What is "Dad Brain"? with Darby Saxbe | ReThinking

1. 0:00 – 1:54

   Reclaiming “mom brain” and defining “dad brain” as a caregiving superpower

   1. DSDarby Saxbe0:00

      We've seen this kind of revolution in father involvement, and what we see in the brain echoes a little bit what we see in mothers. And it tells us that human men come equipped with a neurobiology that is responsive and dynamic when men invest in parenthood. [upbeat music]

   2. AGAdam Grant0:21

      I thought the title of your book was so interesting in that [laughs] mom brain is a derogatory term, and I cringe every time I, I hear someone say, "Oh, mom brain," as if they've gotten more forgetful or dumber. And Dad Brain kind of on its face sounds like a similarly derogatory term, but I don't think you mean it that way.

   3. DSDarby Saxbe0:42

      Not at all. Yeah, if anything, I think it's a bit of a superpower, and I think we need to reclaim mom brain also, frankly, and I say that as a mom myself. You know, I think we often have this kind of deficit model framing around parenthood, where we think that we're becoming less capable, and in fact the opposite is frequently true. And the newest kind of cognitive psychology research on mom brain actually suggests that moms have better memory for objects and cues that are salient to their baby and to parenthood. It actually sharpens their memory and attention. It's just that they have somewhat worse memory for everything else. So it's not that memory overall is becoming impaired, it's that it's becoming more selective. And so if we can reclaim mom brain, then I think we can also reclaim dad brain. And I think the upside of dad brain is just that it tells us about men's capacity to care, and it tells us that human men come equipped with a neurobiology that is responsive and dynamic when men invest in parenthood, and I think that's a very positive thing for the future of humanity.

2. 1:54 – 2:59

   How fathers’ brains change: experience-dependent neuroplasticity, not pregnancy hormones

   1. AGAdam Grant1:54

      The idea that men's brains change when they become fathers I think is novel for a lot of us. What got you interested in this, and how does it work?

   2. DSDarby Saxbe2:01

      Precisely because it's sort of surprising that I find it so interesting. Because fathers don't undergo pregnancy, birth, and breastfeeding, they don't have the hormonal surges that new moms do, and they don't show the same kind of visible physical changes. So fathers' adaptations to parenthood are much more of an example of experience-dependent neuroplasticity. And I think of it in terms of, you know, whenever we spend our time learning something new or practicing new skills, our brain changes to reflect that. And so when we practice care, when we practice being sensitive to the signals of a new baby, we're honing networks and structures in the brain that support that. So I think that's what the sort of dynamic brain changes in fatherhood are showing us, that as men invest in care, their neurobiology reflects that.

3. 2:59 – 4:04

   It’s not the title “father”—it’s hands-on caregiving that drives the brain effects

   1. AGAdam Grant2:59

      Are you saying they have to invest in care to experience brain changes? The mere fact of knowing that they've welcomed a child is not enough.

   2. DSDarby Saxbe3:07

      Exactly. So the more men tell us in pregnancy that they wanna take time off after the birth of a baby, the more they take pleasure in interacting with their child, the more bonded they feel, the more hours per week they're spending in care, and the more of that time they're spending as a primary caregiver, the more we see changes in their brains.

   3. AGAdam Grant3:28

      So interesting. So it's not becoming a father, it's becoming a caregiver that drives these effects.

   4. DSDarby Saxbe3:33

      Exactly. Or, you know, becoming a hands-on father, right? Becoming an engaged father. That seems to be what makes fathers' neurobiology change. So it kind of changes as they invest.

   5. AGAdam Grant3:45

      Mm-hmm. Okay. We live in a world where dads are much more involved as, as caregivers than they were a generation or two ago. The time use statistics that I've read suggest that dads are spending three to four times as much time per week with their kids as, as their dads did with them, and that's a lot. So [laughs] what, what does that do to our brains?

