Moms of the Millennium

Dad Brain by Darby Saxbe: Transgender Clownfish and the Business Case for Paternity Leave

• Rosie the Red • Season 1 • Episode 13

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Science says fatherhood physically rewires the male brain. The policy proposal is asking corporations, very nicely, to offer a "care day." Rosie has notes.

For their first ever Dad Book, the moms dive into Dad Brain by Darby Saxbe, PhD: a tenured professor with 20 years studying fathers, her own lab at USC on the transition to parenthood, 80+ peer-reviewed papers, and a truly unhinged number of dads in MRI machines looking at pictures of babies.

Somehow along the way we get into transgender clownfish, cortisol, mass incarceration, anthropology lessons from the movie Mamma Mia, and why gay dads split the labor just fine. Sarah wants to skip the whole debate and go straight to matriarchy.

Tune in to hear your favorite millennial moms' unhinged rants on their first book about DADS!

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SPEAKER_02

You don't have to follow these rules, dudes. You can have a good life if you want to. You don't have to do this the stuff that other men tell you to do.

SPEAKER_01

They're the moms, moms, moms, moms.

SPEAKER_00

Hello, and welcome to moms of the millennium. I am your host, Rosie. You can find me on Instagram, Rosie the Redgram, TikTok, Rosie the Red Talk, and we have a subreddit, R slash moms of the Millennium. I am on Reddit, Rosie the Red Reddit. So that's how you can find me, my amazing co-host, as always. Sarah, tell us all about you and where you can be found.

SPEAKER_02

Hey everybody, my name is Sarah. You can find me on the internet at zarinaoostman.com. That's Z-E-R-I-N-A-U-S-M-E-N dot com. And you can also find me on TikTok at Zarina Oostman. Yeah. Hope you find me there.

SPEAKER_00

You want to tell us about your flying to Los Angeles in a couple days to shoot a short film.

SPEAKER_02

Yes, I'm a filmmaker and I'm working on a short film that's about a near future where people have started drinking energy drinks instead of food. And someone brings Biryani to the party and all hell breaks loose. So if that's your jam, you can find out more about it on my website or on my TikTok account. Hope to see you there.

SPEAKER_00

Fun, fun. Yeah. Energy drinks instead of food. That'll never happen. Okay, what are we talking about today? The topic for today is the book Dad Brain by Darby Saxby. This book was a listener suggestion. We do take listener suggestions. If you want to contact me on one of my platforms, I will consider your suggestion. I also thought this was a good book because we have mostly focused on moms so far in the podcast. So I thought it would be interesting to kind of dive into the other side and talk about fathers. First off, a note about the authors. Here on the Moms of the Millennium podcast, we always use people's preferred form of address. The author, she is a professor with a PhD, but she does not use the titles doctor or professor on her website or in interviews. On her website, she uses Darby Saxby, comma, PhD. So that's why I will not be referring to her as doctor or professor. Um, of course, I always do use people's professional titles if if that's how they want to be referred to, but since she doesn't, I just am gonna use her name in the podcast. Okay, I'm gonna tell you a little bit about the author. I'm gonna tell you a little bit about the book, and I'm gonna tell you a little bit about my takeaway, and then I'll just go through the book from beginning to end, kind of going through the main topics. The title of the book is Dad Brain. The author is Darby Saxby, PhD. She is from Ohio. She's been studying fathers for about 20 years as a tenured psychology professor at University of Southern California, where she runs a lab on the transition to parenthood. She has 80 plus peer-reviewed papers. She also consulted on the fair play bookslash game. She's a mom of two. She plays in a mom band, which I thought was very cute.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

I when I was looking her up, she actually seems like a lovely person. I mean, she really seems passionate about her research. I really think her heart's in the right place, which I don't know if that sounds like a backhanded compliment, but it kind of is. That's the um the bread of my compliment sandwich because I do have other stuff to say about her. Political wise, uh she's been on NPR, New York Times, Slate, so the typical Obama enlightened centrist technocrat. And that's her whole that's her resume. So that's that's basically her her position. I couldn't figure out exactly when she was born, but based on I found her resume on uh her LinkedIn. I would guess she was born in the late 70s sometime. So she is another Xennial. Yay! They are really the bread and butter of this this podcast. What about the book itself? Uh, I did respect that she's actually an expert in the field, you know. USC is a pretty prestigious university in the US.

SPEAKER_02

She's a Trojan. I went to USC. Wait, so her PhD is from USC and her PhD.

SPEAKER_00

Where did she go? Her PhD is from UCLA. Um, but she is a professor at USC. Okay, cool. As for where her team allegiances lie, I cannot say. I guess when you do a PhD, you're like, well, our team, our school has a sports team. I don't, I didn't know that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so the book Dad Brain, this is basically a pop science book on the study of fatherhood. How does becoming a father change the brain, hormones, all that kind of stuff? Socials, status, things like that. She says that uh a quick search of studies on parenthood published in peer-reviewed journals yields more than 10 to 1 ratio of papers focused on mothers. There's a real lack of research in this area, which she's seeking to fill with her career and her research. Um, she says, sure, it is true, like mothers undergo more of the physical demands of pregnancy, birth, and breastfeeding. So it is kind of logical that that there is more research in that respect. But then there's a whole other 18 years of the kid's life. So the research hasn't fully caught up to this gap. She quotes an old movie that she said they used to watch all the time as kids called The Crimson Pirate, Pirate Captain or whatever, stands up there and he's like, Don't believe what you hear, only what you see. No, believe half of what you see. Yeah, we want to believe our eyes, believe what we see, be very grounded, but don't be gullible. Don't be an idiot who believes everything. And she takes kind of a very realistic look at the research and is very honest when when saying, like, hey, the research really doesn't support this or that, or it needs to be studied more, and so on. So yeah, she named some myths up front. You might have heard, like, oxytocin is the cuddle hormone. Cortisol comes from toxic stress, social media myths that that are not really true. And the story is always more complex. Okay, before we get into the book itself, I'm gonna give just a little bit of my feedback on kind of the political aspects of it. Because, and I know, you know, I just can't wait till the end. This is like this is the thing I want to talk about the most. So I can't, I'm not gonna wait till the end to tell this part. And I don't know if the listeners are gonna say, oh, Rosie, do you have to make everything about your communist political views?

