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You've discovered something about the brain I think is quite surprising.

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So we found that in fathers, the brain is actually shrinking, and I'll explain why.

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But also there are studies that find that both men and women who report having had more kids have markers of a younger looking brain age.

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And then also typically men, when they do this show about a 25% drop in testosterone.

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The next studies of single women have found that, you know, if you show them a series of body types, dad bod is the most popular.

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And that's proven by science.

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So if I go out and get a dad bod, you're telling me that science says I'm going to be more attractive.

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Yeah, go for it.

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Let's see what my fiance says.

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The other thing that's worth talking about is... Have you done any studies on that?

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Yes.

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That is one of the most robust findings in parenthood research.

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My lab found actually that... Wow.

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So I've always been really interested in families, and becoming a parent is one of the biggest transformations that you can experience.

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But I'm concerned about the declining birth rate, and I think that we've managed to market it as an undesirable choice.

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According to the CDC and Pew Research data, the U.S. total fertility rate just hit an all-time recorded low...

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Yeah, I mean, the transition to parenthood can be really challenging.

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You are sacrificing yourself.

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It can be very isolating.

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You're losing your sleep.

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But becoming a parent, you are benefiting from this sense of connection and purpose.

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You will rediscover your priorities in a way that will ultimately bring a lot of value.

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So if all goes well, next year I will be a dad.

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And I would like you to give me some advice on becoming a father based on all the research that you have.

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So great fathers are made not born.

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There's a lot you can do.

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I'm going to write it down.

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Love it.

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So first...

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Guys, I've got a favour to ask before this episode begins.

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.

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Dr. Darby Saxby, you've discovered something about the brain that I think is quite surprising to a lot of men and women as it relates to what happens to a man's brain when they become a father.

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And I've got the report here in front of me, but I have a model brain over there.

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Could you explain to me what exactly it is that you discovered?

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Yes.

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So we found that in fathers, and this is similar to what's been observed in mothers, the brain is actually losing gray matter volume.

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So it is shrinking.

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So if I had stronger hands, I could probably squish this brain and make it look tinier.

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But the parts of the brain that are shrinking the most are in what we call the mentalizing network.

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And that's a part of the brain that helps us understand other people's feelings and intentions.

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Those areas are kind of concentrated around the midline of the cortex, which is kind of what we're seeing here.

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And then you also see volume reduction in the visual areas, which is the back of the brain, which is really important for understanding when you look at an infant's face, what kinds of emotions it's trying to tell you.

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And so we see changes to those parts of the brain in new dads.

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In moms, we see changes to these same parts of the brain.

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We also see changes in moms to what's called the subcortex, which is this part of the brain that kind of controls our gut feelings and our sense of reward and is really strongly linked with our hormones.

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So moms are kind of changing all across the brain.

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Dads are mostly changing in this top layer, the cortex, which kind of controls our higher order thinking, reasoning, and executive functioning.

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And that tells us something about fatherhood, which is that fathers choose to engage in parenting.

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It's a sort of cognitively mediated investment that dads are making.

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What does that mean?

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So if you think about a mom who's been through nine months of pregnancy, she is flooded with hormones when her baby is born.

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And she has a really high investment in the baby's survival.

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Right.

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Just thinking about the number of calories that it takes to sustain a pregnancy, it's thousands.

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And so there's a very high floor for maternal investment.

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And moms are undergoing plasticity all across the brain that reflects that.

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In dads, there's a tremendous amount of cross-cultural stress.

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variability.

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So there are cultures in which dads participate in childcare and are very hands-on with babies from the moment of birth.

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There are cultures in which there are prohibitions against men picking babies up.

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You don't pick babies up in the first year in some cultures.

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You don't pick babies up because it's considered unmanly.

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Okay.

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So there's a tremendous amount of variability.

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And dads calibrate their investment according to what the culture says and what the context looks like.

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If mom becomes unavailable, dad is often needed to step in and provide more of the care.

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And so this sort of top layer of brain changes reflects that, you know, dads are modulating their investment depending on what they're learning from the environment.

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And the word that biologists use for this is facultative.

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So a facultative adaptation is an adaptation that is optional but extremely useful.

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You could think about an animal that walks on four legs, suddenly having something really important to grab and switching to walk on two legs so that it can use its hands.

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Hands are really useful for that animal.

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Fathers are really useful for humanity.

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But are you saying they're optional?

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But they vary depending on situation.

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And I don't want to say that fathers aren't important.

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They're incredibly important.

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There are dads who are primary caregivers and even sole caregivers of children.

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But dads vary.

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And they vary depending on what is needed for children to thrive in their specific local context.

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Yeah.

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And a woman's brain shrinks as well, but it shrinks a little bit more.

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Yes, it covers more of the brain.

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And it also shows a larger across the board volume reduction.

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And I should explain volume reduction, we often think about deficit, mommy brain, you're forgetting things.

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Volume reduction is not a bad thing.

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What it means is that the brain is actually working more efficiently because it's building better connected pathways and better

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Is it accurate to say that the brain is focusing?

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Yes, exactly.

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So it's reshaping in a way that enables more efficient communication.

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It's learning.

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It's consolidating.

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So it's kind of like if you think about the director's cut of a movie that has lots of interesting extra scenes and characters, and then you watch it in the theater and it's like this lean, mean two hour cut, right?

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Like many of us prefer the theatrical release because it's easier to follow.

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And by getting rid of certain parts of the brain, that means more energy can be used in the other parts of the brain.

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Is that broadly accurate?

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Exactly.

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So that we're better able to focus on what matters.

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And when we become parents, what matters is our children and the inputs they're giving us.

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The interesting thing is the way that you described the part of the brain that the man loses when they become a father made it seem like they're losing empathy.

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No, they're actually improving in their empathy because they're becoming more efficient processors of social information.

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So the fact that where we see the biggest changes are in these what we call mentalizing social cognition networks tells us that those networks are really important for dads to use when they become parents.

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And they're getting a lot of practice putting those networks into into use.

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Yeah.

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I thought you said that section of the brain shrunk.

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Yes, because the brain is becoming more efficient.

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So it's losing all the extra pathways and you're sort of building a super highway for that specific social information.

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Sounds a bit counterintuitive because I imagined that my brain would grow when I get better at something.

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You would.

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But in this case, the brain is actually shrinking.

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And I know it sort of feels like a

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And is there a relationship between how hands-on the father is and the amount of shrinkage that happens in their brain?

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Yeah, and my lab found that relationship.

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So when dads told us before birth that they felt more bonded to their unborn baby, when they wanted to take more time off after work, and when they told us three months after birth that they enjoyed their babies more, they felt more connected and bonded to them, and they were spending more time taking care of their babies,

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All of this seems to support the contention that the shrinkage is really adaptive and it's enabling men's adjustment to parenthood.

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Is there any other biological changes that take place when someone becomes a father?

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So we also see changes to men's hormones.

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I talk about this in the book.

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Men typically show a drop in testosterone.

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I've got a big thing here.

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Yeah, let's talk about testosterone.

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So typically men, when they're hands-on as fathers, show about a 25% drop in testosterone.

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And some of the best studies of this have been done longitudinally in the Philippines.

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Before we had longitudinal studies, people said, well, maybe lower testosterone men are just choosing to become fathers.

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And so looking across time lets us tease that out and see, is there something about fatherhood that's actually changing testosterone?

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And so when you look across decades, you find that testosterone is typically pretty high before pregnancy happens.

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And it's adaptive to have high testosterone.

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You know, testosterone's been studied a lot in birds.

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It's also been studied in rodents and in other mammals.

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You want high testosterone at the start of breeding season, when it's time to maximize your chances of producing offspring.

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You want to compete.

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You want to build status.

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You want to fight off your rivals.

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High testosterone is your friend.

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Once you've accomplished your reproductive goal and you've caused a pregnancy and you want your offspring to survive, you want to be investing and nurturing that new baby.

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And this is what we saw in the men in the Philippines, that as they were spending more time taking care of kids, they showed a sharper drop.

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And then you typically see some rebound when the baby is getting older.

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And again, this is not unique to humans.

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We see it all over the animal kingdom.

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So during the pregnancy, something, some chemical tells my body.

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Yeah.

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That I need to make less testosterone.

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Yeah.

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Even though the baby's not here yet.

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Yeah.

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It might just be your proximity to your pregnant partner.

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Interesting.

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Yeah.

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Our lab found expectant dads and expectant moms had correlated levels of testosterone during pregnancy.

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And the more strong that relationship was, the more dads showed a drop in testosterone after birth.

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But I want to caveat because I think a lot of men are really concerned about the idea that testosterone might drop.

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And I think we have a really strong narrative right now that testosterone sort of like equals successful masculinity.

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And masculinity is not about a particular hormone.

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It is about a body that is responsive to our goals and that sets us up to meet the demands of our environment.

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And so having a biology...

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that fluctuates across the lifespan as our reproductive strategy shifts is really adaptive.

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We want to be flexible.

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And that doesn't always mean maxed out testosterone.

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So high levels of testosterone actually decrease our sperm count and they are bad for our immune system.

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I think some men might be concerned that dropping testosterone might make them worse in the gym or it might make them less ambitious or less able to pursue their goals in life.

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Is there any truth to

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There's definitely a link between testosterone and men's muscle mass and their motivation, their drives.

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But these are not one-to-one relationships.

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So the human hormone literature is messy and a lot of these are weak correlations.

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So testosterone doesn't necessarily equal success at work, for example.

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And high testosterone can get in men's way in multiple ways.

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So there are links between men's testosterone levels and relationship satisfaction in the couple relationship.

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So my lab did a study where we found that men who had relatively higher testosterone after their baby's birth had partners who were more dissatisfied in the relationship and reported more intimate partner aggression.

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So the dads themselves reported more parenting stress.

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So there's a little bit of a mixed bag of high testosterone.

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And what it looks like you want is to hit a sweet spot.

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You don't want testosterone levels that totally crash.

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My lab has also found that when testosterone is really low after a birth, men have higher postpartum depression symptoms.

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You don't necessarily want testosterone levels that are sky high either because that can cause problems in your intimate relationship and it can make it hard for you to switch into nurturing and parenting mode.

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So the men who seem most successful in our study were men who had mid-range testosterone levels that could be flexible and that could adapt to different life changes.

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And am I right in thinking that the more time you spend hands-on as a father in those studies that they did on men, the lower your testosterone will go?

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Yeah, so the longitudinal work in the Philippines found that when men spent more time changing babies, doing hands-on care, sharing a sleeping surface with babies, they had more of a testosterone drop.

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So the testosterone, the hormones, are responsive to the context and to what we're doing.

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But testosterone does rebound, you know.

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after birth.

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So it's not necessarily the case that testosterone is going to bottom out and it's going to stay low forever.

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You know, you said a second ago that men that had crashes to their testosterone during the pregnancy and thereafter had a high likelihood of experiencing postpartum depression themselves.

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Does that, are you implying that that means that there's an ideal amount of time and hands-on-ness that a father can spend with their child to make sure their testosterone hits that mid-range point?

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Yeah, it's a really good question.

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I mean, I don't know that we know for sure if there's like a dose of parenting involvement that sort of lends itself to an ideal amount of testosterone.

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It's hard to optimize your way out of these natural changes.

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I don't want to discourage dads from being hands-on with their kids because they're worried they're going to pay some kind of physiological tax.

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I think it's more like make sure you're protecting your sleep, which we know is linked with overall health.

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Make sure you're getting time to exercise and to socialize, you know, to participate in activities that bring you joy.

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Like those are ways to help mitigate your risk that I think will be more successful than trying to hit a particular hormone level.

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My brother is a year older than me and he has three young kids under the age of seven now.

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They were actually just here.

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They just left.

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But I noticed a remarkable difference in him when his wife, Giulio, got pregnant.

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What did you notice?

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Just a total shift in what he wanted out of life.

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Yeah.

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And so before growing up, I remember one day seeing him on the computer figuring out which job would pay the most money.

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And he was very, very smart.

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He is very, very smart.

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And he sort of orientated his career towards the job that would make the most money.

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And then he was successful.

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He went to LSE, got the job.

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And then shortly after graduating university, met someone that got pregnant unexpectedly.

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And I watched my brother go from someone who was like really striving for material goals to someone who suddenly placed the material goal immediately after, how do I retire and spend the maximum amount of my time with my kids?

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Yeah.

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His kids are number one above anything else and it's something I admire a lot about him.

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But the most remarkable thing as someone that's not gone through that transition because I've not had kids yet is just watching how profound the change was in him in terms of his stated goals and ambitions.

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Yeah.

214
00:16:54.394 --> 00:16:54.914
What is this?

215
00:16:55.094 --> 00:17:05.201
I'm so glad you said that because that's something I heard from so many of the fathers that I interviewed for the book is that you experience this profound shift in your values and your priorities.

216
00:17:05.901 --> 00:17:11.645
And a lot of men, you know, if you survey parents, you say, what are the most meaningful priorities in your life?

217
00:17:12.995 --> 00:17:15.740
men are just as likely as women to say, my kids.

218
00:17:16.701 --> 00:17:22.872
And I think fathers increasingly are recognizing that the parenting role is really central to their self-concept.

219
00:17:23.727 --> 00:17:32.534
And, you know, like we're in a culture where I think it can be hard for men to find a sense of meaning and purpose and connection to other people.

220
00:17:33.095 --> 00:17:36.417
Being a parent can give you that sense of meaning and purpose.

221
00:17:37.058 --> 00:17:51.990
And so, you know, I think that's a really important framing around, you know, your testosterone level might change or your brain might shrink, like things that maybe sound a little scary and negative, but they're in the service of this larger goal, which is building a more meaningful life.

222
00:17:52.809 --> 00:18:00.731
And I think, you know, like a message to men and also to women, to moms and to dads, is anything that's worth doing is hard.

223
00:18:01.471 --> 00:18:02.752
Being a parent is really hard.

224
00:18:03.272 --> 00:18:19.516
You know, you are sacrificing yourself, you're losing your sleep, you are getting extra wrinkles, ask me how I know, but you are benefiting from this sense of connection and purpose that, you know, it sounds like your brother has been totally transformed by.

225
00:18:20.096 --> 00:18:31.724
And I think we're in a lot of ways like selling young men on this message that you should be optimizing your bank account and your body fat percentage and you should be out there hustling as much as possible.

226
00:18:32.304 --> 00:18:43.792
And I think that can be a little bit of a hollow message because what we keep learning again and again from the longevity studies is that the quality of men's relationships is the best predictor of their well-being and old age.

227
00:18:44.292 --> 00:18:59.656
So men with healthy marriages, men who have positive relationships with their kids, those are the men who age well, not necessarily the men who've maxed out on, you know, riches or the perfect body fat score.