4. 4:04 – 5:31

   What researchers learned from “mom brain” MRI studies: gray matter volume reduction as adaptation

   1. DSDarby Saxbe4:04

      Yeah, exactly, and that's what we're still figuring out. So a lot of what we know about new moms came from a big nature neuroscience paper that was published in 2016. It was done by a research group in Spain that recruited women from a fertility clinic who were trying to get pregnant, and they followed the women across pregnancy and early parenthood, and they had a comparison group of women recruited from the same setting who didn't become mothers. And they found changes that were so profound that they could use a machine learning algorithm essentially to tell who became a mother just from the changes to their brain. And what they found was gray matter volume reduction. So the brain was actually losing volume from preconception to postpartum, and this seemed to be an adaptive remodeling because where the brain was losing volume, I always have to ca-

   2. AGAdam Grant4:57

      Adaptive? It sounds like terrible news

   3. DSDarby Saxbe4:58

      [laughs] I always have to caveat that.

   4. AGAdam Grant5:00

      Your brain is shrinking.

   5. DSDarby Saxbe5:00

      Yeah.

   6. AGAdam Grant5:00

      Don't have kids.

   7. DSDarby Saxbe5:01

      It sounds like very bad news. But where the brain was losing the most volume is actually in the regions that we consider to be responsible for social cognition, mentalizing, and thinking about other people's minds. Those regions get a lot of practice in early parenthood, and the extent to which the brain lost volume in those regions tracked with moms bonding and, um, connection to their infants. So we think this is a healthy process of streamlining

5. 5:31 – 6:25

   Dad brain evidence: similar direction, subtler magnitude, and tied to caregiving intensity

   1. DSDarby Saxbe5:31

      and making these really important parts of the brain work more efficiently when you become a parent. So I got so excited by this study, I Hopped on a plane, went to Spain, collaborated with this research group, and we ended up working with a sample of fathers that they had collected data from. They were partners of the moms in the study. And I had been scanning new dads in my lab at the University of Southern California. So we pooled our two samples, this Spanish sample and my US sample, and we found really similar changes in the dads. They were also losing gray matter volume, but the changes were much more subtle, they were much more nuanced, they were much more variable. And then when I reanalyzed the data just to look at my sample, we found they were really tied to dad's investment in care.

   2. AGAdam Grant6:15

      Yep. That makes sense. And so the dads who are invested in care, it sounds like then the neurological changes that you saw were similar to what you would see in moms. Is that right?

6. 6:25 – 7:28

   Where changes occur: cortex vs. subcortex and what “efficiency” might mean

   1. DSDarby Saxbe6:25

      Exactly. Exactly. Yes. Very similar, but a few important distinctions. So like I said, the changes were smaller and more variable, but they were also volume reduction. But where the volume loss happened was in the part of the brain we call the cortex, which is like the kinda top layer of outer brain tissue that we consider to be responsible for our higher order fun- functions, like executive function and sort of more sophisticated thinking and reasoning. The moms lost volume in those regions, and in particular the mentalizing network, as I said, but they also lost volume in the subcortex, which is the part of the brain that we think about driving our gut feelings and basic emotions. And so the dads were really showing just changes in those higher order brain regions.

   2. AGAdam Grant7:16

      So when you say more efficient, I start to think about, okay, like the, the brain is, is consuming fewer resources to do the same task, and that's, that's good for the body in some ways. I also start to wonder about specialization.

   3. DSDarby Saxbe7:28

      Mm.

7. 7:28 – 9:10

   Narrowing the circle of concern? In-group bias and the ‘director’s cut’ metaphor

   1. AGAdam Grant7:28

      Is there a narrowing of a circle of concern? Are both moms and dads getting better at reading their newborns, but maybe a little bit worse [chuckles] at interacting with people that are maybe outside of that inner circle or that are harder for them to understand?

   2. DSDarby Saxbe7:43

      Yeah, that's such an interesting way to frame it, which I hadn't really thought about before. But we do know that there's this sort of preferred in-group bias that happens when we become parents, that we are more invested in our immediate family and sort of less interested in the fates of others. So that could be what's happening in the brain. You know, the hunch is that it really does reflect this sort of streamlining as we practice and gain skills. We need to make circuits work faster in certain areas. So I think of it as like editing a movie clip. It's like the meandering director's cut versus the streamlined, you know, shorter version that tells a concise story. Like we want the more, um, efficient version because we're gonna be using these same skills and structures quite a bit. And if you think about what you need to do as a parent, you do have to try to figure out what your baby, who cannot communicate with you clearly, needs from moment to moment. So when your baby cries, you have to orient to the salience of the sound. You have to practice and deploy different strategies to try to soothe them. You have to modulate your distress. You have to regulate your emotions. And you have to be rewarded by the interaction because you're gonna need to do it many, many more times. So, you know, all of those regions are gonna get sort of, like intensive practice just in the first months of parenthood.