SPEAKER_02

Um go for it. Do it, do it.

SPEAKER_00

The answer is yes, obviously, I do. But to be fair, this is a highly political topic, and Darby Saxby does not shy away from that. She talks about the role of masculinity shaping how fathers behave. Why is the birth rate falling? These are all politically charged topics, and she does not shy away from engaging with them, in my opinion, rightly so. So I think it's very fair to for me to give to give my my feedback on that. As I explained earlier, she's very Obama-era, market friendly, nudge the culture, that type of thing. It started to frustrate me throughout the book. Yeah, yeah. Because her her theory of change is these nudges, yeah, change attitudes, things like that. This is the government we're talking about. You don't have to say pretty please. You have power, you can make laws, right? Yeah. Tax dollars do the thing, please. And and of course, I understand there's also kind of this fear of government overreach. By abdicating this responsibility, you're handing that power to corporations, and they're not accountable to the people, like a government is. She goes over and over again about the business case. The typical, oh, you know, if you give paternity leave, then the line will go up. Oh, this is my most biggest pet peeve. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02

It's like, who cares?

SPEAKER_00

I don't care about the line. I don't. I don't care. And you can never make me care. I will never care. By by even arguing this point, you're conceding that if it didn't make the line go up, we wouldn't do it. And I disagree with that. There are a lot of things that don't make the line go up. Paying taxes doesn't make the line go up. They still have to do that. So why is this any different when it comes to paternity leave and so on? The other thing is, is she focuses a lot on perceptions, attitudes, which I do agree is important, but it's also about just power. For example, in the US, paternity leave has 70% approval ratings. There are times when she says, Oh, we need to do this or that thing, which will encourage support for paternity leave. We already have support. 70% of people already want paternity leave in the United States. This already has support, it's just not happening.

SPEAKER_02

That can be said of so many issues in the US. Yes, yes. Government does not reflect the people's actual policy stance on anything.

SPEAKER_00

There's also the the kind of a missing angle is like class, class analysis. She does talk about class. I'm not saying she ignores it, but she never really dives in. I think it was Ronald Reagan who said that all history is a history of class struggle. Ironic. It was Ronald Reagan, I'm pretty sure, who said that. Yeah. Family precariousness that she talks about in the book. It's downstream of, you know, wages, cost of living crisis, housing, childcare, all this stuff. And if you're not gonna dive into that stuff, if you're swimming on the surface, you're not gonna see, you know, the rest of the iceberg. Um, oh yeah, this she has a bit of a lean-in, um oh neoliberal feminism thing. So there's a whole thing in the book about how women's jobs don't pay as well. Do you want to know what her solution is? Lean in, just skip it, get a better job. It's not for the women to lean in. The solution is more men need to work those jobs, then they'll be paid better because men's labor is valued more. So at one point, she even says, if we could rebuild society from the ground up, okay, this is her vision. We would have more men in these caregiving jobs, and then they would be better compensated. That's the big even in her wildest dreams, like complete lack of imagination. You cannot imagine women's labor being valued. Best we can do is hope that the men lift the lift the tide. There's also something about uh empathy. She talks a lot about like, oh, we need more empathy in society and blah blah blah. Oh my god, you know, human nature is empathetic. Everyone has empathy. That's not the problem. It's like you're watching the Hunger Games, where the are you familiar with the Hunger Games? Uh yeah, yeah. Yeah. So in case any of the listeners don't know about it, it's a dystopian future where they randomly choose children who like have to fight each other in this arena. Watching this and saying, Oh my god, the children in this arena just need more empathy. No, they they need to not be there. They need this needs to not happen. Right, yeah. Again, individual solutions to societal problems. She also has a teeny tiny teeny tiny tad of pronatalism. Oh, we gotta be consumed, you know, birth rate is falling and so on.

SPEAKER_02

That's a function of her economic disposition.

SPEAKER_00

Yes.

SPEAKER_02

Because we need a workforce and blah, blah, blah. Make line go up. Yeah, again, like no one owes anybody a birth rate, the positive birth rate.

SPEAKER_00

Because this book focuses on fathers. Yeah, fair enough. This book is about fathers. So she mostly focuses on the male side of it. Why are men not interested in having children? But I really think this is mostly driven by women, the birth rate collapse. Yeah. And she she does mention, she says that in South Korea, some women are on a birth strike.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, it's a 4B movement. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah. She does mention the 4B movement, actually. It's a very fringe movement, as far as I know in Korea, that they're actually like fully 4B, but Darby Saxby calls it a birth strike, but doesn't dive into that. I mean, a strike is a labor action. They are withholding their labor because it's not being compensated. Yeah. Those were my those were my political takeaways before we before we dive in. Well, we'll keep coming back to those as we as we go along. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. What do you think? Am I being fair asking a pop neuroscience book to be like a socialist manifesto?

SPEAKER_02

No, I mean you're doing a fair analysis of like the author's point of view based on what they're saying and not saying it. It is what it is, you know. You can't expect it to be something that the author is not. We have to look at it through the lens that they're presenting and dissect it by with the analysis that you're making. So it's it's good to keep all of this in mind as we see her advice or in her her take on things. Like she's an expert, but then experts have major blind spots sometimes.