228
00:19:00.622 --> 00:19:01.022
It is.

229
00:19:01.163 --> 00:19:10.170
It's really a remarkable thing because as you look forward into becoming a parent, you often see the sacrifices you'll have to make.

230
00:19:10.190 --> 00:19:12.412
You hear about, okay, you're not going to sleep as much as you used to.

231
00:19:12.793 --> 00:19:18.277
You'll hear about the anxieties of being a parent and loving something so much more than yourself and all these things.

232
00:19:19.078 --> 00:19:24.423
But that sort of profound psychological, biological, hormonal shift, you kind of just have to believe in it.

233
00:19:25.063 --> 00:19:30.488
People tell you about it as if it's almost like a religion.

234
00:19:30.588 --> 00:19:39.395
I say that because you have to have faith that the profound upside will be worth the very obvious cost that you see parents, the sacrifices they have to make.

235
00:19:39.640 --> 00:19:43.402
Yeah, I think that's exactly right because I think a lot of the downsides are really visible.

236
00:19:43.602 --> 00:19:43.822
Yeah.

237
00:19:43.962 --> 00:19:48.244
Like we've all been on a plane with a crying kid and we've seen the frantic parent trying to calm them down.

238
00:19:48.805 --> 00:19:50.906
We've all seen a tantrum in the grocery store, right?

239
00:19:50.926 --> 00:19:52.727
Like that stuff is right in your face.

240
00:19:53.267 --> 00:19:55.868
But the upsides are sort of invisible.

241
00:19:56.389 --> 00:20:00.451
You know, just like the joy of seeing your child's face as they discover something new.

242
00:20:01.391 --> 00:20:06.354
Or, you know, getting to snuggle late at night and feeling this sense of closeness that you've never had, right?

243
00:20:06.374 --> 00:20:08.695
That like love that's bigger than yourself.

244
00:20:08.975 --> 00:20:09.175
Mm-hmm.

245
00:20:09.612 --> 00:20:18.922
And I think it's important to speak about the benefits as well as the downsides, because we humans crave connection.

246
00:20:19.903 --> 00:20:22.365
And, you know, we crave care.

247
00:20:23.246 --> 00:20:29.232
And I think becoming a parent is an opportunity to provide care on a scale that's hard to find in other ways.

248
00:20:29.772 --> 00:20:35.815
I also want to hear from you about how the mother's brain changes through pregnancy and beyond.

249
00:20:35.995 --> 00:20:36.275
Yeah.

250
00:20:36.295 --> 00:20:39.617
Because Julia, so my brother's wife, she was here as well.

251
00:20:40.298 --> 00:20:43.779
And she's remarkably different now that she's had these three beautiful children.

252
00:20:44.360 --> 00:20:47.301
And I was asking her last night because she was in the sort of corporate world before.

253
00:20:47.341 --> 00:20:57.887
I was saying, you know, when they grow up and they leave home, which, again, is probably the worst thing you could probably say to a mother who has three young, beautiful children and who's already anxious that someday they're going to fly the nest.

254
00:20:58.187 --> 00:21:02.091
I was like, what will then be in the place of these three kids in your life?

255
00:21:02.111 --> 00:21:03.772
Would you want to go back to like the corporate world?

256
00:21:03.792 --> 00:21:04.953
Or do you want to do something else?

257
00:21:05.013 --> 00:21:07.155
And how has it reordered your sense of meaning?

258
00:21:07.815 --> 00:21:09.717
But tell me, how does the mother's brain change?

259
00:21:09.737 --> 00:21:12.459
Yeah, the mother's brain changes really profoundly as well.

260
00:21:12.639 --> 00:21:18.424
Moms are losing about two and a half percent of their brain volume from before pregnancy to after birth.

261
00:21:18.945 --> 00:21:22.107
Dads, in our studies, we found they lose about one percent of their brain volume.

262
00:21:22.207 --> 00:21:22.388
So,

263
00:21:23.168 --> 00:21:30.251
Similar pattern in similar parts of the brain, but the magnitude is different and there's more variability in the dads.

264
00:21:30.431 --> 00:21:31.852
And how did you conduct these studies?

265
00:21:32.332 --> 00:21:33.353
What was the methodology?

266
00:21:33.573 --> 00:21:37.054
So we recruited a bunch of first-time parents.

267
00:21:37.374 --> 00:21:40.536
These were all couples that we recruited during pregnancy.

268
00:21:41.196 --> 00:21:54.464
Our only rule was that you had to be cohabiting and you had to be planning to continue cohabiting after the birth because we really wanted to capture the dads and get their experience, you know, being in proximity to their babies.

269
00:21:55.025 --> 00:21:56.606
And so we brought them into the lab.

270
00:21:57.106 --> 00:21:59.207
We asked them every question we could think of.

271
00:21:59.347 --> 00:22:01.749
We sampled their blood, their saliva, their hair.

272
00:22:03.310 --> 00:22:06.172
We had them fight with each other on camera.

273
00:22:06.632 --> 00:22:08.153
We scanned the men's brains.

274
00:22:08.913 --> 00:22:15.257
And then about six months after their baby was born, we brought them back into the lab, blood, saliva, hair.

275
00:22:15.317 --> 00:22:16.718
This time we got a breast milk sample.

276
00:22:16.758 --> 00:22:18.079
We got a sample of baby poop.

277
00:22:18.819 --> 00:22:21.521
And we had them fight again, and we scanned the dad's brains again.

278
00:22:21.741 --> 00:22:22.702
You had them fight again.

279
00:22:22.762 --> 00:22:23.683
We had them fight again.

280
00:22:23.743 --> 00:22:27.286
We wanted to see how do couples communicate with each other?

281
00:22:28.047 --> 00:22:30.829
And does that change across the transition to parenthood?

282
00:22:30.909 --> 00:22:38.796
And also, what communication styles are going to predict better couple-level adaptation to becoming parents?

283
00:22:38.916 --> 00:22:39.877
How did you get them to fight?

284
00:22:39.917 --> 00:22:41.018
I need to make sure I don't do that.

285
00:22:41.198 --> 00:22:43.660
So we gave them a whole list of different topics.

286
00:22:43.700 --> 00:22:46.641
We said, these are topics that couples commonly argue about.

287
00:22:47.282 --> 00:22:49.864
Which are hot button issues for you and your partner?

288
00:22:50.364 --> 00:22:53.306
And so we had both the mom and the dad fill these out independently.

289
00:22:53.706 --> 00:22:58.189
And then we went through and we saw what are the issues that both people are endorsing.

290
00:22:58.909 --> 00:23:01.551
And we said, we want you to talk about this issue.

291
00:23:01.591 --> 00:23:02.311
Don't hold back.

292
00:23:02.331 --> 00:23:04.593
We're going to give you 15 minutes in this room.

293
00:23:05.533 --> 00:23:07.555
And we, you know, watch them.

294
00:23:08.295 --> 00:23:08.836
talk through it.

295
00:23:09.197 --> 00:23:18.193
They weren't, you know, like punching each other, but the conversations were often contentious because they were talking about issues that were frequently objects of conflict.

296
00:23:19.315 --> 00:23:19.536
Okay.

297
00:23:19.816 --> 00:23:20.718
And what did you discover?

298
00:23:21.178 --> 00:23:28.562
So we discovered that when couples fought more negatively with each other, they subsequently reported more difficult birth experiences.

299
00:23:29.483 --> 00:23:34.886
And it's interesting because birth is a time in which moms need a lot of support.

300
00:23:35.727 --> 00:23:39.709
And the partner's often a primary person who's in the room providing that support.

301
00:23:40.209 --> 00:23:48.274
So when couples have, you know, sort of like a toxic, difficult relationship, that can really color mom's experience of the birth.

302
00:23:49.758 --> 00:24:01.871
Are you saying that because the person that they fought with and don't have a good conflict resolution strategy with, it was in the room, they had a bad birth experience?

303
00:24:02.012 --> 00:24:04.675
Or did something actually happen in the birth experience?

304
00:24:04.715 --> 00:24:06.356
Did the husband make a comment?

305
00:24:06.537 --> 00:24:06.757
Yeah.

306
00:24:06.997 --> 00:24:07.197
Yeah.

307
00:24:07.277 --> 00:24:15.562
No, I mean, we didn't record their conversations during the birth, but we actually did get the charts from the hospital or the birth center after the baby delivered.

308
00:24:15.582 --> 00:24:16.823
And we looked at complications.

309
00:24:17.463 --> 00:24:19.625
We looked at how medically complex the birth was.

310
00:24:20.245 --> 00:24:25.048
And we found that when couples fought more negatively and less positively during pregnancy...

311
00:24:25.508 --> 00:24:26.428
During pregnancy.

312
00:24:26.448 --> 00:24:27.429
During pregnancy.

313
00:24:27.549 --> 00:24:30.009
So, you know, they're about six months into pregnancy.

314
00:24:30.409 --> 00:24:34.751
A few months later, when it's time to deliver the infant, they had more medically complex births.

315
00:24:35.451 --> 00:24:38.472
And they also appraised the births as more stressful.

316
00:24:38.872 --> 00:24:44.113
So the conclusion is, it's thinking about the couple relationship is actually important when we think about birth.

317
00:24:44.613 --> 00:24:49.495
There's been a huge sea change about how we deliver babies.

318
00:24:49.815 --> 00:24:50.595
You know, like...

319
00:24:51.195 --> 00:24:54.759
It used to be that men were never in the birthing room.

320
00:24:54.779 --> 00:25:00.585
So babies were typically delivered with the assistance of a female midwife and female relatives.

321
00:25:01.306 --> 00:25:06.892
And it really wasn't until birth moved into hospitals in the late 19th century.

322
00:25:06.912 --> 00:25:09.614
Suddenly you had a male physician who's presiding over the birth.

323
00:25:10.335 --> 00:25:16.903
And then really it wasn't until the 60s and 70s that dads started to advocate for their inclusion in the birth room.

324
00:25:17.363 --> 00:25:19.226
They said, you know, we don't want to miss this.

325
00:25:19.286 --> 00:25:20.187
We want to be present.

326
00:25:20.867 --> 00:25:30.238
But because historically dads have really not been part of the birth experience, we haven't necessarily thought about the couple relationship as a place to intervene.

327
00:25:31.019 --> 00:25:35.740
If we want to make birth go more smoothly, we actually want to be thinking about dad's mental health.

328
00:25:36.200 --> 00:25:39.461
And we want to be thinking about couples' relationship functioning.

329
00:25:39.961 --> 00:25:43.842
Because those things might actually affect mom's psychological experience at birth.

330
00:25:44.262 --> 00:25:46.323
So you're saying don't fight during pregnancy?

331
00:25:46.663 --> 00:25:47.103
Yeah.

332
00:25:47.163 --> 00:25:49.123
Or just find more effective ways to fight.

333
00:25:49.283 --> 00:25:54.345
You want to figure out ways to calm each other down, validate each other.

334
00:25:54.365 --> 00:26:00.026
Not necessarily, you know, imp each other up and get into these really negative spirals.

335
00:26:00.751 --> 00:26:08.880
I guess I want to push on a point of nuance here because I'm concerned that expectant parents might be looking at each other right now as they listen to this episode.

336
00:26:08.900 --> 00:26:12.644
I imagine we've got a lot of expectant parents listening and they're thinking, fuck, we had a fight last week.

337
00:26:13.765 --> 00:26:15.868
And we've got the buff coming up in a couple of months.

338
00:26:16.537 --> 00:26:18.759
There's nothing wrong with fighting.

339
00:26:18.819 --> 00:26:23.264
In fact, I'm a big believer that it's good to air out your concerns and grievances.

340
00:26:24.065 --> 00:26:27.749
What we were looking at specifically were negative conflict behaviors.

341
00:26:28.029 --> 00:26:28.270
Okay.

342
00:26:28.370 --> 00:26:36.638
Things like criticizing, showing contempt, stonewalling, so like refusing to listen to see the other person's perspective.

343
00:26:36.658 --> 00:26:37.199
Okay.

344
00:26:37.359 --> 00:26:52.862
Actually, one of my really smart grad students is working on a project right now where he's looking at what is kind of like a magic ingredient that helps couples shift from being negative with each other to being positive with each other during these conflict tasks.

345
00:26:52.882 --> 00:26:55.503
He's like literally looking at the same task.

346
00:26:56.083 --> 00:26:57.923
And he's finding the ingredient is validation.

347
00:26:58.583 --> 00:27:03.985
So just conveying to your partner, I understand what you're saying.

348
00:27:04.105 --> 00:27:05.285
I see where you're coming from.

349
00:27:06.225 --> 00:27:07.286
I'm right here with you.

350
00:27:07.326 --> 00:27:07.807
I get it.

351
00:27:08.648 --> 00:27:16.696
Like those kinds of behaviors make a huge difference because they sort of take like a lot of the tension and frustration out of the conversation.

352
00:27:17.357 --> 00:27:23.523
As soon as you feel really heard by your partner, you, you know, the wind is a little bit out of your sails for being furious.

353
00:27:24.399 --> 00:27:35.212
I sometimes worry that a lot of people are waiting for perfection before they step into the next season of parenthood.

354
00:27:35.532 --> 00:27:37.995
Maybe I'm guilty of this myself a little bit to some degree.

355
00:27:38.215 --> 00:27:40.998
I think me and my partner talk about this sometimes, me and my fiancé about...

356
00:27:41.779 --> 00:27:44.300
like, it doesn't feel like there's ever going to be a perfect time to have kids.

357
00:27:44.960 --> 00:27:48.561
When you look at the nature of my life and her life, you go, look, crazy, crazy schedules.

358
00:27:49.182 --> 00:27:50.982
There really is no time right now.

359
00:27:51.723 --> 00:27:58.305
But I reflect and go, well, everything that I do now, including this podcast, at the time that I did the first episode, there was no time.

360
00:27:58.525 --> 00:27:58.685
Yeah.

361
00:27:58.725 --> 00:27:59.405
But I made the time.

362
00:27:59.565 --> 00:28:00.185
Yeah.

363
00:28:00.346 --> 00:28:04.307
And I sometimes worry that as young people, we...

364
00:28:05.087 --> 00:28:14.253
are in a culture that is waiting for more perfection than is coming in terms of our romantic partner or our circumstances.

365
00:28:14.333 --> 00:28:21.597
And of course, there is a fundamental sort of basis of security that everybody needs to be able to bring a life into the world.

366
00:28:21.737 --> 00:28:23.939
And often people don't have that.

367
00:28:24.159 --> 00:28:25.640
But I'm wondering what your thoughts are on that.

368
00:28:25.920 --> 00:28:28.881
Yeah, I mean, I had this conversation with my grad school advisor.