8. 9:10 – 14:20

   Do sons vs. daughters change dads differently? Mixed evidence and cultural mechanisms

   1. AGAdam Grant9:10

      Okay, let's hold constant the amount of caregiving that fathers do, and let's assume we're talking about engaged fathers. Do the changes in their brain vary as a function of whether they've just had a boy or a girl?

   2. DSDarby Saxbe9:19

      Yeah. It's a really interesting question. I've looked at this in our data, and we do find some differences in testosterone when dads are having boys versus girls. I haven't seen any significant differences in the brain. So I'm curious what you think the reason would be for sort of like gender specific effects. Like do we think that dads would be more or less invested in girls versus boys, or just that they would care for them differently?

   3. AGAdam Grant9:43

      Yeah. I'm, I'm thinking about a whole body of research on, on the daughter effect, which I'm sure you know better than I do. But I've read a series of studies suggesting that when men have a firstborn daughter, they become more empathetic and more generous. And I think, you know, some of this has to do with the legitimization of, like of care and concern-

   4. DSDarby Saxbe10:04

      Mm

   5. AGAdam Grant10:04

      ... for a girl that may not exist the same way with a boy, and I'm sure there are a lot of cultural expectations that govern that. But some of the effects are, are pretty far reaching.

   6. DSDarby Saxbe10:14

      Mm-hmm.

   7. AGAdam Grant10:14

      So I'm, I'm thinking about a, a study of Danish CEOs, for example, where after they, they have a daughter as opposed to a son, they pay their employees more generously. [chuckles] And I'm thinking, okay, it's a big leap to go from, okay, you had a daughter, that activated empathy, and now like you're starting to think more about the welfare of the people who work for you? That's kind of staggering. What's going on there? And so y- yeah, that, that was basically where I went. What, what do you make of all this?

   8. DSDarby Saxbe10:41

      Yeah, that's a really interesting thing to think about. And it, it, you know, reminds me of you often hear politicians say, you know, "As the father of daughters, I'm gonna support this bill." It's like, oh, you wouldn't have supported it without your daughters, right? It's like something about having girls. And I think it also i- in some ways, like it allows men to maybe try a side of themselves that they would ordinarily not be comfortable displaying. So I think a lot of the time fathers of boys feel like they need to kinda toughen their boys up or they need to make sure their boys are suited for the rigors of the harsh world. Whereas with girls, fathers can, you know, do tea parties and get their nails painted. You know, like I think there's a broader repertoire-

   9. AGAdam Grant11:26

      Let's not go too far

   10. DSDarby Saxbe11:27

       ... of ways to be. And, uh, you know, obviously this varies a ton depending on the specific dad and the specific girl or boy that the dad is, uh, parenting. But, um, it, it may allow some men to be a little more gender expansive in a way that still feels socially sanctioned. But I mean, so far I haven't found any correlates of this with the brain. But I should caveat, this is an emerging area of research with small samples, so there's still so much we need to learn.

   11. AGAdam Grant11:52

       Yeah, that makes sense. I think it's not surprising that there have been multiple studies showing that when politicians have daughters, they're more likely to sponsor bills that are pro-women. I can see the direct connection there. But you have a daughter, and as a venture capitalist, you're more likely to invest in female-led startups. Okay, that's, that's a little bit less obvious that you would start to, to care about people who are not directly connected to your family. And I think, okay, is it that, you know, that, that becoming a father makes you a little bit less misogynistic or makes you a little bit more of a feminist? Or to your point, is it more that it's giving you cover to express values that you already hold?

   12. DSDarby Saxbe12:30

       Yeah, I think it's an interesting question about parenthood sort of giving men permission to behave in a lot of different ways that maybe they already wanted to, but, but there's sort of like this social cover, especially when you're the parent of girls. And I think the answer is we probably don't know yet from the research that we have because there hasn't been enough work looking at child gender-specific effects.