SPEAKER_00

She's an expert in brain research. She's yeah, there's a lot of things she's not an expert in. I mean, I think she what you talked about with the frame of reference. Like she has this frame of reference where the only thing we can possibly do is beg for scraps from our corporate overlords. But we will keep that in mind as we go through. Yeah. Yeah. Let's do this. Diving in. Um, first off, what makes a good dad? Uh her big claim is that a good dad is a cultural idea. It's not fixed. There are many cultures throughout the world, they all have different ideas of what makes someone a good or a bad father. Um, she talks about some anthropology studies of different people. There are, for example, the Aka in Congo versus the kipsigis in Kenya. The Aka are very doting. As soon as they stop, the first thing they said is, I want the baby, and they spend a lot of time kissing and holding their babies versus the kipsigi, are they believe that holding a baby is unmanly. Yeah. People can have different cultural values in terms of what makes what what are the responsibilities of a father, how are they supposed to act. She says that fathers in the West have gotten more and more hands-on in the last couple decades, which I think is is pretty more or less true. Oh fun fact, you know the movie uh Finding Nemo, where the clownfish has to go rescue his little clownfish son. That is actually accurate. Clownfish dads in nature are very vigilant parents. They fan the eggs with their little fins. They're cutie. Yeah. But also, if you want to get more woke, um, another thing, clownfish, if the clownfish mother dies, like it did in Finding Nemo, the dad can become a female. Wow. That's cool. Yeah, this woke trans clownfish. Oh my god. Okay, what else? Ah, she talks about, okay, this is another thing. This is a little bit of a nitpick, but I think I'm right on this. Uh, she talks about how the term mammal is mother-centric, right? Because it's referring to mother's milk as a defining feature of mammals, which is true. Like that is a defining feature of mammals, but they didn't have to pick that one for the name, right? There are other defining features of mammals. For example, only mammals have hair. Reptiles don't have hair, fish don't have hair. You know, all mammals have hair, even whales. They could have used that as the name of the type of animal. The fact that they picked mammal, that's not objectively the best way to describe us. Uh, the whole thing about uh nuclear, she talks a little bit about different types of families. Nuclear families are kind of a new idea since the Industrial Revolution. Whereas for most of human history, people lived in more communal families. There, again, there's every kind of version of families under the sun that you can imagine. She does talk about stay-at-home dads a little bit as well. In the same thing, she never really goes into how economics plays into this. When it comes to being a stay-at-home mom, it is more common than being a stay-at-home dad. People will always they they don't want to seem judgmental. So they always say, Oh, if you want to raise your kids, you should do it, queen. I disagree. I think you should not do it. I mean, and it's not because it's not important work, it's the most important yeah.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

But you're not gonna have any money. And that's a very dangerous position to put yourself in.

SPEAKER_02

Long-term security uh goes down the drain, and your ability to function outside and earn money in your field goes down. All of these things to be able to take care of your kid long term goes down if you don't personally have money and you're relying on someone else.

SPEAKER_00

It's just not a safe position. Putting your whole family's future on one person. And yeah, I'm sure he's an angel who would never leave you for his secret second family, but um, you know, anything can happen. You never know, like injury, illness, disability, anything can happen. And yeah, I mean, of course, there's exceptions, you know. Maybe if you have qualifications in a high-paying field that you can re-enter, or maybe your I don't know, your surname is Vanderbilt or YouTube or whatever, then maybe you don't you don't need to worry about it. But I think it's a huge risk, and I do not think you should do it. Only if it's your only option, if you have no other option. She doesn't talk about that in the book because it applies to dads as well. Like obviously, if a dad is going to be a stay-at-home dad, he's also gonna have these concerns. She never really touches on it. All right. Up next, part two uncertain paternity and partial dads. So humans have concealed ovulation. It's not obvious when uh we are fertile. She talks about this in terms of being an evolutionary strategy because then you're not really sure who's the dad. Uh, which first off, I was like, this is a bit of an incel talking point. But she actually does address that. The incel movement's preoccupation with false paternity is nothing new. Patrilineal cultures, which pass property down from fathers to sons, have an especially significant take in preventing it because it upends the whole inheritance system. For thousands of years, these societies have attempted to ensure paternity certainty through checks on women's reproductive behavior. There are other alternatives in different cultures throughout the world, which are not patriarchal. For example, there's a forest-dwelling Ace tribe in Paraguay. They have a traditional of partial fathers. So everyone who could potentially be the kid's father is considered to be their father. Which reminds me, by the way, they she mentioned this in the book too. Have you seen the movie Mama Mia?

SPEAKER_02

No, I haven't.

SPEAKER_00

From 2000, 2008, something like that. Okay, spoiler a word, by the way, for this movie from 2008. Starring Meryl Streep and the songs of ABBA, the Swedish pop sensation group. Basically, the daughter, Meryl Streep's daughter in the movie is getting married, and she doesn't know who her biological father is. And she figures out there's three different guys who it could be, um, who, by the way, are played by Piers Brosnan, Colin Firth, and the Skarsgard dad, the dad of the Skarsgards. So I was like, okay, sounds good to me. I'd take any of them. But so she invites these, she's trying to figure out which of these three guys is the dad. And then it turns out that her mom says, Well, any of them could be the dad. I was dating them all at the same time or whatever. And in the end, they all decide together to be the dads, and they all three walk her down the aisle, which I thought was very cute.

SPEAKER_02

Why why not just do a paternity test? Is this set in the 60s?

SPEAKER_00

Like, you know, it should have been. I think that would have made more sense. Supposed to be a happy ending. They all decide, oh, we don't care. We're all gonna be your dad. Yeah. Um, but yeah, it would have made more sense if it was set in like the 80s, then they wouldn't have any way to know, really.

SPEAKER_02

Can I jump in and say my point of view on all of this framing?

SPEAKER_00

Of course, of course.