369
00:28:28.942 --> 00:28:30.882
I said, I would love to have kids.

370
00:28:31.343 --> 00:28:32.223
What do you recommend?

371
00:28:32.443 --> 00:28:33.384
When is the right time?

372
00:28:33.424 --> 00:28:36.525
And she laughed and she said, there is no right time.

373
00:28:36.645 --> 00:28:37.606
You just have to do it.

374
00:28:37.746 --> 00:28:41.588
You just have to make it work because once the baby shows up, you'll figure it out.

375
00:28:42.268 --> 00:28:49.654
And that was tremendously good advice and led me to start having kids within the next few years after that conversation.

376
00:28:49.674 --> 00:28:50.074
Really?

377
00:28:50.274 --> 00:28:50.494
Yeah.

378
00:28:50.695 --> 00:28:50.855
Yeah.

379
00:28:50.875 --> 00:28:53.296
I was like, okay, I guess I'm just going to go for it.

380
00:28:53.357 --> 00:28:54.017
I'm going to make it work.

381
00:28:54.057 --> 00:28:54.698
And it was hard.

382
00:28:55.398 --> 00:28:57.460
But we did, in fact, figure it out.

383
00:28:58.160 --> 00:29:10.628
And I think, you know, when you optimize everything, and you feel like you need the perfect conditions, I need to own a house, it has to be this many bedrooms, I need, you know, this level of stability.

384
00:29:10.989 --> 00:29:12.650
Yes, all those things are terrific.

385
00:29:13.310 --> 00:29:25.054
But historically, you know, people had kids young and, you know, often they found that having kids gave them a really strong impetus to get those things together.

386
00:29:25.114 --> 00:29:27.915
We used to think about having kids as like a cornerstone of a life.

387
00:29:27.955 --> 00:29:28.916
It's like a foundation.

388
00:29:29.396 --> 00:29:32.177
You know, you do that and then you sort of build your career and everything else.

389
00:29:32.717 --> 00:29:34.798
Now we kind of think of it as like a capstone.

390
00:29:35.278 --> 00:29:36.698
It's like your crowning achievement.

391
00:29:37.079 --> 00:29:40.400
You've got everything perfectly set and now it's time to have kids.

392
00:29:40.420 --> 00:29:40.900
Yeah.

393
00:29:41.080 --> 00:29:44.824
And I think the problem with that is, first of all, our biology doesn't always agree.

394
00:29:45.105 --> 00:29:48.008
You know, we can sort of lose our best window in which to have kids.

395
00:29:48.789 --> 00:29:54.135
And I also think, like, having kids isn't just an individual responsibility.

396
00:29:54.695 --> 00:29:58.019
We need to be thinking about it as it's a collective responsibility.

397
00:29:58.039 --> 00:29:58.780
It's societal responsibility.

398
00:29:59.320 --> 00:30:01.343
We are an allo-parenting species.

399
00:30:01.763 --> 00:30:04.005
So what that means, we're cooperative breeders.

400
00:30:04.066 --> 00:30:05.607
We raise our kids in community.

401
00:30:05.988 --> 00:30:06.989
That's how we evolved.

402
00:30:07.009 --> 00:30:10.753
That's if you look at hunter-gatherers, that's how they raise their kids.

403
00:30:11.253 --> 00:30:13.215
We are not designed to do this in isolation.

404
00:30:14.242 --> 00:30:20.607
And I think, you know, when you think about, like, what does a healthy society provide for parents to reduce stress, right?

405
00:30:20.647 --> 00:30:26.791
Like, generous maternity and paternity leaves, you know, job protections, child care.

406
00:30:26.811 --> 00:30:31.414
Like, I'm a big believer in having strong policies that make it easier to have kids.

407
00:30:31.915 --> 00:30:38.259
Because I think in the absence of those policies, you feel like it's your job to get everything completely lined up.

408
00:30:38.900 --> 00:30:43.483
And that time might never come, especially not in a, you know, tempestuous economy.

409
00:30:44.728 --> 00:30:47.991
And I think we're seeing some of the symptoms of exactly what you've described there.

410
00:30:48.371 --> 00:31:02.083
A landmark 2024 study published in The Lancet projects that by the year 2100, 97% of all countries and territories will have fertility rates too low to sustain their populations.

411
00:31:02.683 --> 00:31:08.767
The global fertility rate has plummeted from an average of 5 children per woman in 1950 to just 2.2 today.

412
00:31:09.348 --> 00:31:17.033
According to the CDC and Pew Research data, the US total fertility rate just hit an all-time recorded low of 1.6.

413
00:31:17.533 --> 00:31:22.977
This is far below the replacement rate of 2.1 children per couple, I guess.

414
00:31:23.297 --> 00:31:23.938
Yeah.

415
00:31:24.078 --> 00:31:27.000
Required to keep the population stable without immigration.

416
00:31:27.821 --> 00:31:40.691
CDC data shows total US birth rates dropped yet again by 1% in 2025, falling to roughly 3.6 million babies, continuing a nearly two-decade downfall slide since the Great Recession.

417
00:31:41.151 --> 00:31:48.237
And lastly, because the fertility rate is crashing in high-income nations but remaining comparatively high in specific low-income regions...

418
00:31:49.138 --> 00:31:52.701
It is predicted a massive shift in human demographics will take place.

419
00:31:52.741 --> 00:32:00.249
And by 2100, one in every two children born on the planet will be born in sub-Saharan Africa.

420
00:32:01.810 --> 00:32:04.573
It's all quite shocking to hear, isn't it?

421
00:32:04.913 --> 00:32:05.174
I think.

422
00:32:05.774 --> 00:32:06.956
Well, I mean, it's inconceivable.

423
00:32:06.976 --> 00:32:10.319
I thought we'd growing up, everyone was talking about too many people being on the planet.

424
00:32:10.490 --> 00:32:10.650
Right.

425
00:32:10.670 --> 00:32:16.996
There was this narrative of the population bomb, which was this really popular theory in the 60s that we had too many children.

426
00:32:17.276 --> 00:32:17.496
Yeah.

427
00:32:17.856 --> 00:32:23.341
And we needed to, you know, adopt contraception and we needed to prevent too many children from being born.

428
00:32:24.142 --> 00:32:29.586
We all took that too literally and maybe overcorrected because now you have this population drop.

429
00:32:30.427 --> 00:32:40.051
And it's concerning because what you don't want is a society with what's called an inverse age curve, which means that you have many more old people than young people.

430
00:32:40.691 --> 00:32:44.372
Because then you don't have enough caregivers for the older people.

431
00:32:44.412 --> 00:32:46.733
You don't have enough people to sustain the economy.

432
00:32:47.553 --> 00:32:49.254
You don't have innovators.

433
00:32:49.454 --> 00:32:53.376
You don't have, you know, the folks who are sort of building your future.

434
00:32:53.776 --> 00:32:57.157
You've depopulated that and you have a very aging population.

435
00:32:57.197 --> 00:32:59.418
And that can create a lot of instability.

436
00:32:59.438 --> 00:32:59.578
Yeah.

437
00:33:00.178 --> 00:33:09.762
So I think we need to be thinking about, you know, how do we make parenting easier and more desirable for young people?

438
00:33:09.802 --> 00:33:15.785
Because I think that we've managed to market it as an undesirable choice.

439
00:33:15.925 --> 00:33:18.506
How do we make it easier and more desirable for young people?

440
00:33:19.070 --> 00:33:27.877
So I think part of it is the conversation we're having right now where we're talking about the meaning, the purpose, the benefits that you can get from your relationships with others.

441
00:33:28.438 --> 00:33:33.522
I think that we need a cultural reframe around care to raise the value of care.

442
00:33:33.622 --> 00:33:44.471
One of the reasons I'm interested in fatherhood is because I think seeing men as talented caregivers kind of unlocks this appreciation we have for the importance of care.

443
00:33:44.491 --> 00:33:44.791
Mm-hmm.

444
00:33:45.151 --> 00:33:52.498
The shift you described your brother undergoing where he went from transactional, how can I make the most money to my kids matter?

445
00:33:52.558 --> 00:33:54.199
How can I spend the most time with them?

446
00:33:54.219 --> 00:34:03.828
I think is a really valuable shift in purpose that, you know, at scale would make societies healthier and more empathetic.

447
00:34:04.362 --> 00:34:07.363
So there's like two things I think are worth saying here from my perspective.

448
00:34:07.383 --> 00:34:15.725
The first is I think it's important that we express the fact that, A, not everybody can have kids because of, you know, reasons beyond their control.

449
00:34:15.745 --> 00:34:21.806
I think the second thing is not everybody wants or should want to have kids, you know, depending on their circumstance.

450
00:34:22.346 --> 00:34:34.189
And the third thing is that I do feel in my personal circumstances, when I think about what I want from my life, again, this is about me, I do feel tremendously positively jealous of his life.

451
00:34:35.490 --> 00:34:57.727
and that's a strange thing because you know he has a couple more gray hairs than me even though he's only a year older so you know everything in life is a trade-off but the like deep sense of meaning and purpose that even i experienced when those kids are here like they were at my house for the last couple of weeks and it's it's everything seems yeah incomparable in terms of like meaning to these beautiful children and

452
00:34:57.988 --> 00:35:01.653
Yeah, they're just endlessly curious and fascinating.

453
00:35:02.714 --> 00:35:12.786
And, you know, there's very little you can get from scrolling on a screen that, you know, that to me is as fulfilling as what you can get from watching a baby learn something.

454
00:35:13.533 --> 00:35:19.140
It used to be that working for yourself was a massive, massive risk, but that world has completely changed.

455
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471
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One of the things you've heard me talk about quite a lot over the last couple of years, and this is something that's true in business and content, but also with everything in life, is that consistency is the thing that really, really compounds.

472
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474
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But, as I've experienced, when you grow, this starts to break down, and deals start to slip, follow-ups don't happen, leads go cold that shouldn't have.

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And when this happens, a lot of leaders look at it and think they have a people problem.

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when actually it's a systems problem.

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487
00:37:34.831 --> 00:37:45.097
Am I right in thinking that parents have different brains as it relates to the brain being protected?

488
00:37:45.810 --> 00:37:46.070
Yeah.

489
00:37:46.270 --> 00:37:53.533
So there's this really interesting emerging body of research suggesting that being a parent is neuroprotective in late life.

490
00:37:54.173 --> 00:38:01.435
So there are studies, the UK Biobank is the biggest, big repository of brain scans from people in their 50s and 60s.

491
00:38:02.156 --> 00:38:08.918
And they find that both men and women who report having had more kids have markers of a younger looking brain age.

492
00:38:09.538 --> 00:38:25.836
So if you do a machine learning algorithm that adjusts for your chronological age and then, you know, takes what the scans looks like and uses that to estimate what they think your brain age is, you look relatively younger when you report having had more kids.

493
00:38:26.576 --> 00:38:28.878
It seems like the greatest benefit is at two or three kids.

494
00:38:28.918 --> 00:38:30.299
After that, it kind of levels off.

495
00:38:30.459 --> 00:38:35.263
You don't necessarily get a big benefit from having had six kids compared to having had two.

496
00:38:36.003 --> 00:38:49.413
But it suggests that there is something about the practice that you get to your social brain and to your empathetic brain that is really beneficial to your brain plasticity and functioning later in life.

497
00:38:50.225 --> 00:38:53.988
That's quite surprising because you think, you know, parents go through a lot of stress having lots of kids.

498
00:38:54.428 --> 00:38:56.230
So you'd assume that they'd be sleeping less.

499
00:38:56.830 --> 00:38:58.251
You'd assume that would be bad for the brain.

500
00:38:58.552 --> 00:39:02.555
But you're telling me there's evidence that it's actually protective to be a parent of two or three kids.

501
00:39:02.775 --> 00:39:06.758
Yeah, I think it's healthy to think about the short-term cost and then the long-term benefit.

502
00:39:07.418 --> 00:39:15.722
So, you know, like there are plenty of studies that have found that moment to moment, parents of young kids say that they're less happy.

503
00:39:16.482 --> 00:39:17.262
They're more tired.

504
00:39:17.363 --> 00:39:18.143
They're more stressed.

505
00:39:18.163 --> 00:39:19.143
They have more going on.

506
00:39:19.223 --> 00:39:22.745
We've talked about the, you know, brain changes, hormone changes.

507
00:39:23.465 --> 00:39:29.228
But then, you know, if you look longer in later life, people will report more fulfillment.

508
00:39:30.093 --> 00:39:32.975
So it's like you're doing something that's not very fun.

509
00:39:33.335 --> 00:39:34.056
It's taxing.

510
00:39:34.096 --> 00:39:35.317
It can be very isolating.

511
00:39:36.137 --> 00:39:43.482
And yet you're kind of reaping this longer term benefit in terms of the power of those relationships and that sense of connection with other people.

512
00:39:43.862 --> 00:39:52.548
That social integration and that practice trying to understand others that is really beneficial, like it's a glue for creating good relationships.

513
00:39:52.909 --> 00:39:58.451
What is it exactly about being a parent, though, that's going to make my brain more protected when I get older?

514
00:39:58.891 --> 00:40:04.473
You know, one of the theories I had was that, because, you know, when those three kids were here, they had me playing all kinds of bloody games.

515
00:40:04.533 --> 00:40:06.134
They wanted to play hide-and-seek for seven hours.

516
00:40:06.754 --> 00:40:11.736
And it is somewhat, you know, actually picking them up all the bloody time, because there's three of them, and one of them's eight.

517
00:40:11.936 --> 00:40:12.916
I can't really pick her up easily.

518
00:40:13.317 --> 00:40:14.477
The other two, I can get them up.

519
00:40:14.857 --> 00:40:17.558
And then she starts complaining that I've not picked her up, so I have to pick her up.

520
00:40:17.578 --> 00:40:19.139
And I'm like, wow, what a workout.

521
00:40:19.359 --> 00:40:19.479
Yeah.

522
00:40:19.859 --> 00:40:21.980
It is both a cognitive and a physical workout.

523
00:40:22.200 --> 00:40:22.560
Yeah.

524
00:40:22.720 --> 00:40:23.400
when they're around.

525
00:40:24.040 --> 00:40:31.082
Is it that like I'm building up brain reserve because they're challenging me and having tantrums and they're wanting to play and they're engaging me all the time?

526
00:40:31.142 --> 00:40:32.483
Is that why it's protective?

527
00:40:32.543 --> 00:40:32.643
Yeah.

528
00:40:32.703 --> 00:40:36.064
I think it's like Sudoku for your social cognition, right?