   13. AGAdam Grant12:56

       When you say permission, I, I think of that every time I, I see somebody talk with pride about being a girl dad. I think Kobe Bryant probably modeled that more visibly than anybody I can think of in American culture. And I think for a lot of dads, it was a movement almost [laughs] that like, okay, I have permission now-

   14. DSDarby Saxbe13:13

       Mm-hmm

   15. AGAdam Grant13:13

       ... to say, "Yeah, I braid my daughter's hair." Or, you know, for those of us who don't braid well [laughs] and were fired from that job, yeah, like at least I know how to do a high ponytail, and once upon a time that was a useful skill. And I, I think taking that form of care and kindness and making that a source of pride as opposed to something you hide because it's stigmatized, that, that does seem to be part of the story.

   16. DSDarby Saxbe13:36

       Yeah, definitely. And I think there has been a sea change in general with fatherhood where men are increasingly reporting that it's a key source of meaning and purpose in their lives. It's a way in which they build social connections with other people, other parents, and it's something that they derive a lot of pride from. And I think millennial dads especially who are doing so much childcare, so much more childcare time than, you know, was standard in the kinda classic '50s and '60s dad, it's like I think men actually really enjoy and appreciate having the opportunity to be caring, to be present with kids. That's something I heard from a lot of the dads that I interviewed for the book.

9. 14:20 – 17:04

   Testosterone shifts and the biology behind ‘dad bod’

   1. AGAdam Grant14:20

      You mentioned that you did see gender differences with testosterone. What were those?

   2. DSDarby Saxbe14:25

      Yeah. So I should say we haven't published any of this work yet, so, you know, stay tuned. But we found that, uh, fathers of boys had higher testosterone prenatally and then, uh, less of a drop in testosterone after birth. So there seemed to be just some differences in terms of where testosterone goes around the birth of a baby. And what's interesting to know about testosterone is there is kind of a normative drop in T levels when men become fathers, and that's been found not just in human males but in lots of different animals, right? You see it in birds, you see it in rodents, you see it in primates, that testosterone does tend to decline, and that it seems to reflect, uh, the reproductive strategies of males. So whether your goal is to have as many offspring as possible in the hopes that some of them might survive, or whether you are adjusting to a more nurturing-oriented reproductive strategy where you're trying to invest a lot more in each individual child.

   3. AGAdam Grant15:30

      Is that also a novel explanation then for dad bod? That-

   4. DSDarby Saxbe15:33

      Definitely.

   5. AGAdam Grant15:34

      [laughs]

   6. DSDarby Saxbe15:34

      Yeah, yeah. So I talk about this in the dad bod chapter, that, uh, w- hormonal mechanisms are part of what's happening. It's testosterone. It could also be a hormone called prolactin, which seems to be linked to fatherhood. But yeah, there was a study of tamarin monkeys that looked at their weight gain over the course of a mate's pregnancy and found that even when they were eating the same food, the expectant father monkeys actually gained more weight. So there's something going on that isn't just about eating behavior.

   7. AGAdam Grant16:05

      Wow.

   8. DSDarby Saxbe16:05

      It's probably about hormones. And there was actually a big human study as well, an epidemiological study, that looked at, uh, testosterone levels in men, uh, and linked, uh, changes around the transition to fatherhood to increased adiposity.

   9. AGAdam Grant16:20

      Which means what?

   10. DSDarby Saxbe16:21

       Which means more abdominal fat.

   11. AGAdam Grant16:22

       So even monkeys get dad bod. Good to know. Does that reduction in testosterone also reduce the motivation to work out?

   12. DSDarby Saxbe16:29

       Probably, yeah, 'cause it's linked with, uh, you know, volition and motivation and kinda men's sense of energy and vitality. And we do see changes in physical activity around the transition to fatherhood, so that's likely a driver of dad bod changes as well.

   13. AGAdam Grant16:47

       So interesting.

   14. DSDarby Saxbe16:48

       And I talked to a researcher who has done a lot of work with hunter-gatherers and he said, you know, these are very lean men, and so when T drops around the transition to fatherhood, that's likely adaptive. They need more of a buffer in case of scarcity.

