Do you actually soap that? Yeah. It's used to this day. Yeah. I watched my neck. Yeah. Okay. I can't risk walking around with dirt neck again. I don't watch my neck. Yeah. You don't have a crease. I don't like that. It's not the same. Okay. Rob, do you have a crease? Oh, thanks so. Oh, so unfair. Well, this is actually ding, ding, ding, since it's for Darby and that's parenting. Dad, yeah. Dad, yeah. My dad,

I don't think laughed at me. He didn't even see it. He did not see it. They're like, look, and he's like, I don't see anything. Exactly. Yeah. That's where I get my, that's probably where I get my non, my non. Sure. Like, let's say my powers of observation. So you'd have to say like, my deficit of observation. Yeah. But I'd like to, I'd like to twist it and make it positive. Like, that's where I get my just nonjudgment. My nonchalance. My laws are weird. I wouldn't say

I'm laws are fair or nonchalant, but I don't make judgments about people because I can't see what to judge. So that's cool. Think about me. Okay. You said that we've diagnosed like six

chemical messengers. Um, so yeah. Okay. Brain rules for babies. You guys read. You said a child

will make 60 or 70 percent of relationships worse. In brain rules for baby, author John Medina notes

that more than 80 percent of marriage's experience, a significant drop in relationship satisfaction after a child is born. Even better. But 80 percent. John Gottman, who we love. Uh-huh. He highlights 67 to 70 percent of couples see the quality of their relationship plummet within the first three years of baby's life. Mm-hmm. People just need to have that warning. Yeah. It's good to know. And they should know it'll pass. Yeah. Yeah. When you're in it, you don't think

it's going to pass. Yeah. You're like, what have we've traded this for that for sure? Yeah. Oh, percentage of men who rate having children as a high priority, or like highest priority.

So this is about 57 percent of men ages 18 to 34. I want to have children one day, according to

a Pew Research Center poll. Surprisingly, this means men are now more likely to prioritize having kids than women who report a desire for children at 45 percent in the same age group. Wow. This whole world is flipped. Flipy flipped women. College at 65 percent. The boys want to

“have kids. Well, it's all connected. I think all of that is connected. Because if you're in college,”

as a woman, you have big career aspirations. You're not thinking about having kids or thinking about doing that. Mm-hmm. Interesting. Now, studies on men having daughters. Yes. Research suggests that having daughters increases the life expectancy of fathers. But the opposite is true

from mothers. Did say that? Yeah. They live less long with daughters. Come on. Listen,

it says for father studies, including landmark research published in the American Journal of Human Biology show that a father's lifespan increases by an average of 74 weeks for every daughter he has. Yes. That's about one point, whatever I said. Sons were found to have no significant impact on a father's longevity. Why? Researchers theorize that having daughters may lead men to adopt healthier lifestyle choices, taking fewer risks and build stronger emotional support networks.

Additionally, adult daughters are traditionally more likely to provide care and support as our parents age. That's interesting. You can read more about the reason. Well, they used to.

“New curls. Yeah. That's why I'm kids like that. I'm going to be heard from them for that.”

For mothers, the physical toil of having children impacts mothers differently. Research shows that mothers experience a reduction in lifespan of about 95 weeks per child, regardless of whether the child is a son or a daughter. The cost is largely attributed to the biological and energetic demands of pregnancy and lactation. Interesting. So my dad got 74 more weeks for me, but he didn't get many from my bro. And your mom lost 180 some weeks. Yeah. Thanks.

Your mom lost. That's that's four years. Elizabeth and Andy's podcast recently. They were talking about this. Like, when you start counting how many months you have left? No, it's not a fun. It's not a good idea. It's not a good idea. No, no. You don't even need to do that. Yeah. I already did it. Yeah. I know. I know that. All right. Well, that's it. Darby didn't have many facts. And it was a great episode. I hope men listen and women listen because I hate this. I'm going to sound like

woman bashing or mom bashing and I don't mean to do that. But I do think moms should realize the impact of kids on fathers. Like, it's not not having an impact on them. Yeah. Well, there's like, there's upsides and downsides of this stereotype that the dad is an even relevant. He's not truly apparent. Yeah. Exactly. So it's like they get out of a bunch of shit they shouldn't get out of. All right. I guess. Yeah. But then also they get denied all this lovely

stuff. And well, and also they're seen as a totally expendable, which is not a nice thing to be seen. No. It's not like what you want. And it's not even like, you know, I did think moms for a lot of obvious reasons and understandable reasons do a lot of like, well, it's a default me, which it often

“is, but it can be changed as a whole point. Like, I think it's important for everyone to listen to this.”

I do think this is changing pretty rapidly. Yes. Again, because of women in the workforce, because my dad dropped me off. He would drop me off at school on Monday and pick me up on Friday. Yep. No, he would drop me off at school. We would listen to that rain song. Beer Gabriel. No, it's like rainbows and sunshine. No, not that one. That's karma. Um, this one is like, no, that's rainbow connection. I love her. I love her. Oh, it's on the other side.

Molly pops and rainbows. Yes. Leslie Gore. I see that sunshine after the rain or something. Yeah. Yeah, I think it's this. Let's listen.

“Wow, you know, we're in fun. Yeah. Can you imagine you're trying to keep it low profile. If I saw”

the one in the in family, it might go pull up in the door open. That sun was blocking blasting.

And I was 10. I would just have to fill in so many wrong assumptions. Oh, wow.

India's love dance music. Yeah. But I forget the song. And that's sad. That was our song.

I wonder if you called him. He won't know, right? I bet he'll remember. You think so. Yeah,

“listen with this little daughter. TVD. I think about that daily because I'm nearing the end of”

drop off. Delta's elementary school drop off. And we ride the motorcycle every morning, which means I'm guaranteed to have my Kuala backpack on every morning. You wear her backpack. And where

“her is a backpack. She's sitting behind me and she's like holding on to me like she's a Kuala bear.”

Yeah. And we talk while we're riding. It's hard to see. She just gives me squeezes. And so like I'm excited to not have to be out the door at the same time every day. You're going to admit it. But I if it's yeah, as much as I don't like getting up and having to deal with it, I absolutely cherish that every day of my week starts with my Kuala bear on my back. I love it. Kids will break your heart. They'll make your heart and then they'll break your heart. That's right. I love you.

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