529
00:40:36.144 --> 00:40:49.668
It's like you're doing crossword puzzles, but instead of like, you know, the sort of practice that you're getting for putting words together, you're getting practice understanding people's minds and intentions and communicating and responding to them and being sensitive to them.

530
00:40:50.168 --> 00:40:51.990
And all of that is putting you through a workout.

531
00:40:52.050 --> 00:40:55.452
And it's also a full body workout because kids are really embodied.

532
00:40:56.213 --> 00:41:03.739
And there's actually interesting research that dads especially play in these physically demanding kind of vigorous ways with young kids.

533
00:41:03.759 --> 00:41:04.219
That's exactly it.

534
00:41:04.259 --> 00:41:04.920
That was my job.

535
00:41:04.940 --> 00:41:07.421
My job was to pick them up and throw them as high as I possibly can.

536
00:41:07.462 --> 00:41:07.622
Yeah.

537
00:41:07.802 --> 00:41:08.682
And kids love that.

538
00:41:08.903 --> 00:41:09.083
Yeah.

539
00:41:09.123 --> 00:41:10.404
And then me now.

540
00:41:10.764 --> 00:41:12.646
And then I threw that and then it's like me now.

541
00:41:12.786 --> 00:41:15.748
And then I just I was like, I'm going to lose weeks throwing these kids in the air.

542
00:41:15.828 --> 00:41:17.049
But also I'm going to break something.

543
00:41:17.327 --> 00:41:17.467
Yeah.

544
00:41:17.527 --> 00:41:24.054
I mean, I think my husband never had to see the chiropractor until, you know, he became a dad and all of a sudden you're throwing them up in the air all the time.

545
00:41:24.094 --> 00:41:28.979
But that kind of play is really good for kids because it's testing their limits.

546
00:41:29.079 --> 00:41:33.023
It's challenging them and it's actually helping them build their risk tolerance.

547
00:41:33.544 --> 00:41:39.249
So, like, think about, like, the moment of fear that you have when you're thrown up in the air and then the relief when you're caught.

548
00:41:40.190 --> 00:41:51.115
You're basically practicing your emotion regulation skills on a small scale so that when you're thrown into a scary situation at school, you have a stronger sense of confidence.

549
00:41:51.355 --> 00:41:56.957
My other theory around why having children would be neuroprotective for the brain was around oxytocin.

550
00:41:57.737 --> 00:42:03.079
And I say that because I sat with Robert Waldinger, who's done that long Harvard study on human happiness.

551
00:42:03.660 --> 00:42:09.202
And the conclusion is that one of the single biggest predictors of longevity is whether you have strong relationships.

552
00:42:09.782 --> 00:42:15.609
And again, I had another scientist say to me that oxytocin, the bonding chemical, is neuroprotective.

553
00:42:16.329 --> 00:42:22.736
So I imagine having three children is going to equal a lot of oxytocin, which is going to equal some neuroprotectiveness.

554
00:42:22.836 --> 00:42:24.658
I mean, we are social animals.

555
00:42:25.219 --> 00:42:27.681
We are designed to bond with each other.

556
00:42:28.322 --> 00:42:29.443
We pair bond.

557
00:42:29.543 --> 00:42:30.725
We bond with our kids.

558
00:42:31.185 --> 00:42:32.046
That's really healthy.

559
00:42:32.586 --> 00:42:34.027
I love Waldinger's studies.

560
00:42:34.107 --> 00:42:41.932
I cite those in the book when I talk about, you know, if you really want to think about what creates longevity and well-being late in life, look at your relationships.

561
00:42:42.833 --> 00:42:46.875
And, you know, I feel like he shows that really well with this 80-year study that he's been doing.

562
00:42:47.376 --> 00:42:53.280
There are all these brain changes and hormone changes that are designed to facilitate to help us build those bonds.

563
00:42:54.060 --> 00:43:03.222
And that's a lot of what is sort of going off in early parenthood is like we are sort of reorganizing to become more sensitive, more attentive caregivers.

564
00:43:03.322 --> 00:43:08.244
It's not like, you know, some people are just destined to be great parents and some people aren't.

565
00:43:08.844 --> 00:43:13.045
It's like as we put in the experience, as we get the practice, we put in the reps.

566
00:43:13.825 --> 00:43:18.047
we're building that brain and body that helps make us really great sensitive caregivers.

567
00:43:18.447 --> 00:43:22.148
And then that, I think, can transfer over to our other relationships, too.

568
00:43:22.728 --> 00:43:28.610
If you've learned how to calm a kid down from a tantrum, you are probably going to be a very effective manager at work.

569
00:43:29.371 --> 00:43:38.154
If you have, you know, negotiated with three kids who all want to pick you up at different times, you know, you're probably going to be a better problem solver in your couple relationship.

570
00:43:38.214 --> 00:43:41.815
Like, those are just skills that you're building that can cross domains.

571
00:43:42.227 --> 00:43:50.492
I was just looking at some of the research on this, and it says that research shows that oxytocin actively downregulates harmful pro-inflammatory cytokines in the brain.

572
00:43:51.133 --> 00:43:58.438
It acts on the brain's immune cells, making toxic inflammatory responses lower.

573
00:43:58.878 --> 00:44:11.346
And studies on aging mice demonstrated that long-term oxytocin treatment concurrently enhanced the brain's plasticity, which directly improved learning and made them better with memory as they aged.

574
00:44:11.706 --> 00:44:24.150
And in terms of Alzheimer's, in animal models of Alzheimer's, oxytocin has been shown to reduce the toxicity of amyloid beta plaques, the toxic protein clumps that are the hallmark of Alzheimer's disease, which is fascinating.

575
00:44:24.251 --> 00:44:26.911
And that's the chemical that is produced from bonding.

576
00:44:27.051 --> 00:44:29.032
Yeah, that's a pair bonding chemical.

577
00:44:29.132 --> 00:44:30.933
It's an affiliative neuropeptide.

578
00:44:31.493 --> 00:44:33.914
So it sort of helps us shore up our social bonds.

579
00:44:34.596 --> 00:44:35.816
Touch is really important, isn't it?

580
00:44:35.977 --> 00:44:36.177
Yeah.

581
00:44:36.297 --> 00:44:37.337
You know, it's such an important thing.

582
00:44:37.537 --> 00:44:37.737
Yeah.

583
00:44:37.757 --> 00:44:50.762
My lab found actually that when dads engaged in more physical touch, there's a type of touch that's called proprioceptive touch, which is exactly what you were just describing, like picking babies up, moving them around, playing with them like in space.

584
00:44:51.482 --> 00:44:54.403
It's that sort of like vigorous touch that we often associate with fathers.

585
00:44:54.923 --> 00:44:59.985
When dads did more of that, they subsequently had higher oxytocin levels when we did a blood draw in our lab.

586
00:45:00.305 --> 00:45:02.246
And that's been found in some other labs as well.

587
00:45:02.900 --> 00:45:04.441
Do you know Erika Comissar who's been on my show?

588
00:45:04.601 --> 00:45:05.061
I do.

589
00:45:05.381 --> 00:45:15.525
One of the things she says, which has been a little bit controversial, is that she's argued that placing children under the age of three in daycare causes profound separation trauma and elevates cortisol to dangerous levels.

590
00:45:15.545 --> 00:45:17.946
So she's quite against daycare.

591
00:45:18.566 --> 00:45:19.887
So I politely disagree.

592
00:45:20.748 --> 00:45:23.029
Both my kids went to daycare where they thrived.

593
00:45:23.269 --> 00:45:29.853
And I am a big believer in this idea of alloparenting, which is this idea that we collectively raise kids.

594
00:45:29.953 --> 00:45:33.635
We are designed to help each other out and share care.

595
00:45:34.255 --> 00:45:42.340
And so the model of single parent, single child, isolated in a suburban home is a very weird model in the context of human history.

596
00:45:43.020 --> 00:45:51.165
And so I think this idea that, you know, we can't participate in shared care, that kids can't do well in group care settings, to me is a little exaggerated.

597
00:45:51.725 --> 00:45:59.850
I do think it's very true that it's about timing and when is the right window to, you know, put kids in group care settings.

598
00:46:01.111 --> 00:46:07.315
It's, you know, ideally when kids can benefit from some social interaction, which is usually a little older in toddlerhood.

599
00:46:07.875 --> 00:46:10.037
So, you know, 18 months and beyond.

600
00:46:10.917 --> 00:46:14.622
Very young babies often do better when they have a single caregiver.

601
00:46:14.662 --> 00:46:18.207
They have a more stable attachment figure that they can bond with.

602
00:46:18.848 --> 00:46:24.595
But babies can form really strong attachments with their dads, with a caregiver.

603
00:46:25.156 --> 00:46:27.840
It doesn't necessarily have to be the case that...

604
00:46:28.240 --> 00:46:38.028
Mom is the only person that needs to be present for every moment of an infant's life, because I think that model is not terribly sustainable for parents.

605
00:46:38.828 --> 00:46:41.770
And parenting stress is really bad for kids.

606
00:46:41.971 --> 00:46:44.032
You know, and this goes back to the birthright conversation.

607
00:46:44.513 --> 00:46:49.716
I think we need to be thinking about parenting in ways that are sustainable, that allow us to get help.

608
00:46:50.537 --> 00:47:05.383
And we also, you know, if we really think that we don't want kids in a lot of early child care, we need to support that with universal paid parental leave, which is not available for most parents in the United States.

609
00:47:05.463 --> 00:47:14.827
So a lot of moms are coming up against a reality that doesn't fit with what some of the parenting gurus are telling them is the only way to raise their kids.

610
00:47:14.867 --> 00:47:17.408
And I think that creates a lot of anxiety.

611
00:47:17.659 --> 00:47:26.446
If you think about the early phases of a child coming into the world, like year one, year two, year three, is there any differences in when either parent plays a different type of role?

612
00:47:27.487 --> 00:47:28.748
There's a little bit of difference.

613
00:47:28.848 --> 00:47:34.032
And it sort of depends on, you know, what the parent's styles are and what the kid's situation is.

614
00:47:35.786 --> 00:47:42.151
There's a chapter in my book where I talked with Richard Reeves, who's done a lot of great work on masculinity and manhood.

615
00:47:43.112 --> 00:47:48.756
And he says he thinks dads should be able to get paternity leave up to their kid's 18th birthday.

616
00:47:49.457 --> 00:47:56.882
Because a lot of the time dads find that their sort of best relationship with their kid happens later in childhood, even in adolescence.

617
00:47:56.902 --> 00:48:01.206
You know, he talked about taking his kids on trips, teaching his sons how to drive.

618
00:48:01.746 --> 00:48:09.671
And so I think like dads can kind of come in at different points along a kid's development and provide a lot of value.

619
00:48:10.271 --> 00:48:18.236
I think early in infancy, if mom is breastfeeding, it's important for the baby to get that sort of regular access to milk.

620
00:48:18.936 --> 00:48:32.562
You know, of course, moms can pump, dads can do feeding, but it is often a source of challenge for couples when a baby's first born and dads feel like mom has a really big biological head start.

621
00:48:33.102 --> 00:48:38.044
You know, she has had the pregnancy, she's been able to build a bond with the child.

622
00:48:38.544 --> 00:48:44.027
Fresh feeding is like this magical formula that she can give the baby to help soothe.

623
00:48:44.327 --> 00:48:46.788
And so I think a lot of dads struggle to find their place.

624
00:48:47.548 --> 00:48:51.793
in early parenthood in the first year or two, because they're like, what am I supposed to do?

625
00:48:52.814 --> 00:48:57.218
You know, it takes a little while for dads to kind of come online as parents.

626
00:48:57.599 --> 00:49:01.803
You know, dads need, I think, some space and opportunity to figure things out.

627
00:49:02.884 --> 00:49:10.472
And you often get into this dynamic where mom is kind of the default parent in the early years and dads are waiting for their instructions.

628
00:49:10.492 --> 00:49:10.692
Yeah.

629
00:49:11.168 --> 00:49:18.533
When you've gone out on the book tree and you've spoken to both fathers and mothers, what is the like central point of contention that you discover?

630
00:49:18.733 --> 00:49:19.094
It's funny.

631
00:49:19.194 --> 00:49:22.656
I was just at a friend's book club meeting and it was a mix of couples.

632
00:49:22.696 --> 00:49:23.737
It was moms and dads.

633
00:49:23.957 --> 00:49:30.782
And the thing that they all got into was this concept of maternal gatekeeping and sort of male malingering.

634
00:49:31.322 --> 00:49:33.383
which is this like double-edged kind of sword.

635
00:49:33.463 --> 00:49:46.366
And so maternal gatekeeping, it's a somewhat controversial term, but it just refers to any time a mom consciously or unconsciously sort of puts up a roadblock to dad's fully participating in parenting.

636
00:49:47.107 --> 00:49:50.608
And it could be as simple as the baby's fussy and crying.

637
00:49:51.228 --> 00:49:53.208
A mom says, hand him to me.

638
00:49:53.849 --> 00:49:54.689
You know, I know what to do.

639
00:49:55.473 --> 00:50:01.134
But over time, that kind of spiral into a pattern of mom becomes the authority figure.

640
00:50:01.894 --> 00:50:05.595
Dad is seen as like the bumbling, hapless kind of appendage.

641
00:50:06.495 --> 00:50:14.316
And dads ultimately feel like their contributions aren't valued or, you know, mom doesn't really want them to have a lot of independent time.

642
00:50:14.356 --> 00:50:16.417
Maybe it's because mom doesn't trust the dad, right?

643
00:50:16.917 --> 00:50:23.478
Which is an area where I think having communication and making sure there's trust before the birth is really important.

644
00:50:24.266 --> 00:50:43.399
But, you know, the flip side of maternal gatekeeping is what's called weaponized incompetence or husbandly malingering, which is when, you know, dad, who's a totally competent, let's say, project manager at work who can handle lots of different spreadsheets and a whole workflow, suddenly doesn't know what to put in the diaper bag.

645
00:50:44.159 --> 00:50:50.486
Or, you know, when we were at the book club meeting, one of the moms was saying their baby was a couple days old.

646
00:50:50.506 --> 00:50:52.167
There was a giant diaper blowout.

647
00:50:52.848 --> 00:50:54.470
And she had gone out for a 10-minute walk.

648
00:50:54.510 --> 00:50:56.292
And her husband called to be like, what do I do?

649
00:50:56.832 --> 00:50:58.954
She's like, I've been a parent for exactly two days.

650
00:50:58.994 --> 00:51:00.476
That's exactly as long as you.

651
00:51:00.596 --> 00:51:01.417
I have no idea.

652
00:51:01.477 --> 00:51:02.318
You got to figure it out.

653
00:51:02.338 --> 00:51:03.719
He's like, but the poop's on the wall.