10. 17:04 – 18:18

    The hidden costs: brain adaptations linked with sleep loss, depression, anxiety, distress

    1. AGAdam Grant17:04

       You also point out that there are some downsides to what happens to dads. Talk to me about those and also what do we do to avoid them.

    2. DSDarby Saxbe17:13

       Definitely. We found that the same neural adaptations that seem to track with men's investment in parenthood, their bonding with their infant, and their enjoyment of their infant also were linked with some mental health risks. So when dads showed more cortical gray matter volume reductions, they reported worse sleep, they reported more symptoms of depression, more anxiety, and more overall psychological distress. And so I think the answer there is not that men should not become parents any more than the answer to postpartum depression in women is that women should never become mothers. Rather, to me it's an indicator that caregiving is costly, it's draining, it's isolating, it's repetitive, and- It's taxing, and that we as a society need to think harder about how to support parents as they do what is arguably the most important work of any employee ever.

    3. AGAdam Grant18:16

       Agreed. How do we do it?

11. 18:18 – 22:57

    What support looks like: paternity leave, community design, and rebuilding the ‘village’

    1. DSDarby Saxbe18:18

       Good question. Well, I mean, I think there are a lot of public policies that would probably help, and there's a chapter in the book about paternity leave and what that looks like in different countries. I think we have a lot of stigma around men taking time off after the birth of a baby. A lot of dads even who have access to paid leave are reluctant to take it because they feel like they'll get blowback from their coworkers or from their employers. So I think allowing some time off after the birth to rest, recover, and bond is really imperative. I also think, you know, we've lost the kinda community and extended family networks that we really evolved to parent within, right? So we humans are cooperative breeders. We were built to parent in conjunction with other people, and yet we've kind of developed this very isolated model of the nuclear family, where we're sort of trapped in a house with our individual kids, and we're not necessarily getting those networks of support. So I think we need to rethink our built environments. We need to think about how we build stronger community fabric, and we, you know, need to refocus our energies on reducing the epidemic of parenting stress.

    2. AGAdam Grant19:35

       I'm gonna endorse all of that. It's, it's bothered me for a long time that [laughs] we're, we're leaving the fate of an entire generation up to the luck of the draw of, of what one or two parents they happen to get. As opposed to if you think about how some more collectivistic cultures are organized or frankly what we did for a lot of human history, like you would have grandparents, aunts, uncles, like extended... Essentially you'd have a village, right? And so if, you know, if you had an abusive parent or a neglectful parent, there were other people there to step in, and I think we've deprived most kids of that access and, and frankly most parents of that help and support too.

    3. DSDarby Saxbe20:12

       Yeah, exactly. And you know, I interviewed an anthropologist who looks at fathers within hunter-gatherer societies, right? Like, that's the context in which we humans spent 95% of our evolutionary history. And there you have these kinda mobile bands of 20 to 30 people. Everybody knows each other really well, and kids are truly raised communally. And there are a lot of mixed-age playgroups where older kids are essentially mentored by their peers and by teens and those who are a little bit older. And I think we now really are feeling that lack of that kind of collective approach to care, and you just see it in the extent to which parents feel sorta lonely and, and cut off from each other.

    4. AGAdam Grant20:58

       Yep, absolutely. And you know, I think the, [laughs] like the design of parental leave is supposed to help with that, but in some cases people end up feeling even more, more isolated when they, they no longer have a work community and they're just kind of overwhelmed with the job of parenting. They're on their own.

    5. DSDarby Saxbe21:15

       Yeah, like we know it's actually healthy to have routines where you're out and you're seeing people. And I think you actually do see slightly different models in other countries. Like I talk a little bit about this in the book, but kinda paternity leave nudge and incentive programs like the ones you see in the Nordics, where a certain amount of leave is earmarked for dads. And I think there you have more of an opportunity to kinda build a society of parents. And you have this phenomenon in Sweden called the latte papas, which is like the men kinda holding their takeout cups of coffee, um, pushing strollers and sort of meeting up in the city center. And, and so I think when there's kind of a normalization of parents being home with their kids, there are maybe more opportunities for them to connect with each other. But then you also need to live, I think, in places where you can walk and see each other and not in kind of atomized suburban sprawl, which is sort of part of the problem with our neighborhood design here.