SPEAKER_02

I know there's cultural relativity with uh dad's roles and how much they're involved and what masculinity has to say about it in any context. And my husband even said, like in Hawaii, there's uh I think it's Hawaii or some Polynesian island, where if a couple isn't able to conceive, um, then someone else is assigned to like mix it up and then see if they conceive, and then they raise the kid together. It's not so hard line about property, it's just the tribe has a new life to it, and people are taking care of the children. Um, so there's many different ways to go about children, and what it means to be a dad is very different in matriarchal cultures. Honestly, I believe in a matriarchy. A matriarchy? What is that? Tell me more. There's all these conversations around fair play, domestic labor. A lot of feminism today is labor dispute, domestic labor disputes. And it's like how much mental load, how much invisible load, how much childcare, how much retirement funds versus staying at home. All of these debates are about equal distribution of labor in the home. And uh men either do or don't participate in that. Um, my whole exhaustion with that debate is just do make Instead, and whoever wants to participate in the child rearing gets the role. And if they don't, then they don't. You know, the matriarchal society is reading raising the children. That's what happens anyway. In in a lot of uh places with um not present fathers. It's like the women in the family are raised, either the grandmothers, the sisters, the aunts. It's women doing that work anyway. Why invest so much energy into getting dads to be equal parents and partners and just give the resources to the people who are gonna do the work anyway?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, so she does have a lot of stuff in the book about fathers being partially present, like not always present. Maybe they have to be away for work, maybe they are in prison, uh, maybe they're going to live with their secret second family. I don't know. Yeah, she does seem to encourage, like, there are ways that we can support fathers to to be there more, but also, yeah, she doesn't really consider that maybe we don't have to well, she actually talks about at some point. You know, the rapper killer Mike. No, no, but okay. Yeah. So, anyways, he um he has like a bunch of kids by with a bunch of different moms, and he's like, Oh, that's normal where I'm from. You know, everybody has multiple stepdads and half siblings and all this kind of stuff. She does seem to advocate for kind of expanding our views of what makes a family. But yeah, she definitely doesn't go into changing society that much. What I also see as being different about matriarchy is not just the immediate caregivers of the child, like who's gonna take care of them. The the entire society is reorganized to benefit children. So whatever job you're doing now, instead of benefiting the CEO, it's supposed to benefit children and other vulnerable people in society.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

I always use the example if you're a civil engineer, instead of designing a street that cars can drive down as fast as possible, you would design a street which is safe for children to walk on. Even though you may have no children, you may have nothing to do with it in your life, but your job, your role in society is supposed to support the most vulnerable. The other thing is a lot of this uh evolutionary psychology stuff, which Dari Saxby does not engage in, which I appreciate, but the idea that, oh, being obsessed with are you the real biological father in these traditional societies, they are expected to share. People have to share everything. So if if you're the best hunter or whatever, you don't just provide for your own biological children. You're supposed to provide for everyone. So it doesn't matter. I mean, I I don't mean it doesn't matter from a relationship perspective, but but it doesn't matter from a resource providing perspective. If you were a father, people kind of assume that like they were nuclear families living under capitalism, and this father is providing for his own biological children and his nuclear family, but it wasn't like that. And like you said, that is the more traditional way to do it. Okay. Continue. We're moving right along. I'm loving this discussion. Okay. Yeah. Uh section three, birth of a dad. Uh historically, women would give birth with other women, but we're starting to move more into having dads being present at the birth. Um, she talks about the process of going through from pregnancy to childbirth and so on. Couples who had a more tumultuous relationship during pregnancy, mothers were more likely to describe the childbirth as difficult, painful, scary, or feel less supported when they fought more with their partner during pregnancy. So it does show that the fathers really do have this supporting role that they can take on, not just during the birth, but also before, as far as like having that strong relationship. She gets into something called couvad. I don't know if that's how it's pronounced, but it's you know how when you give well, you gave birth on medicated, I did too. You remember how it like hurts a lot. Well, did you know that it can also hurt the dads? They can get sympathetic labor pains. Poor guys. I mean, let me tell you, Sarah, this whole book. I was trying so hard to be sympathetic. I'm trying to be sympathetic because I know there are a lot of these men's issues are very neglected. I want to say, oh, okay. Yeah, poor guy, you know. But this one I just couldn't get down. So listen to what this dad says. Okay, well, maybe you'll listen to his his terrifying story and maybe you'll be sympathetic. Okay, he said. I think I was in more pain than she was.

SPEAKER_02

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_00

I'm pretty sure you were not. Okay, like I'm pretty sure it was almost as if she was transferring the pain for you. I mean, I'm sure it was hard for you, but it's just what do you think? Is this real or is this just the most man-centering thing you ever heard? I don't know. Is just a man making everything about him? I don't know.

SPEAKER_02

I can give that this is a thing that can happen, like empathy towards someone else, you can feel their pain, etc. But just to think that it's anywhere near the actual pain or it's centering to say, I think I was in more pain than her. Like, come on. Yes come on. That kind of tells you like how much of a diva he probably is in the rest of their relationship.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, that's what I was thinking too.

SPEAKER_02

Um, there are men's issues. There are definitely men's issues, mental health, and a lot of it is patriarch patriarchy inflicted, self-inflicted. You don't have to follow these rules, dudes. You can have a good life if you want to. You don't have to do this the stuff that other men tell you to do. So there are problems and a lot of it's self-inflicted. And I do think there are solutions to it, but I don't if we want to compare pain's, you know, pain olympics, like they're not gonna win this one. Childbirth, they're not gonna win this one.

SPEAKER_00

You know, I do want to be fair. This is a book about dads, and it is a book about their experiences regarding childbirth. And and I know that, yeah, attending someone's childbirth of someone you care about must be really hard because you're seeing them suffer, you can't help them. So maybe even feeling these pains is a way to feel like you are participating. Yeah, but the way he phrased it really did make him sound like a diva.

SPEAKER_02

Can I say two things? Sure, sure. Hopefully I don't forget book one thing. Um, I'm I'm in a group, a Facebook group. This one in particular is called Bridging the Gap. And it's a community of women who I think there's like a hundred thousand of them, um, who try to work on relationship. It's kind of like fair play, like relationship gaps. I take on too much mental load, or there's a bit more invisible labor on my plate than on my husband's plate or my partner's plate. How can we work through this together? Do you have tips or whatever? In any of these women's groups, there's like 20% of it is like abuse, and you need to leave the relationship, and here are some domestic violence resources. The other like 40% is gosh, that's a big gap there, and it's gonna take a lot of work, and you need to either you're gonna have to make a choice about devoting this much effort to this, or you know, figuring something else out. Then there's actual gaps. And I feel like the dad problems are just ignorance. First of all, they don't know what they don't know, and and then it becomes a woman's problem to help them not have the problems that they have because they don't know.