654
00:51:04.320 --> 00:51:05.681
She's like, I'm sorry.

655
00:51:06.002 --> 00:51:07.043
You can use the wipes.

656
00:51:07.523 --> 00:51:11.405
You know, that same husband she told me later was in charge of packing lunches.

657
00:51:11.465 --> 00:51:15.367
And at a certain point he said, do you give the kids anything but chicken nuggets?

658
00:51:16.347 --> 00:51:17.368
She said, well, there's fruit.

659
00:51:17.588 --> 00:51:21.290
You can cut up some avocado, you know, like throw stuff in.

660
00:51:21.730 --> 00:51:27.373
So I think that is sort of like when dads act like they just have no idea and it's mom's job to solve the problem.

661
00:51:28.113 --> 00:51:31.814
And so I think a lot of moms are sort of frustrated with what they see as that dynamic happening.

662
00:51:31.954 --> 00:51:37.156
At the same time, I've talked to a lot of dads who said, I would love to have done more.

663
00:51:37.877 --> 00:51:43.158
But my wife insisted on organizing everything, scheduling everything, telling me what to do.

664
00:51:43.319 --> 00:51:47.080
I never felt like I got an opportunity to fully step up.

665
00:51:47.520 --> 00:51:54.166
So I think that's an area where couples really need to iron some of this out even before the baby comes.

666
00:51:54.867 --> 00:52:03.154
Who's going to do what and how are we going to balance it in a way that we both get some ownership, we both have some opportunity and we can trust each other.

667
00:52:04.675 --> 00:52:11.501
Talking about that parents often report is that post-pregnancy there is a change in their relationship and intimacy.

668
00:52:11.742 --> 00:52:13.043
Have you done any studies on that?

669
00:52:13.485 --> 00:52:13.745
Yes.

670
00:52:14.065 --> 00:52:23.831
And that is one of the most robust findings in transition to parenthood research is that there is a drop in couple relationship satisfaction often around the birth of a new baby.

671
00:52:24.771 --> 00:52:26.112
And it's not surprising.

672
00:52:26.172 --> 00:52:28.293
You take two people who are having fun together.

673
00:52:28.934 --> 00:52:30.374
You sleep deprive them.

674
00:52:30.875 --> 00:52:33.016
You give them a lot of extra responsibility.

675
00:52:33.176 --> 00:52:38.539
And then a baby who's crying and demanding that, you know, they get out of bed at multiple times during the night.

676
00:52:39.279 --> 00:52:47.643
So you often get a lot of conflict around who's going to do what, you know, who's more connected to the baby.

677
00:52:48.684 --> 00:52:53.666
And, you know, I think it's one of those things where forewarned is forearmed.

678
00:52:54.306 --> 00:53:02.030
If couples know that this is going to be a risky time for their relationship, they can do more to shore up their communication before a baby's born.

679
00:53:02.210 --> 00:53:06.772
Have you ever quantified how different the relationship is on the other side of giving birth?

680
00:53:07.255 --> 00:53:19.764
We have definitely given lots of different couple relationship questionnaires and we've measured them and we've looked at that dip and we've seen that there is, in fact, a statistically significant drop in relationship quality.

681
00:53:19.965 --> 00:53:20.605
And sex life.

682
00:53:20.945 --> 00:53:21.706
And sex life.

683
00:53:21.786 --> 00:53:22.106
Yeah.

684
00:53:22.126 --> 00:53:23.647
I mean, because of course, right?

685
00:53:23.687 --> 00:53:29.252
Like, you've got an extra person in your bed a lot of the time or near your bed.

686
00:53:29.272 --> 00:53:29.812
Mm-hmm.

687
00:53:30.413 --> 00:53:40.826
And if you have delivered the baby vaginally, there's also a lot of stuff that's sore and might need to get stitched up and even more so if it was a C-section birth.

688
00:53:41.126 --> 00:53:46.814
And does that at some point go back to pre-birth levels in terms of relationship satisfaction?

689
00:53:47.215 --> 00:53:50.919
Yeah, so there is a lot of variability in couples' relationship trajectories.

690
00:53:51.380 --> 00:53:58.308
So there are some couples for whom relationship quality continues to dip, and often the relationship dissolves.

691
00:53:58.889 --> 00:54:04.436
There are also couples who report they have a better quality relationship after having parented together.

692
00:54:04.936 --> 00:54:06.717
You know, there's a richer relationship.

693
00:54:06.777 --> 00:54:08.518
Like, I feel that with my husband.

694
00:54:08.538 --> 00:54:14.381
Like, I appreciate him so much because I've seen him negotiate with terrorists in the form of our young children.

695
00:54:15.042 --> 00:54:26.588
So, you know, I think, like, how well couples fare is going to diverge sort of depending on how well they can kind of muscle through some of those early years.

696
00:54:27.023 --> 00:54:34.431
Earlier on, you said that men experience postpartum depression after the birth of their child sometimes.

697
00:54:35.332 --> 00:54:38.975
And that's quite a unconventional thing to hear.

698
00:54:39.536 --> 00:54:43.500
When we think about postpartum depression, typically it's in the context of what the woman is experiencing.

699
00:54:44.581 --> 00:54:48.225
So it's quite interesting to hear that that is a big issue for men as well.

700
00:54:48.863 --> 00:54:54.030
So technically, postpartum depression just means depression that occurs after the birth of a baby.

701
00:54:54.050 --> 00:54:55.292
That's what postpartum means.

702
00:54:55.953 --> 00:55:01.882
So that term, postpartum, doesn't necessarily mean that, you know, it's the person that's delivered the baby.

703
00:55:01.902 --> 00:55:04.405
It just means this is the time period after birth.

704
00:55:05.126 --> 00:55:13.713
And there's some evidence that dads' prevalence rate for depression, so in new dads, it's about twice that of the general population.

705
00:55:13.793 --> 00:55:18.958
So if you look at non-fathering men, they have about half the risk of depression as new dads.

706
00:55:19.438 --> 00:55:21.500
So there's a big uptick in depression risk.

707
00:55:21.520 --> 00:55:23.562
That doesn't mean that every new dad is depressed.

708
00:55:23.582 --> 00:55:24.102
Absolutely.

709
00:55:24.442 --> 00:55:28.465
And new dads have lower depression rates than new moms, just to be clear.

710
00:55:28.826 --> 00:55:30.867
But it's also not a competition.

711
00:55:31.147 --> 00:55:32.508
It's not a zero-sum game.

712
00:55:32.528 --> 00:55:45.098
And I think there can be a lot of consternation, understandably, from moms who feel like we have fought for the term postpartum depression to be widely recognized by the medical community.

713
00:55:45.138 --> 00:55:46.439
We've advocated for this.

714
00:55:47.199 --> 00:55:50.462
Now that we've succeeded, men are sort of trying to take it over.

715
00:55:51.412 --> 00:55:52.892
And I'm sympathetic to that argument.

716
00:55:52.912 --> 00:55:55.393
And a lot of moms have said, why don't we call it perinatal depression?

717
00:55:55.473 --> 00:55:55.733
Fine.

718
00:55:55.773 --> 00:55:57.054
I think that's totally okay.

719
00:55:57.114 --> 00:55:59.935
Perinatal just means around the birth of a baby.

720
00:56:00.695 --> 00:56:01.835
And that's legitimate too.

721
00:56:02.375 --> 00:56:12.338
But if you think about what are the risk factors for depression, either in moms or in dads, like in, you know, the period following a baby's birth, it's a combination of factors.

722
00:56:12.398 --> 00:56:13.439
It's multidetermined.

723
00:56:13.619 --> 00:56:14.699
It's hormone changes.

724
00:56:15.458 --> 00:56:16.859
It's sleep changes.

725
00:56:17.419 --> 00:56:18.860
It's identity changes.

726
00:56:19.001 --> 00:56:26.766
It's relationship changes, like relationship conflict, changes to, you know, how you show up at work, to your extended family.

727
00:56:26.826 --> 00:56:32.190
It can reawaken childhood traumas that were unresolved about how you yourself were parented.

728
00:56:32.770 --> 00:56:45.059
So all of those things are coming to the fore, and you're preoccupied by what can be very isolating and repetitive care for a young baby, and it creates kind of a perfect storm of mental health risk.

729
00:56:45.725 --> 00:56:50.747
You've studied cortisol changes in couples, right?

730
00:56:50.947 --> 00:56:51.807
Yeah.

731
00:56:51.967 --> 00:56:54.548
And how their cortisol interacts with each other.

732
00:56:55.168 --> 00:57:06.792
Is there a biological divorce predictor in terms of a specific way a couple's cortisol sinks up or clashes in that sort of first year of parenting that tells you if their marriage is going to fail before they realize it themselves?

733
00:57:07.052 --> 00:57:15.163
Yeah, so I have looked at cortisol interconnection in my lab between couples, so how cortisol levels become correlated over time.

734
00:57:15.984 --> 00:57:24.015
I found that when couples had really strongly linked levels of cortisol, they reported lower marital satisfaction.

735
00:57:24.375 --> 00:57:26.876
And you'd think like, okay, they've got more similar hormones.

736
00:57:26.896 --> 00:57:28.016
That's probably a good thing.

737
00:57:28.296 --> 00:57:30.097
We found the opposite in our lab.

738
00:57:30.857 --> 00:57:36.199
And I think it's because you don't actually want to be contagious to other people's stress.

739
00:57:36.879 --> 00:57:42.460
When one person is really stressed, it's helpful to have a partner who can modulate that, who can calm you down.

740
00:57:43.241 --> 00:57:48.502
So you don't necessarily want to be exacerbating, like amplifying the stress state.

741
00:57:48.642 --> 00:57:49.423
Interesting.

742
00:57:49.443 --> 00:57:50.583
This is fascinating.

743
00:57:50.870 --> 00:58:02.495
There are some other labs that have found that especially in a transition to parenthood context, more synchrony in cortisol can actually be a good thing if you're looking from prenatal to postpartum.

744
00:58:03.223 --> 00:58:05.504
But outside of childbirth.

745
00:58:05.604 --> 00:58:05.884
Yes.

746
00:58:06.384 --> 00:58:16.247
So this is interesting for me because I was having a conversation with someone the other day and she was telling me that she emotionally is a little bit more variant than her partner.

747
00:58:16.367 --> 00:58:16.587
Yeah.

748
00:58:16.887 --> 00:58:30.571
And I was expressing a similar sentiment saying that I think actually the reason why my relationship works with my fiance Melanie is because Mel is a little bit emotionally variant and I am kind of the prefrontal cortex sounding board.

749
00:58:31.271 --> 00:58:32.212
That kind of brings us back down.

750
00:58:32.232 --> 00:58:32.712
Yeah.

751
00:58:32.812 --> 00:58:32.992
Yeah.

752
00:58:33.232 --> 00:58:37.154
So her emotional variance is super useful because she's almost like a threat detector.

753
00:58:37.294 --> 00:58:37.535
Right.

754
00:58:37.735 --> 00:58:38.335
In every regard.

755
00:58:38.355 --> 00:58:42.277
So if our relationship is drifting a little bit or if we're disconnected, she'll know first.

756
00:58:42.838 --> 00:58:48.841
Whereas I take a little bit more time to like to sort of have empathy to these kinds of like shifts in our relationship.

757
00:58:48.861 --> 00:58:51.122
She's like very in tune.

758
00:58:51.703 --> 00:58:52.923
It's like a sixth sense she has.

759
00:58:53.123 --> 00:58:53.424
Yeah.

760
00:58:53.704 --> 00:59:00.448
However, sometimes that can mean some things are harder to deal with and maybe she's more prone to worry sometimes.

761
00:59:00.468 --> 00:59:01.088
Mm hmm.

762
00:59:01.288 --> 00:59:10.298
And I've often felt, actually because she's expressed this to me, she's expressed the gratitude of me being able to bring her back to a place of calm.

763
00:59:10.538 --> 00:59:10.779
Yeah.

764
00:59:11.299 --> 00:59:12.741
I've often felt that that's kind of like my job.

765
00:59:13.041 --> 00:59:13.241
Yeah.

766
00:59:13.762 --> 00:59:19.748
And I've often thought that our relationship works because you do have two different types of people.

767
00:59:19.949 --> 00:59:20.049
Yeah.

768
00:59:20.069 --> 00:59:20.169
Yeah.

769
00:59:20.589 --> 00:59:24.172
And actually, this is not a plug, but I'm an investor in a company called Whoop.

770
00:59:24.752 --> 00:59:27.595
And on there, they have the stress measure.

771
00:59:27.655 --> 00:59:30.217
Again, it's not a perfect measure and nothing is a perfect measure.

772
00:59:30.697 --> 00:59:35.901
But I was looking at our differences in the stress response according to Whoop on the devices.

773
00:59:36.421 --> 00:59:39.964
And mine is very stable and hers is much more unstable.

774
00:59:41.005 --> 00:59:44.728
But I imagine that opposites attracted in this regard.

775
00:59:45.080 --> 00:59:51.324
Yeah, I mean, it's interesting because you could think if you were paired with somebody who was super stable, life might feel boring.

776
00:59:51.905 --> 00:59:56.348
If she was paired with somebody who was really volatile, life might feel too chaotic.

777
00:59:56.948 --> 00:59:59.690
So we frequently are drawn to people who compliment.

778
01:00:00.350 --> 01:00:06.734
something about ourselves and who are sort of different enough that it can sort of expand our worldview.

779
01:00:07.314 --> 01:00:10.315
And I worked with a couples therapist.

780
01:00:10.355 --> 01:00:19.580
This is sort of his theory that it's often the differences that drive us together that can ultimately polarize us when things go awry.

781
01:00:20.241 --> 01:00:27.725
So you can imagine a future where she's always the emotional one and you're always the calm one and nobody gets a chance to break out of that.

782
01:00:27.765 --> 01:00:29.586
And that becomes really entrenched in a way

783
01:00:30.486 --> 01:00:52.387
pulls you apart but you could also imagine a future where you meet in the middle yeah like you become more emotionally attuned yeah and she becomes calmer and more stable yeah and that's sort of the ideal right that's what you want is you want to you want to be joining around those differences i would say that's definitely what's happened yeah so that's good that's a good sign for your relationship yeah time to have a kid

784
01:00:53.073 --> 01:00:53.593
I think so.

785
01:00:53.613 --> 01:00:54.034
Yeah.

786
01:00:54.674 --> 01:00:55.134
I'm trying.

787
01:00:55.775 --> 01:00:56.335
Good.

788
01:00:56.355 --> 01:00:57.215
We froze our embryos.

789
01:00:57.455 --> 01:00:58.096
Excellent.

790
01:00:58.256 --> 01:00:59.557
So we've got them in the freezer.