    6. AGAdam Grant22:09

       I think so too. So it seems like part of, part of then the case for parental leave is that we need the time as dads with newborns to bond and to do the caregiving then that activates dad brain. [laughs] Like full stop there, right?

    7. DSDarby Saxbe22:24

       Yeah, exactly. You know, a lotta men feel like they're not equipped for parenthood. They're not wired for it. We have these very essentialist kinda gendered myths around caregiving and parenting, that women have a knack for it and that dads don't know what they're doing. And I think the best remedy for that is just practice and experience. And dads can have their own repertoire. They can develop their own style of interacting with kids. But the more they get the chance to do that, the better they're gonna feel about the parenting role.

12. 22:57 – 24:30

    Evidence from leave reforms: long-term father involvement and improved maternal mental health

    1. AGAdam Grant22:57

       Seems like a natural experiment waiting to be done, looking at when countries or cities or states or provinces start to mandate parental leave, then what happens to both dads' brains and also what happens to their, their patterns of, you know, bonding, connecting, and caregiving with their kids. Has anyone done that yet?

    2. DSDarby Saxbe23:16

       Yeah, we have a little bit of data on that so far. So like couple countries have done leave reforms that have expanded paternity leave access for men, and there are studies that look at children born right before and right after those reforms are introduced, which is like a perfect way to compare. And you see dads actually have more enduring marriages. They have more involvement in parenting even a decade after taking leave. And moms actually have better mental health. So one study in Sweden actually found lower rates of moms using prescription anti-anxiety medication when men had more access to paternity leave.

    3. AGAdam Grant23:57

       Wow.

    4. DSDarby Saxbe23:57

       And my lab actually did a similar study just looking at our sample in California, where some of our dads had access to paid leave, some of them didn't. And we found that when the dads had access to paid leave, their partners actually were buffered from depression and reported less stress from prenatal to postpartum. So there are benefits, I think, to the whole family system when you kind of empower dads to have some time off.

    5. AGAdam Grant24:22

       Incredible. Uh, if, if that doesn't make an airtight case for parental leave being extended to fathers as well as mothers, I don't know what does.

    6. DSDarby Saxbe24:30

       Yeah.

13. 24:30 – 27:19

    What ‘fair’ leave means: earmarked dad months, flexibility, and avoiding stress contagion

    1. AGAdam Grant24:30

       I, I do have to ask, I'm wondering if you can help me resolve some ambivalence about parental leave and what fairness looks like, because I've seen a lotta leaders in the work that I do in organizations argue for It's time to get to parity. We should give men the same amount of parental leave that women get. And on the one hand, I think that's, it's a powerful way of normalizing leave. On the other hand, but you didn't just birth a baby. Like, you didn't grow a human in your body. You don't have to recover from the physical experience. Where do you come down on this as an expert?

    2. DSDarby Saxbe25:01

       You know, I'm, I kinda land on the side of let's mandate some leave for dads. I really like the Scandinavian model of like let's earmark a few months of the total leave time that a couple is allotted specifically for dad, so there's like a use it or lose it program where there is a certain chunk of the leave that has dad's name on it. If he doesn't take it, it goes away. But we don't have to necessarily force that it's gonna happen at the exact same time or in the exact same way or for the exact same duration in moms and dads. Like, let's give couples some autonomy in figuring out what they would prefer to do about the leave that's available to them.

    3. AGAdam Grant25:41

       If, if we just pause where we are so far, I think people will say, okay, net positive, get dads involved in caregiving. It's, it's good obviously for the newborn, it's good for the dad, it's good for the mom, you just told us. But if my memory serves me right, you also have some evidence that when, if, you know, if couples are a man and a woman, when they get more into sync, there's a dark side of that.