SPEAKER_00

It sucks that the solution is always like more work for the mom. If you want to bring him up to level, you gotta put in all the work to make it happen. It's like, oh yeah.

SPEAKER_02

And that's like the fust frustrating bit about it is as moms, I had to learn a bunch of stuff.

SPEAKER_00

Nobody taught me, yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Nobody taught me. I I initiated all that learning and I was because I gave a sh, you know, like I cared. Why can't men do that too? Like, um, why is it a woman's responsibility? So that's like a chunk of the bridging of the gap conversations, and then maybe, maybe like five percent of the conversations is oh, he does all this stuff and he's great. The problem that is an actual problem, okay, we're in a social setting and other guys pick on him because he's doing a dad thing. Mm-hmm. Society level problems. It's like, okay, well, how can you guys come up with stuff to deal with the conversations that society is pushing on you because of patriarchal norms? That's the actual problem I want, I would like dads to be at, you know?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, that's a gap. That's an actual gap. A gap is not like a yawning chasm. A gap is a small difference. Yeah.

unknown

Right.

SPEAKER_02

I I think I lost the thread on the other one, but maybe it'll come back to me. So continue.

SPEAKER_00

All right. Yeah, you can stop at any time if it if it pops up. Okay. The next section is called the Dad Brain at Rest. Uh, this is like the brain scan chapter. And this is really where she's the strongest. It's her specialty, it's what she's most familiar with, where she's most detailed about the research. Her favorite region of the brain, which of course she's a brain scientist, she has a favorite region of the brain. It's the precuneus. It's a mysterious region of the brain. Um, because I think it's a little bit more deep in the brain. There's a lot in the book about like how is the brain structured, what do different parts of the brain do, and how it's not quite so simple as this part of the brain does XYZ. It's a lot more complicated. There's more to do with connections and so on. But she says this precuneus is has to deal with something called mentalizing, which is trying to imagine how other people are feeling at the moment. So when your brain is at rest, when you're not actively, you know, thinking about or concentrating on something, she said what it often does is replaying awkward encounters. I was like, oh my god, relatable. That's all I think about. And I'm at rest. Being able to put yourself in someone else's shoes and imagine how they are feeling is a fundamental part of being a good dad. And men typically are not as practiced at this as women. And this is an essential skill to be a good parent is to think about your children. How are they feeling? How is the family feeling? Um, so it's something that might they need more practice at to figure out how to do it. Uh, there are basically in this book 200 different versions of the study where they put someone in a brain scanner and show them pictures. And that's it. There are so many versions. Oh, we showed them pictures of their baby, another baby, and their wife when she was pregnant. Oh, we showed them pictures of their baby and a different woman, and we showed them, and I was like, oh my god, enough. But I guess that's how you do brain scans. I don't know. I guess that's what brain science looks like. But for example, they showed a video of a baby doll in a stroller that was rolling down a hill towards a road or something. They they put dads in the scanner. The part of their brain that has to do with movement lit up. And she interpreted this like a protection. Oh, they want to run over there and catch that stroller, right? And first off, I was like, well, I feel like I would also, that would also be my instinct, right?

SPEAKER_02

What about women? And when they when did women did they compare it to like what women's brains did?

SPEAKER_00

I can't remember in the in the uh book if they talked about doing it for women as well and comparing, because like yeah, I feel like as a mom, oh my god, that's like my worst nightmare.

SPEAKER_02

Of course.

SPEAKER_00

Literally, I've had that nightmare before. So it sounds weird to say that oh, women also wouldn't want to run after and catch the stroller. I don't know. If someone is interested in this brain science stuff, it was very educational. Okay, next up, uh, have you heard of a little hormone called testosterone?

SPEAKER_02

Oh, yeah. Tell us all about it.

SPEAKER_00

Let's hear all about it. A bunch of different studies show that men tend to have lower testosterone after becoming fathers. She does go into like there's the whole manosphere test testosterone maxing stuff, and it's not as simple as number high equals good. It's not like it's good to have high testosterone and it's bad to have low testosterone. It has seasons, you know, when you are a father of young children, it gets lower because it's not as necessary to be have all this high energy and everything. Actually, kind of popped the bubble a little bit on testosterone for me, because yeah, it does have all these effects, but it's also widely variable throughout your life. Maybe they're making a big deal about it for no reason. Well, yeah, surprise, surprise. I know. She says good health is not just about high or low tea, it's about the flexibility to respond to life's variable demands. Uh, she also talks about what she calls the hormone Sue, which is all the other hormones oxytocin, prolactin, cortisol. Her running theme is that all three are way more complicated than you would learn from like wellness TikToks. Prolactin is actually the hormone that induces lactation in breastfeeding mothers, but it's also called the hormone of paternity. It also changes in men when they become fathers. And did you know that seahorses in seahorses a male seahorse carries the eggs? And so the seahorse's dad, little dad belly comes from this prolactin hormone. I didn't know that. I thought it was interesting.

SPEAKER_02

That's cool.