791
01:00:59.877 --> 01:01:00.617
Fantastic.

792
01:01:00.837 --> 01:01:02.478
Which is a really interesting process.

793
01:01:02.518 --> 01:01:11.683
I think this is probably worth spending some time on because I think I was living under the assumption that like in my early 30s, I could just sort of decide when to have a kid and I could just, you know, have sex during that little window.

794
01:01:11.703 --> 01:01:14.065
They talk about where she's ovulating and the kids would appear.

795
01:01:14.085 --> 01:01:15.465
It's not necessarily how it works.

796
01:01:15.726 --> 01:01:15.986
Yeah.

797
01:01:16.006 --> 01:01:16.386
Turns out.

798
01:01:16.546 --> 01:01:17.929
No, it's actually a little trickier.

799
01:01:17.949 --> 01:01:18.931
It's trickier than I expected.

800
01:01:19.151 --> 01:01:22.518
There's actually a chapter in the book where I talk about paternity uncertainty.

801
01:01:22.639 --> 01:01:26.968
One of the things that's really unique and interesting about humans is we conceal our ovulation.

802
01:01:27.783 --> 01:01:39.830
So that makes us different from a lot of other animals where when a female is fertile, you know, because she changes color, she starts dancing in a certain way, she smells different, right?

803
01:01:39.850 --> 01:01:42.051
Like there are all these really obvious cues.

804
01:01:42.912 --> 01:01:46.534
And as a result, males sort of know exactly what window to jump in on.

805
01:01:47.454 --> 01:01:51.878
And because we conceal our ovulation as humans, it's always a little bit murky.

806
01:01:51.898 --> 01:01:52.899
Why do we do that?

807
01:01:53.079 --> 01:01:55.681
For one thing, it encourages pair bonding.

808
01:01:56.222 --> 01:02:02.447
Because you can't just, as a man, just show up the one day that it's time to cause a pregnancy and then take off.

809
01:02:03.107 --> 01:02:04.769
So you have to court a woman.

810
01:02:04.889 --> 01:02:07.451
You need a lot of repeated opportunities.

811
01:02:08.151 --> 01:02:12.415
So if a man actually wants to cause pregnancy, he's much better off...

812
01:02:13.035 --> 01:02:19.539
sticking with one woman and really investing in that relationship than he is like going out every night to find a different lady.

813
01:02:19.959 --> 01:02:26.183
We form stable monogamous relationships because that's actually adaptive for spreading our genetic material.

814
01:02:26.963 --> 01:02:28.844
And it also reduces aggression.

815
01:02:29.284 --> 01:02:33.407
So there's one theory that it reduces rivalry between women.

816
01:02:34.007 --> 01:02:43.055
If you know that one of the ladies in your group is fertile and you have it out for her, you want to take her out during her fertile period, right?

817
01:02:43.775 --> 01:02:48.379
So concealing ovulation actually reduces that rivalry, that aggression.

818
01:02:49.320 --> 01:02:52.743
It also makes everybody a little bit more invested.

819
01:02:53.564 --> 01:03:00.190
in babies, because no man knows exactly who's caused which pregnancies.

820
01:03:00.291 --> 01:03:06.397
And as a result, everybody has a little bit of an altruistic stake in the future of our children.

821
01:03:07.198 --> 01:03:12.521
Do you, I'm not sure if this is an area of research you've covered, but, and maybe I'm asking for a friend here.

822
01:03:12.681 --> 01:03:12.861
Yeah.

823
01:03:13.461 --> 01:03:17.163
Do you know what increases the probability of conceiving a child?

824
01:03:17.284 --> 01:03:21.466
Because I think about this a lot in terms of stress and feeling comfortable and all these kinds of things.

825
01:03:21.486 --> 01:03:25.288
Like I'm often thinking about like, don't argue with her, keep her safe, make her feel really secure.

826
01:03:25.626 --> 01:03:25.826
Yeah.

827
01:03:26.026 --> 01:03:27.707
I mean, I think those are all good instincts.

828
01:03:27.867 --> 01:03:28.688
Is there research on this?

829
01:03:28.868 --> 01:03:31.249
There is research on reducing stress for sure, right?

830
01:03:31.269 --> 01:03:33.350
Like we know that stress makes it harder to conceive.

831
01:03:33.850 --> 01:03:43.855
Of course, the last thing you want to tell someone who's struggling to conceive is reduce stress because that's so invalidating because you're like, I'm stressed about how hard it is to conceive.

832
01:03:43.915 --> 01:03:48.017
Like, don't, you know, telling somebody be less stressed is frequently not that helpful.

833
01:03:48.578 --> 01:03:52.640
But I think your intuition is right that you probably want to make the environment calmer.

834
01:03:53.420 --> 01:03:53.981
and safer.

835
01:03:54.121 --> 01:03:56.504
And, you know, like you can optimize nutrition.

836
01:03:56.524 --> 01:04:00.790
There's a lot you can do, but there's also a lot that is, you know, not up to you.

837
01:04:01.291 --> 01:04:03.654
And sometimes more intervention is needed.

838
01:04:04.034 --> 01:04:06.518
What advice would you have for new fathers?

839
01:04:07.023 --> 01:04:08.925
This is kind of like one of the themes of my book.

840
01:04:09.585 --> 01:04:11.026
Great fathers are made not born.

841
01:04:11.286 --> 01:04:24.217
You might feel like you don't have the qualities to become an amazing dad, but it's really about your time, your investment, the practice that you get, and the extent that you care that is going to shape you.

842
01:04:24.257 --> 01:04:29.481
It's going to build a brain and it's going to build a body that will make you a tuned in parent.

843
01:04:30.141 --> 01:04:39.928
You know, give yourself grace, like the transition to parenthood can be really challenging, but you can become an expert in your own child.

844
01:04:40.548 --> 01:04:42.129
And there is a reward there.

845
01:04:42.390 --> 01:04:50.195
You will find enrichment, you will find meaning, you will rediscover your priorities in a way that will ultimately bring a lot of value.

846
01:04:52.368 --> 01:04:57.774
Whenever I talk to new founders, they all carry the same belief that the biggest threat to their small business is having a bad product.

847
01:04:58.194 --> 01:04:58.535
It's not.

848
01:04:58.735 --> 01:05:07.264
The biggest threat they face is hiring the wrong person for their small team because bad hires put the handbrake on growth and rapidly infect company culture.

849
01:05:07.404 --> 01:05:07.905
And I get it.

850
01:05:08.165 --> 01:05:13.910
When you're starting out, you need A players to grow your company, but you don't have 40 spare hours to spend sifting through interviews.

851
01:05:14.110 --> 01:05:18.074
So you hire fast to fill the seat, but this ends up costing you even more in the long term.

852
01:05:18.294 --> 01:05:23.158
What any small business actually needs is a reliable and efficient way to find the right talent without stalling momentum.

853
01:05:23.278 --> 01:05:27.020
That's where our long-term sponsor, LinkedIn, and LinkedIn Hiring Pro can help you.

854
01:05:27.240 --> 01:05:34.783
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855
01:05:34.963 --> 01:05:40.045
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856
01:05:40.205 --> 01:05:46.767
Hire right the first time around and get started by posting your first job for free at linkedin.com slash doac.

857
01:05:46.888 --> 01:05:49.128
That's linkedin.com slash doac.

858
01:05:49.208 --> 01:05:50.329
In terms and conditions apply.

859
01:05:51.830 --> 01:05:52.830
Well, you've done so many studies.

860
01:05:53.268 --> 01:05:54.729
Yeah, probably too many.

861
01:05:55.169 --> 01:06:02.034
What are the studies that we haven't talked about that are most formative or surprising for you?

862
01:06:02.374 --> 01:06:07.958
We did a study where we looked at couples' plans for how they wanted to divide up baby care.

863
01:06:08.278 --> 01:06:17.344
So we gave them this questionnaire that we called a who does what, where they were given 10 common baby care tasks like changing diapers, feeding a bottle.

864
01:06:17.925 --> 01:06:22.028
And they indicated on a slider how much mom was going to do and how much dad was going to do.

865
01:06:22.668 --> 01:06:25.492
And then we brought them back into the lab about six months after birth.

866
01:06:25.532 --> 01:06:26.874
We had them do the same scale.

867
01:06:27.575 --> 01:06:33.363
And it was really interesting because couples weren't actually great predictors of how much dad was going to do.

868
01:06:33.903 --> 01:06:39.671
So every single couple expected dad would do more before birth than dad was actually doing after birth.

869
01:06:40.323 --> 01:06:41.504
And there are a lot of reasons for that.

870
01:06:41.524 --> 01:06:43.044
That doesn't mean that anybody's a villain.

871
01:06:43.264 --> 01:06:46.386
It just means maybe mom got more time off from work.

872
01:06:46.506 --> 01:06:47.606
Maybe she was breastfeeding.

873
01:06:47.626 --> 01:06:50.928
And so the baby, you know, she was she was with the baby more.

874
01:06:50.988 --> 01:06:51.148
Right.

875
01:06:51.168 --> 01:06:52.969
Like there are a lot of reasons why that is the case.

876
01:06:53.669 --> 01:07:01.593
But we found that when dads were doing more, they reported that they were happier in their couple relationship.

877
01:07:02.113 --> 01:07:09.116
But one thing we looked at actually was how moms and dads talked about how they wanted to divvy up baby care.

878
01:07:09.777 --> 01:07:16.460
We measured how many times did they say the pronoun we compared to when you use the pronoun I, where you're talking about yourself.

879
01:07:16.520 --> 01:07:20.402
When you're using we, you're talking about, you know, you and your partner.

880
01:07:21.062 --> 01:07:28.546
The more we-ness the dads were showing, the more happy they were in their relationship after birth.

881
01:07:29.286 --> 01:07:37.871
So their investment, their willingness to chip in, even if they didn't totally realize all their plans, was still linked with their satisfaction.

882
01:07:37.891 --> 01:07:40.773
And that was controlling for how they felt about their partner before birth.

883
01:07:41.113 --> 01:07:49.718
And it's a little counterintuitive because you might think, you know, if you get to sit back and relax and your partner is doing more, that's a winning strategy.

884
01:07:50.298 --> 01:07:53.340
But it was actually the dads that did more who told us they were happier.

885
01:07:54.021 --> 01:07:56.622
If all goes well, next year I will be a dad.

886
01:07:57.483 --> 01:07:57.983
I hope so.

887
01:07:58.003 --> 01:07:58.103
Yeah.

888
01:07:58.407 --> 01:07:58.989
I hope so too.

889
01:07:59.070 --> 01:07:59.270
Yeah.

890
01:07:59.531 --> 01:08:03.586
So I've written on this sort of slide in front of me here, advice for Stephen.

891
01:08:04.904 --> 01:08:11.247
And I would like you to give me some advice, some actionable advice on, you know, becoming a father, what I need to do pre, post, during.

892
01:08:11.747 --> 01:08:11.947
Yes.

893
01:08:11.967 --> 01:08:13.468
Based on all the research that you have.

894
01:08:13.568 --> 01:08:13.888
Love it.

895
01:08:13.948 --> 01:08:14.589
I'm going to write it down.

896
01:08:14.669 --> 01:08:14.969
Okay.

897
01:08:15.169 --> 01:08:18.130
So first, take advantage of the window before birth.

898
01:08:18.491 --> 01:08:18.691
Yeah.

899
01:08:18.891 --> 01:08:21.312
To work on your communication with your partner.

900
01:08:21.332 --> 01:08:21.812
Okay.

901
01:08:21.892 --> 01:08:24.614
Think about how you want to divide up baby care.

902
01:08:24.734 --> 01:08:27.815
You know, a lot of the time people say, well, just wing it once the baby comes.

903
01:08:28.255 --> 01:08:32.037
And that can be a recipe for frustration because moms feel like they're doing everything.

904
01:08:32.077 --> 01:08:33.578
Dads feel like they're set out from care.

905
01:08:34.018 --> 01:08:36.039
So, you know, have those conversations sooner.

906
01:08:36.379 --> 01:08:41.581
So before the baby comes, have a conversation about how we're going to divvy up responsibilities and make sure both people are clear.

907
01:08:41.861 --> 01:08:42.321
Exactly.

908
01:08:42.501 --> 01:08:46.743
And think about, too, like, what are we going to do about our extended families?

909
01:08:46.783 --> 01:08:48.643
What religion do we want to raise our kids in?

910
01:08:48.683 --> 01:08:50.104
What do we think about education?

911
01:08:50.124 --> 01:08:54.585
Like, if you haven't had those conversations about values, have them now, right?

912
01:08:54.945 --> 01:08:59.187
Because then I think you're going to ward off conflict that is going to crop up later on.

913
01:08:59.767 --> 01:09:04.331
The other thing is, and I would do this before birth too, build up your social support network.

914
01:09:04.832 --> 01:09:09.296
A lot of men's primary confidant, their primary intimate relationship is with their partner.

915
01:09:10.036 --> 01:09:14.660
After the baby comes, mom is really preoccupied and dads are like, what about me?

916
01:09:15.241 --> 01:09:21.106
So, you know, we know when we look at depression research that having a strong social support network is one of the best buffers.

917
01:09:21.826 --> 01:09:27.729
So you want to be thinking, what are my friendships that I can count on and who can help me?

918
01:09:28.169 --> 01:09:29.930
We really need community support.

919
01:09:29.950 --> 01:09:31.511
So think about how can my mom help?

920
01:09:31.911 --> 01:09:33.411
How can my friend help?

921
01:09:33.471 --> 01:09:36.753
And maybe like, you know, your brother's got his own kids.

922
01:09:36.793 --> 01:09:41.155
He's too busy to take yours, but he can help in some other way.

923
01:09:41.215 --> 01:09:41.415
Right.

924
01:09:41.435 --> 01:09:45.937
Like, how do you plug the people into your life, into what your social support needs might be?

925
01:09:46.343 --> 01:09:52.005
I think a lot of people would cite this as being one of the reasons why they haven't had kids yet.

926
01:09:52.265 --> 01:09:54.226
Now more so than ever, we don't live in communities.

927
01:09:54.346 --> 01:09:54.586
Yes.

928
01:09:54.906 --> 01:10:02.909
Now more so than ever, we are lonely, isolated, living in four small white walls in a city where we can barely pay our rent and we're struggling enough to take care of ourself.

929
01:10:04.170 --> 01:10:08.011
Our parents often live far away now because we're living in such a globalized world.

930
01:10:08.591 --> 01:10:17.338
So feeling like you don't have the support around you to give birth when you're like scraping through in a job, it doesn't make a lot of logical sense as to why people won't choose to have children.

931
01:10:17.538 --> 01:10:18.899
Yeah, it's a huge problem.