    4. DSDarby Saxbe26:03

       Yeah. It's, it's an interesting conundrum. So I've done work on my lab looking at co-regulation of cortisol levels, for example, which is a stress hormone. We find that when couples have more tightly synchronized patterns of cortisol, they actually report more relationship distress. So the way I think about it is it's helpful for couples to be able to modulate and balance each other's emotional states. You know, you don't wanna be so kinda tightly entrained that you are showing stress contagion. And we know that becoming a parent is a huge inflection point for couple distress. It's been called a crisis event for the marriage as early as the 1950s. We see a big nosedive in couples' relationship quality when they have a new baby. And there are a lot of reasons for why that might be the case, but, uh, it's something that I think a lot of couples have to muddle through. And what you really see is variability in outcomes. You know, some couples end up separating and, you know, the, can't weather that transition. Other couples end up reporting stronger relationship quality over time because they discover this new dimension in their partners.

14. 27:19 – 30:37

    Office hours: getting the ‘dad brain’ message out and treating fatherhood as learnable skills

    1. AGAdam Grant27:19

       Okay, so that, that actually is a good segue to office hours. You get to ask a question of me. If there's a problem, a puzzle, a challenge, a curiosity, a mystery that you have, I would love to hear it.

    2. DSDarby Saxbe27:29

       Well, I mean, you're a dad yourself, so I'm curious, what do you think is the best way to get the message out about the fathering brain to new dads?

    3. AGAdam Grant27:37

       Well, I would say write a book. [laughs]

    4. DSDarby Saxbe27:39

       Hey.

    5. AGAdam Grant27:40

       Go on book tour.

    6. DSDarby Saxbe27:41

       I did it.

    7. AGAdam Grant27:42

       Done. Let me, let me ask you a question about your question-

    8. DSDarby Saxbe27:44

       Yep

    9. AGAdam Grant27:44

       ... which is what, what is the message that you're trying to, to land that you're worried people are not gonna hear?

    10. DSDarby Saxbe27:51

        Yeah. So I would say a couple things. One is just men's brains and bodies are transformed by parenthood just as, as women's are. And I think the other piece is kinda like, like great dads are made not born, which is to say that it's, it's not that you have this innate sort of ability to be a great parent. It's rather that the more you practice, the more you care, the more you invest, the better you get. And I hope that thinking about that will make dads feel more empowered and more eager to participate, even if, you know, in the first weeks and months they are a little unsure about what to do.

    11. AGAdam Grant28:32

        Got it. Okay. So I think the, maybe then my reaction to that question is I would love to hear a little bit more about if fatherhood is something I get better at with practice, what are the key skillsets that I need to work on, and where do I get feedback? 'Cause I think that I know a lot of dads who came into this thinking, "I don't really know what I'm doing. I'm just gonna listen to my wife and take her advice." But they're the same people who went and watched a YouTube video when they wanted to figure out how to, how to fix the brakes on their car. And they're missing the, both, I guess, the, the knowledge and also the, the understanding of what are the routines and habits-

    12. DSDarby Saxbe29:08

        Hmm

    13. AGAdam Grant29:09

        ... to be able to work on their skills. And so I guess both my advice to you and my question back to you is can you break down especially early fatherhood as a skillset that I can learn-

    14. DSDarby Saxbe29:20

        Hmm

    15. AGAdam Grant29:20

        ... and can you help me hold up a mirror so I can get feedback on how I'm doing?

    16. DSDarby Saxbe29:23

        Yeah, it's a great question, and I would say there is some immediate feedback in the form of your baby. And so it may just be that learning how to pay close attention is the best way to become a great parent because you can become an expert in your own child. You know, we have this huge parenting advice industry, and I think some of it's counterproductive because it's gonna tell you what to do with a kid who isn't yours. As you learn any human being, but especially a baby or child, better, you figure out what calms them down, what makes them giggle, what helps them fall asleep, and then you do more of that, right? So you're sort of being shaped by your baby in the same way that you as a parent is sh- you're, you're shaping your child's outcomes.

    17. AGAdam Grant30:09

        Yeah. If part of the both the challenge and the opportunity is to tune into what a baby is expressing, there's knowledge hiding, collecting dust in our research journals that, that, that new parents, especially new dads, would benefit from. But I'm thinking like, okay, there's a training course in there, right, where-

    18. DSDarby Saxbe30:26

        Hmm

    19. AGAdam Grant30:26

        ... dads can listen to, and moms too, can listen to the prototypical hungry versus angry versus hangry cries and then say, "Okay, I can now learn to pick up those cues in my newborn."