SPEAKER_00

Um, cortisol. Wellness gurus talk about cortisol as toxic or precursor to adrenal fatigue. They're missing the fact that steroid hormones like cortisol play a valuable role in regulating our immunity, metabolism, and circadian rhythms. Cortisol changes a lot, even throughout the day. It's actually very hard to study because when you wake up, it's high, it gets lower throughout the day. They even studied that flossing your teeth can raise your cortisol. So it's very hard to study the effect. Was this just random fluctuations throughout the day, or did something really change the cortisol? So this is again, it's just a complicated story, and hormones are interlinked. You can't just say this one is good, this one is bad, this one does this, this one does that. Okay, mental health. Uh, I thought this was one of the strongest uh sections for me and most interesting. One of the big concepts is that men tend to lean on their partner for basically all their emotional support. And then when the baby is born, now she has to spend all her time with your baby with the baby. That can be a big shock, a big transition if they don't have those stronger uh social networks. Men's perinatal mental health care is basically non-existent. And she does reference can't women just have one thing? Like, can't that just be our thing, the postpartum? But yeah, it's we don't have to be competing. It can be that both men and women need better perinatal health care. That's that's a fact. It's a fact that it's something we we don't take into account enough. Another interesting topic was that fathers might cope with their feelings through more typically masculine behaviors like hypersexuality or substance use. And once you consider these more like male-coded symptoms, the difference in depression rates starts to disappear. If you're looking at male depression and expecting it to appear the same as in women, then that's why maybe this is being missed. I I liked her her takeaway. Mental health should be seen as a family affair. We need a paradigm shift from an individualistic approach to mental health based on a family system. I I I overall liked that section. Next up, dad bods and catnaps. So she talks about the stereotypical dad bod. Think Santa Claus when he was 35, you know. She explains this kind of like biologically and talks about snacking and stuff. So, first off, um, she said partnered men living with children have more belly fat than single men. And this extra fat was explained by lower levels of testosterone. It was like, or you know, not working out less. I don't know. She also says if you restrict people's sleep, they get hungry and cranky and crave carbohydrates. Uh, in my experience, absolutely true. Um, but I also thought this is the only time in the whole book where I was like, it's not that deep. Because otherwise I thought she didn't go deep enough. But this was the only time where I was like, look, he has a time-consuming hobby. That is a sign of a very time-consuming hobby. And not just of your gym time, but like your whole life. Special diet and special timing and all this stuff. I think that's just obviously why you would say, okay, this guy is gonna have a hard time as a father continuing with this lifestyle. What if his kid only wants to eat mac and cheese? How is he gonna make his broccoli and brown rice and chicken breast, you know? She also, this is another thing where I thought she uh could have done a little bit more interdisciplinary references because she talks about how hunter-gatherers being lean, mean hunting machines. She she talked about one researcher who studied the people in the Congo and he said, Oh, they look like CrossFit athletes, like they're so fit. I don't think modern hunter-gatherers are necessarily a good picture because they mostly live in like the last corners of the earth that nobody else wants, right? So, and and again, I I'm not any kind of expert on this, but living off the land used to be way easier before we destroyed everything with extractive capitalism. I mean, it used to not be that difficult. I mean, you used to live in the uh Pacific Northwest, like the salmon runs were so prolific that you could not see the water, the most nutritious fish on the planet. And if you just spent two weeks catching the fish, you're good for like almost the whole year. Yeah. I also even have evidence, even because she even says the our ancestors were these lean, mean, you know, with their crossfit-looking guys. Let me share my screen. How do I do that on Zoom? Ah, here we go. Okay, you see it?

SPEAKER_02

Okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

So these little statues, this is from a for an archaeological site in Turkey called Chitalhoyuk. Fertile women. Yes, and and even the thing is a lot of these figurines that they find in Europe look like a pregnant woman. But look at this. This is not a pregnant belly. Yeah. If you look at it from the side, let me find the side view. Yeah, look, even in the back, she has little back rolls. Yeah. Just for the listeners, it's a small statue. I think it's six or seven inches, like 12 centimeters long. It is a very lovingly carved sculpture of a fat woman, and she's very obviously not pregnant.

SPEAKER_02

Like the belly is drooping.

SPEAKER_00

It's an apron belly, it's a drooping belly. This is not a pregnant woman. The person who carved this has clearly seen a fat person before. And it's very realistic. Like she has little back folds. Come on. And at this site, there were other ones too. Like here's the seated one with kind of the same arm rolls, lovingly carved knee dimples. I would say they have definitely seen a fat person in real life. Definitely. And these are from 8,000 years ago, and the other one is from 9,000 years ago. There were fat people in the Stone Age. This idea that everyone were these thin bodies is just false. I don't know. Maybe if she would have talked to an archaeologist, she could have gotten more feedback on that.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Anyways, that's my takeaway.

SPEAKER_02

The brain science is there, but the interpretation could use some interdisciplinary like input.

SPEAKER_00

Because this isn't brain science. This is this is outside of her discipline.

SPEAKER_02

So I'm curious what the dad bod has to do with the dad brain. What is her like what does it mean anything? Like it's your fine dad bod. And I know women who are like attracted to dad bods because of oh that that seems a more fatherly family type person rather than the Jimbro. Yeah. These people with dad bods, they didn't give birth. Yes. And women have like all these hormonal changes and like they their their body permanently changes, but men didn't they didn't give birth. They didn't do like they they have a choice in a lot of the their physical uh state. And also a lot of men are not losing sleep, uh, because a lot of women are doing the night shift as well. So I'm I don't know, like I don't understand.

SPEAKER_00

Like uh Yeah, she mostly tries to explain it in terms of lower testosterone that having lower testosterone makes you put on more fat. Um, snacking, uh evolution. But yeah, in my opinion, it's really just about the time thing. Yeah, obviously, if you are an involved father, you're not gonna have as much time for working out as you used to, and you're not gonna have as much time for meal planning and all that stuff. So, and yeah, even if they're not doing all the effort is still more than not having kids. Um Right. Yeah. Um, yeah, but but no, I agree with you. I think it is more is not so biological, it's probably more just practical. Okay, yeah. Oh, speaking of sleep, the next section is about sleep. Sleep is highly cultural, and she talks about how different societies have very, very different sleeping arrangements. The parents together, baby alone in crib setup that we typically have in the West is actually quite rare in throughout the world. She quotes some studies about when fathers participated more in toddler bedtime routines, the toddler woke up less often at night. And she says fathers were less likely to agree with statements like my child will feel abandoned if I don't respond immediately. They may pick up on that more laid back attitude and sleep better as a result. I disagree. I disagree. This sounds like the typical bedtime routine stuff. And she did have two babies who were very different. She describes it in terms of how easily they slept and their temperament. So I I think she knows that it's mostly luck. You know, the example about if the father participated, the child woke up less. I'm like, did they really wake up less, or did the parents just perceive it as less because they were less tired? If the mom is the one remembering and the dad is helping, so she's less sleep-deprived, then maybe it just seems like the kid is waking up less because she's only doing it half the time. But I really don't know how they measured that. Because this is something that I think would be really hard to recall in hindsight. Because I used to co-sleep. When I woke up in the morning, you asked me how many times did the baby wake up. I would honestly say I don't know. Because it's just a blur. The night is just a blur. Yeah. Even if I tried to tell you that morning, I couldn't tell you. If you asked me like a month later how many times did he wake up, I'd I'd just be going off vibes. So I don't know how they measured it, but I would I I feel like that's something that could really go back and forth depending on how the study was conducted.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. To your point about co-sleeping with the baby. If the dad is involved, I it seems so vague and not um detailed enough. I had so many nights where I couldn't I I couldn't I can't remember. I just remember being very sleep deprived the entire time. I would have more of that information about the sleep patterns than my husband necessarily. That's a difference in perception. What is a good night sleep based on dad involvement?