932
01:10:18.959 --> 01:10:22.682
And I think a lot of parents really struggle with feeling lonely and isolated.

933
01:10:22.903 --> 01:10:27.086
And so when I say, you know, like take the time before birth to build up your social support network.

934
01:10:27.506 --> 01:10:31.631
That doesn't just mean with your existing friendships and family, right?

935
01:10:31.651 --> 01:10:33.713
Like sometimes we end up far away from those people.

936
01:10:34.253 --> 01:10:40.820
It also means build community with other expectant parents, with your neighbors, right?

937
01:10:40.880 --> 01:10:43.003
Like we thrive when we build community.

938
01:10:43.643 --> 01:10:47.485
One nice thing about becoming a parent is there are a lot of mechanisms for doing that.

939
01:10:47.966 --> 01:10:50.647
There are many more for moms than there are for dads.

940
01:10:50.887 --> 01:10:54.209
So when I became a mom, I could go to breastfeeding support group.

941
01:10:54.249 --> 01:10:55.950
I could go to baby wearing support group.

942
01:10:56.110 --> 01:11:00.153
I could go like walk around the park with the Silver Lake Moms Club.

943
01:11:00.173 --> 01:11:02.154
Like I had all these things to plug into.

944
01:11:02.954 --> 01:11:08.598
dads do not have as many of those organic kind of community building structures available.

945
01:11:08.698 --> 01:11:11.980
So, you know, take advantage of the ones that are there.

946
01:11:12.020 --> 01:11:15.482
I just talked to these guys that founded the Daddy Stroller Social Club.

947
01:11:15.922 --> 01:11:17.624
They've got chapters all over the country.

948
01:11:18.064 --> 01:11:21.186
They just meet up and they go for stroller walks with their kids.

949
01:11:21.346 --> 01:11:25.609
And it's like an amazing way for dads to connect with each other.

950
01:11:25.689 --> 01:11:25.869
So,

951
01:11:26.349 --> 01:11:27.969
So build that as much as you can.

952
01:11:28.149 --> 01:11:28.930
Okay, that's number two.

953
01:11:28.950 --> 01:11:29.550
What do we say?

954
01:11:29.590 --> 01:11:34.931
So build your friends, work on your couple relationship, think about how you want to balance things out.

955
01:11:35.611 --> 01:11:38.271
When the baby does come, first of all, protect your sleep.

956
01:11:38.771 --> 01:11:39.792
That's really hard.

957
01:11:39.832 --> 01:11:41.632
Everyone says sleep when the baby sleeps.

958
01:11:41.652 --> 01:11:43.432
Your sleep is going to be totally scrambled.

959
01:11:44.012 --> 01:11:49.693
But when you have healthy routines and good sleep hygiene even before birth, you're going to fare better after birth.

960
01:11:49.874 --> 01:11:52.174
I can hear parents screaming through the cameras.

961
01:11:52.915 --> 01:11:54.416
saying, easier said than done.

962
01:11:54.436 --> 01:11:55.918
Yeah, I'm not trying to gaslight anything.

963
01:11:56.458 --> 01:12:00.763
But I think when you have a good foundation of healthy sleep hygiene, you're probably going to...

964
01:12:00.783 --> 01:12:06.469
So things like really obvious things, like don't be on devices right before it's time to go to bed.

965
01:12:06.549 --> 01:12:07.510
Like dim the lights.

966
01:12:07.591 --> 01:12:09.493
Like make sure your room is the right temperature.

967
01:12:09.533 --> 01:12:14.218
Like try to dial in your sleeping environment because the sleep is going to be the hardest thing, the first thing to go.

968
01:12:14.493 --> 01:12:26.961
A bit of a paradox here that when you're stressed or sleep deprived, we often reach for things that are dopamogenic, I think the term is, which is like foods that maybe are a little bit higher in, you know, not the good stuff.

969
01:12:27.062 --> 01:12:27.742
Yeah, yeah.

970
01:12:27.982 --> 01:12:29.263
And there's almost a paradox there.

971
01:12:29.283 --> 01:12:31.224
Yeah, it's a total vicious cycle for sure.

972
01:12:31.324 --> 01:12:34.747
And I would say, like, think about becoming a parent like you're preparing to run a marathon.

973
01:12:35.267 --> 01:12:44.215
You know, not to the point that you become totally neurotic about it, but think about being healthy, having things that are going to prepare your body for this big shakeup that you're going to undergo.

974
01:12:44.915 --> 01:12:48.298
And then once the baby comes, like take any opportunity to bond.

975
01:12:48.338 --> 01:12:52.922
Like I think a lot of men feel like I'm going to avoid as many diapers as possible.

976
01:12:54.393 --> 01:13:03.058
changing diapers seems gross, but it's also a chance to make eye contact with your baby and like really get to know them in a different way.

977
01:13:03.278 --> 01:13:15.764
So, you know, jump into those baby care opportunities, like find your own style and, you know, make sure like the more windows you have to bond, the better you're going to feel like you know your baby and the more confident you're going to be.

978
01:13:15.984 --> 01:13:17.525
And then I would say, give yourself grace.

979
01:13:17.565 --> 01:13:18.745
Like, know that this is hard.

980
01:13:19.325 --> 01:13:20.506
Know that it's temporary.

981
01:13:20.786 --> 01:13:26.168
And know that you are, you know, you're sacrificing in the short term for a lot of long-term benefit.

982
01:13:26.288 --> 01:13:35.511
One of the things that might be a little bit absent from this list is an effort towards holding my relationship together with my fiancé.

983
01:13:35.812 --> 01:13:36.613
also important.

984
01:13:36.773 --> 01:13:39.857
I mean, that's part of what you want to do before the baby's born, right?

985
01:13:39.877 --> 01:13:43.422
You want to be shoring up the communication and having those hard conversations.

986
01:13:43.442 --> 01:13:44.223
Like the date night thing.

987
01:13:44.263 --> 01:13:44.643
Yeah.

988
01:13:44.883 --> 01:13:45.104
Yeah.

989
01:13:45.144 --> 01:13:46.746
Date night's probably going to be the first thing out the window.

990
01:13:46.806 --> 01:13:49.009
Yeah, that is a thing that goes out the window.

991
01:13:49.029 --> 01:13:49.649
But you know what?

992
01:13:50.030 --> 01:13:52.953
One nice thing about newborns is they'll sleep pretty much anywhere.

993
01:13:52.973 --> 01:13:53.094
Yeah.

994
01:13:53.534 --> 01:14:00.161
So, you know, when our babies were little, my husband and I would just like put the baby in a car seat and go eat in a nice restaurant.

995
01:14:00.841 --> 01:14:07.248
You know, it was like the last time we got to do that for a few years because once they start walking around, they're much less portable.

996
01:14:07.848 --> 01:14:14.355
So like take advantage of some of the early baby stuff that you can do to travel and to make sure that you get out.

997
01:14:14.976 --> 01:14:16.297
That advice was all advice for me.

998
01:14:16.457 --> 01:14:16.678
Yeah.

999
01:14:16.718 --> 01:14:17.138
For Stephen.

1000
01:14:17.218 --> 01:14:17.398
Yeah.

1001
01:14:17.658 --> 01:14:21.742
Would there be any different advice if my fiance was sat here and you were advising her?

1002
01:14:21.762 --> 01:14:22.803
Oh, that would be fun.

1003
01:14:23.163 --> 01:14:23.383
Yeah.

1004
01:14:23.463 --> 01:14:23.724
Yeah.

1005
01:14:24.184 --> 01:14:27.687
I mean, I would say that sort of giving yourself grace thing would go double, right?

1006
01:14:27.767 --> 01:14:31.030
It's like, know that Stephen is going through a lot.

1007
01:14:31.190 --> 01:14:33.472
And then you need to know that she's going through a lot.

1008
01:14:33.512 --> 01:14:38.737
Like her whole sense of self is gonna be in upheaval.

1009
01:14:39.310 --> 01:14:42.552
Because like we go through this thing, it's called matrescence.

1010
01:14:43.152 --> 01:14:49.877
There's also patrescence, which is just the idea that becoming a parent kind of, you know, changes your priorities.

1011
01:14:50.377 --> 01:14:52.098
It changes your sense of who you are.

1012
01:14:52.438 --> 01:14:55.340
So she's going to go through a lot of transformation, as you will.

1013
01:14:55.540 --> 01:15:00.103
And so sort of like hanging in with each other during that period of transformation is...

1014
01:15:00.783 --> 01:15:01.904
is really fundamental.

1015
01:15:01.924 --> 01:15:08.186
Like sometimes couples can grow apart or dads are jealous that the baby's getting all the attention he feels left out.

1016
01:15:08.306 --> 01:15:10.946
Moms are frustrated that dad isn't doing more to help.

1017
01:15:11.026 --> 01:15:21.790
Like all of those things can lead to conflict and you can know that those are going to be hotspots for conflict and try to talk your way through them even ahead of birth.

1018
01:15:22.942 --> 01:15:28.327
Darby, what's the most important thing we haven't talked about that we should have talked about as it relates to your work?

1019
01:15:28.747 --> 01:15:31.289
For all the people that are listening now that have gotten this far in the conversation.

1020
01:15:31.349 --> 01:15:31.650
Yeah.

1021
01:15:31.910 --> 01:15:32.250
Let's see.

1022
01:15:32.270 --> 01:15:34.712
We didn't talk about dad bod.

1023
01:15:35.473 --> 01:15:36.034
Dad bod?

1024
01:15:36.094 --> 01:15:37.094
That's a fun topic.

1025
01:15:37.375 --> 01:15:37.695
Okay.

1026
01:15:38.195 --> 01:15:39.697
Something we frequently joke about.

1027
01:15:39.797 --> 01:15:41.398
We think about like Homer Simpson.

1028
01:15:42.159 --> 01:15:48.084
But it's been found across both animal and human studies that males tend to gain weight when they become fathers.

1029
01:15:48.444 --> 01:15:50.106
Is that just the cortisol and the lack of sleep?

1030
01:15:50.337 --> 01:15:51.838
So it's a mix of all the hormones.

1031
01:15:51.878 --> 01:15:56.041
It's prolactin is a hormone we haven't talked much about, but that is rising.

1032
01:15:56.681 --> 01:16:05.988
Sleep deprivation, changes in physical activity, changes in our diet, right, because of stress and some of the dietary choices that we're making.

1033
01:16:06.028 --> 01:16:13.173
Like, I joke in the book, like, my husband and I basically ate peanut butter pretzels from Trader Joe's, like, every day that our kids were babies, right?

1034
01:16:13.613 --> 01:16:16.154
So, you know, a lot of stuff is happening all at once.

1035
01:16:16.214 --> 01:16:17.355
It's kind of a perfect storm.

1036
01:16:17.875 --> 01:16:27.119
And yet, you know, there's evidence even from animal models that you see weight changes around the transition to fatherhood.

1037
01:16:27.580 --> 01:16:28.120
These ones here.

1038
01:16:28.680 --> 01:16:30.261
Yeah, these are the tamarind monkeys.

1039
01:16:30.321 --> 01:16:35.824
So there was a study that looked at tamarind monkeys that were expecting offspring.

1040
01:16:36.745 --> 01:16:44.830
And it fed them a standardized diet and it compared them to tamarind monkeys who didn't have partners that were expecting offspring.

1041
01:16:45.410 --> 01:16:54.020
And they found that the expectant dads actually gained more weight, even though they were eating the same diet, as the comparison monkeys who weren't about to have a baby.

1042
01:16:54.600 --> 01:17:00.487
And so there were these, like, body changes that happened even before birth in the male monkeys.

1043
01:17:01.118 --> 01:17:01.819
Why would that be?

1044
01:17:02.279 --> 01:17:04.020
It's probably adaptive.

1045
01:17:04.040 --> 01:17:12.066
Like if you think about increasing your body size to be more imposing and to better ward off attacks from rivals.

1046
01:17:12.706 --> 01:17:15.889
And you also want to buffer in case there's scarcity, right?

1047
01:17:15.989 --> 01:17:17.270
Like you want extra fat.

1048
01:17:17.730 --> 01:17:24.395
It looks less adaptive in a kind of modern context when we have a very obesogenic environment.

1049
01:17:25.316 --> 01:17:28.538
And, you know, you can start to see more cardiometabolic risk.

1050
01:17:29.281 --> 01:17:33.143
But one thing I talk about in the book is women actually like a dad bod.

1051
01:17:33.783 --> 01:17:40.046
Studies of single women have found that, you know, if you show them a series of body types, the dad bod is the most popular.

1052
01:17:40.186 --> 01:17:46.449
You know, sort of like a mildly, you know, kind of like a lightly marbled male torso.

1053
01:17:47.209 --> 01:17:54.531
I don't know if you remember like the Ali Muir's, the British singer who did a big tone up at the gym and posted selfies.

1054
01:17:55.011 --> 01:17:57.071
You know, he had like a 12 pack or something.

1055
01:17:57.632 --> 01:18:00.572
And all these women online were saying like we liked the before picture.

1056
01:18:01.592 --> 01:18:06.094
So, you know, there's something to be said for the reproductive signal of a dad bod.

1057
01:18:06.134 --> 01:18:11.335
But part of it is if you show women torsos of different kinds of male body types,

1058
01:18:12.795 --> 01:18:17.599
The sort of dad bod is one that women say he's more likely to be a hands-on father.

1059
01:18:18.100 --> 01:18:19.601
He's probably going to be more attentive.

1060
01:18:19.641 --> 01:18:20.802
He's going to be more caring.

1061
01:18:21.282 --> 01:18:23.664
And those are things that are really attractive to women.

1062
01:18:24.785 --> 01:18:26.266
And that's proven by science.

1063
01:18:26.286 --> 01:18:29.949
So if I go out and get a dad bod, you're telling me the science says I'm going to be more attractive.

1064
01:18:30.069 --> 01:18:30.629
Yeah, go for it.

1065
01:18:31.310 --> 01:18:31.530
Yeah.

1066
01:18:31.650 --> 01:18:32.110
Okay.

1067
01:18:32.130 --> 01:18:32.831
Yeah, worth a shot.

1068
01:18:33.752 --> 01:18:34.772
Let's see what my fiancée says.

1069
01:18:35.093 --> 01:18:35.293
Yeah.

1070
01:18:36.394 --> 01:18:39.756
How much of your work has been influenced by this?

1071
01:18:42.440 --> 01:18:44.042
Oh, this is my dad.

1072
01:18:44.483 --> 01:18:45.464
So much of my work.

1073
01:18:45.604 --> 01:18:53.895
My parents got divorced when I was nine, and my dad became a solo parent to me and my brothers.