    20. DSDarby Saxbe30:37

        Hmm.

15. 30:37 – 37:50

    Training interventions and practical confidence-building—plus rapid-fire wrap-up and scientific humility

    1. AGAdam Grant30:37

       Does anything like this exist to your knowledge?

    2. DSDarby Saxbe30:39

       I actually had this idea that I had pitched to my agent and, and never went anywhere with it, but that we should make a video game, kinda like a Grand Theft Auto or sorta like a, like a single shooter kinda game, but it's like you're a dad and you have to do a bunch of stuff to take care of your baby and kinda manage your household. So it's like could we develop better interventions to sorta train dads prenatally, whether it's through a video game, whether it's through an app. There was a researcher in, um, the Netherlands who did, uh, a- 3D ultrasound study where they had dads see a 3D ultrasound of their baby, and they had an attachment expert walking them through how to interact with the unborn child, like sing to the baby or stroke the baby's foot, things like that. And they actually found that when dads did the 3D ultrasound intervention, they had better parenting sensitivity postpartum.

    3. AGAdam Grant31:35

       Wow.

    4. DSDarby Saxbe31:35

       So I think there's some promise for some of these interventions. And-

    5. AGAdam Grant31:39

       I think so, too.

    6. DSDarby Saxbe31:39

       Yeah. It's a gap in the literature, right? 'Cause people haven't really tested them.

    7. AGAdam Grant31:43

       I love the video game idea.

    8. DSDarby Saxbe31:45

       I mean, I also think there's some promise for intervention soon after birth where, you know, create a forum where dads can bring their babies and, you know, learn some basics, like with their actual infant, right? Anything that I think builds Dad's sense of confidence is gonna be valuable in the first months.

    9. AGAdam Grant32:02

       Bring it on. Okay, it's time for a lightning round. Are you ready for this?

    10. DSDarby Saxbe32:06

        Sure.

    11. AGAdam Grant32:06

        What is the worst advice that new dads get?

    12. DSDarby Saxbe32:09

        I think a really bad piece of advice to give new dads is, like, wait for Mom to tell you what to do. And I think a, for a lot of dads, their experience of being a parent is totally mediated through their partner. But I think actually, we know from attachment science, kids benefit from having multiple caregivers with different styles. And, you know, the idea that there's one right way to do things for your kid actually can really hamstring dads. So I would say, like, have your own style and, you know, get your own time alone as the main caretaker.

    13. AGAdam Grant32:39

        Love that. Okay, so you get to host a dinner party of the most interesting dads in history-

    14. DSDarby Saxbe32:46

        Mm-hmm

    15. AGAdam Grant32:47

        ... and learn about how they raised their kids. Who are you inviting?

    16. DSDarby Saxbe32:50

        Okay. I mean, I guess William Shakespeare was a dad. He'd be pretty interesting to chat with. Maybe we'll throw in some William James. How about that?

    17. AGAdam Grant32:58

        Okay, so you, you went to great thinkers and-

    18. DSDarby Saxbe33:01

        [laughs]

    19. AGAdam Grant33:01

        ... wanted to know what kind of parents they were. It's so interesting. I, I found myself wanting to go the opposite route and say, okay, who are the people whose parents I would love to talk to? Like, I'd love-

    20. DSDarby Saxbe33:09

        Hmm

    21. AGAdam Grant33:09

        ... to sit down with Da Vinci's dad.

    22. DSDarby Saxbe33:11

        Oh, interesting.

    23. AGAdam Grant33:12

        What, what, if anything, did you do to cultivate-

    24. DSDarby Saxbe33:14

        Sure

    25. AGAdam Grant33:14

        ... that kind of curiosity?

    26. DSDarby Saxbe33:16

        Yeah.

    27. AGAdam Grant33:16

        I think about someone like, um, like Harriet Tubman or Lucy Stone.

    28. DSDarby Saxbe33:21

        Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

    29. AGAdam Grant33:21

        Like, what were the-

    30. DSDarby Saxbe33:21

        Yeah

Episode duration: 37:59