SPEAKER_03

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_02

I don't know. I don't understand, I don't understand the measurements here.

SPEAKER_00

Those weren't her own research. She was reporting summaries of other studies. And again, I'm not the journalist deep dive podcaster. I didn't go and look up the original studies that she was quoting. So honestly, I can't tell you. I do think those are reasonable skepticisms. Uh believe half of what you see territory, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Okay, up next, health and the mental load. First off, I forgot to mention this earlier, but she goes over how a lot of the services dealing with parent groups, babies, healthcare is all directed towards women. And for example, she gives this anecdote from a guy who was a stay-at-home dad when his kid was a baby, and he tried going to these baby meetups. He said they were all sitting cross-legged on the floor and holding the babies. And he was like, Oh, I can't sit like that. I can't, I can't cross my legs on the floor. Which, you know, seems like a silly thing, but yeah, it's definitely how this group was set up for moms and didn't accommodate for this dad and his lack of hip flexibility, right? Uh-huh. Males don't have flexibility in their hip and knee joints, and that's why they can't be president. I know. That's my impression of a podcast, bro. It does go to show how there's things you don't think about that can make dads feel excluded even when they're trying to be more involved. Another example she talks about is men who are married and who have kids tend to be healthier. They smoke less, they use their seatbelt, they go to the doctor more, uh, which my pipe was like because their wife makes them go. Right. They don't do that stuff on their own. But there there were some wholesome examples she gave of people who were inspired to clean up their life or break the cycle of abuse somehow by becoming a father, how it kind of inspired them. So that I did kind of roll my eyes at that a little bit. I know. Um, okay.

SPEAKER_02

I feel like this is doing us such a there's so much opportunity to really discuss the dad brain. And I feel like we're not she didn't cover a lot of important things. The discussion I wish people were having was okay, well, what is a dad's role actually, since a mom is doing so much of the physical work with her body with pregnancy and postpartum and like breastfeeding and night co-sleeping, all that stuff. What is a dad's role actually? And what how does that affect his brain actually when he actually does those things? I kind of want to talk about that, but I feel like there's so few men who do that to even study. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_00

Those are great examples, and I I do have some uh some examples from the book. The brain can change over time, even physically size of certain parts of your brain. I don't know if you've heard of the London cab driver study, it's quite famous.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

There's a part of the brain called the hippocampus, which is more associated with wayfinding. To be a registered London taxi cab driver, it usually takes about two years. You have to learn every street in London, you know, every landmark on every street, how to get from any point in London to any other point. You just have to name it off the dome. Yeah, so it's a notoriously very difficult and it takes years of practice just driving around London on a little motorbike to learn every single street in this entire city. The people who are doing this, they scan their hippocampus before and after, and it grew in size. So she gives that as an example of how the brain is adaptable to these kind of difficult changes. And she does talk about brain scans of like before and after becoming a father, but I didn't write about it in my notes. I'll be honest, some of the brain stuff was a little bit boring, so I kind of skipped over that. I I didn't I didn't talk about all there. There was more brain stuff. So I do want to be uh give Darby Saxby a fair shake. There was more brain stuff than I mean. I also I just don't have time, you know, we're trying to fit this into one about one hour, so yeah, yeah, I had to cut some stuff, but I I understand what you mean. And she does talk about how regions of the brain can respond to practice and life changes. So I mean, it is a factor, but she always does say there needs to be more research in this or that. Okay, uh, as far as the health and the mental load, okay. She talks about something called maternal gatekeeping. Have you heard of this?

SPEAKER_02

Oh, it's like my this is I do this because I'm the mom and you don't do this. Kitchen is my domain, you go out, you go out, do that stuff.

SPEAKER_00

Right, right. So it's a bit of a problematic term because it can be a real problem that women don't trust their partners or the dads to take care of the baby. But it could also just be that the mom has standards that the dad isn't meeting. I do think it's a bit of a a complex issue. And she says it can start out with good intentions but spiral into an entrenched pattern of fathers feeling judged, disempowered, and shut out from childcare. If the second the baby starts crying, you snatch the baby away, he's never gonna learn how to get the baby to calm down in his own way. But at the same time, yeah, it's is it maternal gatekeeping if your partner, you know, leaves the baby for hours in a poopy diaper? No, that's obviously a health and safety issue. It it's a bit complicated.

SPEAKER_02

So the maternal gatekeeping, is it that women are gatekeeping responsibilities or that their partners are unreliable with those responsibilities? And uh it's not that she's wanting to gatekeep her territory or her quote unquote territory. It's that she has all these systems in place already, and this person who's doing it as an opt-in thing messes it up or does it inconsistently, and that throws the entire thing off, and that creates more work for her at the end of the day because she has ownership over those things. And that's never been like a discussion beforehand, or if it is a discussion, she's the one who has to initiate, and then then that becomes like the house manager nagging dynamic, and then that then men are just like, Oh, that's your your thing, I'll leave you to it. Okay, if she knows how to clean and sterilize the bottles and she needs him to do it sometimes, either he he could really get the kid sick if he does it doesn't know how to do it properly.