1074
01:18:54.596 --> 01:18:58.781
My parents ultimately worked out a joint custody schedule, so we were married.

1075
01:18:58.961 --> 01:19:03.164
One week with my dad, one week with my mom, we switched off every week as I was growing up.

1076
01:19:04.084 --> 01:19:05.926
And he became a really great dad.

1077
01:19:06.006 --> 01:19:07.707
Like he had a major learning curve.

1078
01:19:08.267 --> 01:19:09.748
He wasn't a hands-on dad.

1079
01:19:09.788 --> 01:19:13.751
He was like an 80s dad who, you know, showed up for the big stuff.

1080
01:19:14.371 --> 01:19:24.218
But when he was alone with the four of us, he suddenly had to be the guy making our meals, the guy helping us with our homework, the guy driving us to sports practice.

1081
01:19:24.718 --> 01:19:27.560
He really rose to the occasion and I'm still really close with him.

1082
01:19:28.035 --> 01:19:32.778
How do you think that's influenced your overarching mission and your focus on, you know, dads and parenting?

1083
01:19:33.058 --> 01:19:35.600
Yeah, so I've always been really interested in families.

1084
01:19:35.880 --> 01:19:40.102
And, you know, they say, like, psychologists are always trying to fix the thing that went wrong in their lives.

1085
01:19:40.142 --> 01:19:44.325
So I'm probably, like, as someone who's interested in couples and families, wanting to reverse, like...

1086
01:19:44.805 --> 01:19:46.005
my own parents' divorce.

1087
01:19:46.646 --> 01:19:57.489
But I also like seeing my dad be a great caregiver and then realizing how much parenting research is solely focused on moms makes me realize there's like a real gap in the literature.

1088
01:19:57.709 --> 01:20:04.491
Like, you know, men play a really important role in parenting and I think deserve a lot of recognition and respect for that.

1089
01:20:05.051 --> 01:20:13.974
It's interesting that I'd never heard before that there's really any changes that took place in a man's brain when a man becomes a father.

1090
01:20:14.495 --> 01:20:19.159
I mean, I think it's not something that gets talked about a lot, which is why I wanted to write about it.

1091
01:20:19.959 --> 01:20:21.620
But, you know, we are dynamic.

1092
01:20:21.680 --> 01:20:22.481
We're plastic.

1093
01:20:22.861 --> 01:20:24.783
We humans adapt.

1094
01:20:25.303 --> 01:20:30.287
And becoming a parent is one of the biggest transformations that you can experience.

1095
01:20:30.747 --> 01:20:34.390
Have you ever done any research on the impact that divorce has on children?

1096
01:20:34.838 --> 01:20:38.842
Not a lot, no, which is ironic because I am a child of divorce.

1097
01:20:38.922 --> 01:20:46.889
But there is some research about it and there's definitely some evidence that it can create some challenges for kids.

1098
01:20:47.650 --> 01:20:52.795
And have you ever done any research on or do you have a view on whether humans are supposed to be monogamous?

1099
01:20:53.956 --> 01:20:58.540
Well, OK, so the best way to describe humans is we're sort of monogamous with benefits and.

1100
01:20:59.225 --> 01:21:02.706
And, you know, you can see that if you look at the difference in our body size.

1101
01:21:03.347 --> 01:21:08.588
So, like, male humans are a little bit bigger than female humans, but they're not, like, twice as big.

1102
01:21:09.329 --> 01:21:13.830
So, like, gorillas, male gorillas are way bigger than female gorillas.

1103
01:21:13.850 --> 01:21:15.711
There's, like, a huge size differential.

1104
01:21:16.531 --> 01:21:23.414
And, you know, that says that, you know, like, the male gorilla model is one of, like, harem dominance.

1105
01:21:24.037 --> 01:21:24.277
Right.

1106
01:21:24.578 --> 01:21:31.406
Fully monogamous animals are exactly the same size, like prairie vole, males and females are almost exactly the same size as each other.

1107
01:21:31.446 --> 01:21:33.429
They have like no size differential.

1108
01:21:33.909 --> 01:21:35.932
So that's like like real pair bonding.

1109
01:21:36.553 --> 01:21:38.655
So we're sort of like somewhere in between.

1110
01:21:38.675 --> 01:21:41.018
There are a lot of societies with different models you have.

1111
01:21:41.539 --> 01:21:45.523
polygamy, which is one man with lots of women.

1112
01:21:46.163 --> 01:21:48.605
You have polyandry, which is more rare.

1113
01:21:48.785 --> 01:21:50.527
That's one woman with lots of men.

1114
01:21:50.947 --> 01:21:52.829
Only a few societies that have that model.

1115
01:21:53.309 --> 01:21:57.493
But monogamy is actually the most common across lots of different cultures and societies.

1116
01:21:57.913 --> 01:22:08.943
And I think it because it brings us some benefits, in part because of the concealed ovulation piece that helps motivate men to be more invested in a single partner, but also because it generally is good for kids.

1117
01:22:09.647 --> 01:22:10.913
What are you concerned about?

1118
01:22:12.690 --> 01:22:15.191
I mean, our future as a planet.

1119
01:22:16.332 --> 01:22:17.693
Which part of our future as a planet?

1120
01:22:17.753 --> 01:22:23.076
So I definitely am concerned about what we've been talking about, the declining birth rate.

1121
01:22:23.836 --> 01:22:34.603
I'm concerned not just because it portends problems, you know, in our future societies, but because of what it signals, I think, about young people's hopefulness for the future.

1122
01:22:35.263 --> 01:22:35.503
Right?

1123
01:22:35.603 --> 01:22:41.727
I think when you look at the world and you say, I don't want to reproduce, I don't want to bring children into this world,

1124
01:22:42.427 --> 01:22:46.711
It, to me, suggests, like, a nihilism and a darkness that concerns me.

1125
01:22:47.211 --> 01:22:48.732
Like, marriage rates are dropping.

1126
01:22:48.933 --> 01:22:53.696
Like, young men and young women seem to be on different paths.

1127
01:22:54.297 --> 01:23:00.622
Part of that is, like, we're in these algorithmic echo chambers where the kind of content that we're absorbing is really different.

1128
01:23:00.642 --> 01:23:06.267
So you see increasing political polarization, not just in the U.S., but in other countries, too.

1129
01:23:06.867 --> 01:23:11.150
It's like there's more adversarial kind of interaction.

1130
01:23:11.171 --> 01:23:11.271
Yeah.

1131
01:23:12.111 --> 01:23:13.352
And I don't think that's good.

1132
01:23:13.553 --> 01:23:22.801
You know, going back to the idea that having a healthy late life is about building strong relationships and that that's a good predictor of our longevity.

1133
01:23:23.722 --> 01:23:27.786
I want us to be in a world where we see ourselves as being on the same team as each other.

1134
01:23:27.806 --> 01:23:29.367
Are you hopeful?

1135
01:23:29.808 --> 01:23:31.089
Yeah, I'm super hopeful.

1136
01:23:31.229 --> 01:23:32.610
I'm a very optimistic person.

1137
01:23:32.750 --> 01:23:34.332
What would have to happen for that to be the case?

1138
01:23:34.352 --> 01:23:34.572
Yeah.

1139
01:23:34.784 --> 01:23:36.085
I'm hopeful I have teenagers.

1140
01:23:36.385 --> 01:23:37.626
You know, I'm hopeful for them.

1141
01:23:37.786 --> 01:23:42.730
I think they're going to take over and hopefully they'll be wiser than my generation has been.

1142
01:23:43.670 --> 01:23:44.851
That's them with my husband.

1143
01:23:45.832 --> 01:23:46.873
That's from a few years ago.

1144
01:23:46.893 --> 01:23:49.515
I was going to say, your boy's a bit older now, right?

1145
01:23:49.535 --> 01:23:50.595
Yeah, he's 14 now.

1146
01:23:50.675 --> 01:23:51.276
14, okay.

1147
01:23:51.536 --> 01:23:51.836
Yeah.

1148
01:23:52.897 --> 01:23:54.858
Dr. Darby Saxby, PhD.

1149
01:23:55.179 --> 01:23:55.779
Yep, that's me.

1150
01:23:55.959 --> 01:24:00.402
We have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question to the next guest, not knowing who they're leading it for.

1151
01:24:00.422 --> 01:24:00.943
Ooh.

1152
01:24:01.885 --> 01:24:06.455
Question left for you is, people are increasingly distrustful and lonely.

1153
01:24:07.036 --> 01:24:13.289
If you could flip a switch and make one systemic change to turn the tide, what would it be?

1154
01:24:13.872 --> 01:24:17.574
Oh, to make people more socially connected.

1155
01:24:17.794 --> 01:24:22.517
Well, I think building a better policy environment around parenting.

1156
01:24:22.557 --> 01:24:27.280
So I'm a big advocate for parental leave to protect time and space to bond.

1157
01:24:28.020 --> 01:24:33.143
I think that would be a really positive change for a lot of parents in the US who don't get access to leave.

1158
01:24:33.658 --> 01:24:41.782
Well, as a Brit, you know, I've moved over here and we, you know, we're hiring a big workforce here in Los Angeles, New York and around the United States.

1159
01:24:42.522 --> 01:24:46.204
But hearing about the parental leave policies here is like mind blowing.

1160
01:24:46.484 --> 01:24:48.725
What is the current parental leave policy in the United States?

1161
01:24:48.885 --> 01:24:53.526
Yeah, so we are a huge outlier compared to the rest of the world, right?

1162
01:24:53.586 --> 01:24:59.728
So, like, we do not have a universal paid leave policy for parents that's at the federal level.

1163
01:25:00.289 --> 01:25:02.469
There are some different policies at the state level.

1164
01:25:02.509 --> 01:25:04.750
So every state has slightly different policies.

1165
01:25:05.510 --> 01:25:11.976
But frequently, what's most available to parents is unpaid disability leave that's provided by the state.

1166
01:25:12.556 --> 01:25:14.258
It's not available to every parent.

1167
01:25:14.398 --> 01:25:21.384
If you're a shift worker, if you're a gig worker, if you're at Walmart, you probably don't have access to that paid leave.

1168
01:25:21.984 --> 01:25:31.312
And as a result, a lot of new moms in the U.S. are back to work within a couple of weeks of birth, which I think is totally bonkers when you think about what does it take to build a healthy society.

1169
01:25:31.332 --> 01:25:31.432
Okay.

1170
01:25:32.130 --> 01:25:36.053
The baseline federal protection is the Family Medical Leave Act.

1171
01:25:36.153 --> 01:25:40.216
It guarantees up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave.

1172
01:25:41.057 --> 01:25:44.480
Your employer must also maintain your group health insurance during this time.

1173
01:25:44.960 --> 01:25:46.101
So they don't pay you.

1174
01:25:46.381 --> 01:25:46.581
Yeah.

1175
01:25:47.182 --> 01:25:47.342
Yeah.

1176
01:25:48.062 --> 01:25:51.165
And that's a big problem because it's expensive.

1177
01:25:51.265 --> 01:25:52.045
They're really expensive.

1178
01:25:52.065 --> 01:25:52.686
To raise kids.

1179
01:25:53.346 --> 01:25:59.031
It's so surprising that they haven't passed a law in this direction because it's not a partisan dispute.

1180
01:25:59.051 --> 01:25:59.151
Yeah.

1181
01:25:59.437 --> 01:26:03.820
No, that's what's so surprising is that it's one of the best polling issues.

1182
01:26:04.360 --> 01:26:05.601
It's bipartisan, right?

1183
01:26:05.721 --> 01:26:09.103
Both Republicans and Democrats say they support Leave.

1184
01:26:09.123 --> 01:26:13.846
I think it's something like 80% of Americans are in favor of it.

1185
01:26:14.427 --> 01:26:16.828
Yet we haven't found the political will to make it happen.

1186
01:26:17.048 --> 01:26:20.110
Well, maybe we need a woman in office.

1187
01:26:20.771 --> 01:26:21.211
Well said.

1188
01:26:22.488 --> 01:26:23.468
Or just a man.

1189
01:26:23.629 --> 01:26:25.770
Or just an empathetic man.

1190
01:26:26.070 --> 01:26:30.332
Let's get hands on dads to rise to power and moms.

1191
01:26:31.652 --> 01:26:47.800
Thank you so much for writing this book because you're shining a light on so many issues that have been mystified through, I guess, pop culture in a way, but you're bringing to light the reality that men are both important in the raising of children, but also you're doing it through a lens of...

1192
01:26:48.140 --> 01:26:53.946
storytelling through adjacencies and different animals and through science in such a rigorous way.

1193
01:26:53.966 --> 01:26:57.390
And I think it starts a conversation about the upsides of being a parent.

1194
01:26:58.131 --> 01:27:01.294
And those are, as we said, they're less obvious than the pain of being a parent.

1195
01:27:01.534 --> 01:27:08.422
And I think the more we can sort of rebalance that equation, the more likely we are to have to raise a healthy generation of kids.

1196
01:27:08.862 --> 01:27:14.689
And again, I do pause a lot because I realize I've got friends close to me that both either don't want to have kids for whatever reasons or just can't have kids.

1197
01:27:15.350 --> 01:27:19.275
So there's often the sort of stigma can go both ways in some regard.

1198
01:27:20.676 --> 01:27:21.717
But I'm someone that wants to have kids.

1199
01:27:21.978 --> 01:27:23.560
And it was fascinating learning about your work.

1200
01:27:23.600 --> 01:27:27.945
And it was helps me to prepare for what I hope will be the most fulfilling journey of my life.

1201
01:27:28.565 --> 01:27:31.047
So, Dr. Darby Saxby, thank you so much for your work.

1202
01:27:31.507 --> 01:27:33.868
If everyone wants to go get your book, I have two versions here.

1203
01:27:33.908 --> 01:27:36.810
I have the UK version and I have the US version.

1204
01:27:36.830 --> 01:27:38.591
I'm going to hold both of them up here.

1205
01:27:38.731 --> 01:27:41.113
And I'll link it below for anyone that wants to have a read.

1206
01:27:41.333 --> 01:27:42.513
Absolutely fascinating.

1207
01:27:42.593 --> 01:27:46.376
And the great thing about your work is you do the sort of first party research yourself.

1208
01:27:47.276 --> 01:27:57.262
And you're at the very forefront of what we know about what it is to have a dad brain, but also more broadly about couples, how they interact and where they can sometimes go wrong.

1209
01:27:58.638 --> 01:27:58.959
Thank you.

1210
01:27:59.901 --> 01:28:01.124
Thank you so much for having me.

1211
01:28:01.145 --> 01:28:01.987
This was a delight.

1212
01:28:02.067 --> 01:28:02.628
It's been a pleasure.