SPEAKER_00

Or, you know, in that example, even if she delegates it to him, she has to check his work. Did he do it? Did he do it right? Did he do it when I asked to? That's just more work. Sometimes it's just easier to do it yourself than to have to micromanage like that. So yeah, I can understand. And you know, of course, some of them do it on wrong on purpose. That's what my weaponized incompetence is. I mean, I also didn't know how to sterilize bottles, I also didn't know that. I I have a phone with all the world's information on it that I use to learn how to do it and do it right, and he could do that too. Yeah. Um, uh, okay, men taking on some of that responsibility. Men tend to compare their contributions to what they saw their fathers or grandfathers doing. By that metric, they're superstars. Uh, but women tend to compare their partners to themselves, which is not nearly so flattering.

SPEAKER_02

Yep.

SPEAKER_00

They're like, oh my god, my dad never even changed a diaper. I change diapers all the time. I'm which is true. I mean, for sure, millennial dads are really stepping up in a big way.

SPEAKER_02

But it again, like the default comparison being other men in the family is so patriarchal in that they can't see their partners as, you know, role models or like or capable.

SPEAKER_00

And it reminds me of how when a man will say, Oh, having a daughter taught me that women are people, and his wife is standing right there, like, what am I chopped liver?

unknown

Okay.

SPEAKER_00

If your husband ever says that, you should just get an instant divorce on the spot. Legal, legally binding. If he says that word. Yeah. Oh, but some couples don't have this gender debate problem in the same way because they are same-sex. She says that partnered gay fathers reported an egalitarian balance of labor with their partners and we're very happy with that division. Love it. Love it. Turns out men can balance the balance the labor fairly when they want to. I guess it just depends if they want to or not. Going back to framing this as an individual problem that couples need to work this out among themselves and not something that we as a society need to work on. Next up, bonding. She talks about how moms tend to bond with the baby early on, regardless of how they feel about their partner. But for fathers, the relationship with the mom actually has a strong predictive effect on how bonded they will feel with the baby. Um, a quote from a husband who said, Oh, my wife had trouble going to sleep at night because I just can't go to sleep. Our baby is so beautiful, don't you think? And personally, I never had that problem. Like if my baby was asleep, I would go to sleep instantly. No waiting around thinking about how beautiful he is. Maybe their baby was a unicorn baby that sleeps a lot. But I could not relate to that problem. Next up, blended families and beyond the binary, trans or non-binary dads. She has a neighbor who is a transgender dad who she talks to about fatherhood as a trans man and how this all of the research and everything, she does admit it. All the research is almost specifically cisgender heterosexual couples. So she does admit that this is really a gap in the research at the moment. There's hardly any research on trans fathers. Um, okay. Uh yeah, I talked about already about the gender switching clownfish. If you're a big fan of the gender binary, this book is not for you. Which I did respect that she talked about a lot of that stuff. It's very interesting. Yeah. Next up, Absence, prison trauma, the political, political chapter. And again, I was a bit disappointed, but I'm gonna I'm gonna go over it. Okay. Old research used to have an absent versus present binary for fathers, but the story is always more complicated than that. You know, maybe they are absent for a short a short period of time, and not that they're always gone. I mean, that can happen, but usually that's not the case. And then of course, she talks about mass incarceration. So good, she does, she does mention it. I mean, she does acknowledge that it's a thing, but she just doesn't think we can do anything about it. For example, charities that can help previously incarcerated men reconnect with their families, and then like, or we could just not lock them up in the first place. That's also an option, but I guess that's not something she considers. I I can't totally trash the book because she always does mention that, like, she bumps up against this issues and then just stops there and just goes into this reassuring anecdote about a guy who got out of prison and connected with his family, you know? And maybe we could just not do that. Maybe she also talks about how men can have are more likely to have jobs that have shift work or move to another town to work in a mine or something like that, or immigrate. This can make parenthood way more complicated. And how does this um affect being a parent? So, out of all the useful jobs you could think of, you know, long haul trucker or firefighter, whatever, she decides to talk to a guy named Dale, who works for the Los Angeles Police Department, LAPD. He's a cop. First off, for the listeners, um, you know, however you think about cops in the US, okay, imagine how bad they are. The LAPD has a particular, even in the US, particular reputation for police brutality and corruption and all that stuff. Painting this sympathetic picture of this cop. Oh no, he spends all night beating protesters with a stick, and then he has to come home and take care of the baby. It's so hard. Wham wham wham. I did not appreciate the copaganda. Sorry that oppressing the people makes you so tired, Dale. Just interview, I don't know, anybody a paramedic, someone who works on ambulance, you know, something like that. If you wanted to talk about that. Not Dale.

unknown

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

I don't know. You used to live in LA. Like, did you also Yeah?

SPEAKER_02

I mean, I went to a lot of Black Lives Matter protests and and things like that and blocked traffic and saw a lot of the reactions to police violence. I nothing happened to me or the people that I were I was with, but it was ubiquitous. Like you didn't want to deal with the cops.

SPEAKER_00

And this is the type of uh work that makes it really hard to bond with your baby in the morning after after, yeah, tear gassing protesters all night. Poor guy. Um ah, so she talks to this guy, Reeves, Richard Reeves, who wrote the of Men and Boys book. Oh my god, this guy is a centrist chump. Chump.

SPEAKER_02

Tell us how. Tell us the details.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, you know, he talks about the manosphere and how men who opt out of family life are missing out on this source of meaning and all this stuff. And the manosphere stuff does tend to be very individualist. He calls them secular monks who are just kind of leading this life of perfection in isolation. And I do think that's true. I do think that is an important aspect of the manosphere, but maybe you could dive into a little more why they're so alienated from the world and why they're retreating into these toxic spaces. But yeah, if you're a centrist, you'll never figure it out. So I guess it's probably women's fault. That's what I can say. Okay, next up, toys, care careers, and paternity leave. So her whole theory of change is that we need to shift the culture and then we'll get these policy changes that we want. For example, let boys play with dolls, and then we'll be more used to the idea of men in caregiving roles, and then we'll get paternity leave. And I'm like, wait a minute. If we already have 70% support from paternity leave, like how much higher does it have to get before we I mean, the way you get more money is by organized labor action.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Not by begging, not by saying pretty, pretty please. It's never worked ever. I mean, I don't know why they keep thinking it's gonna work because it's not gonna. Yeah, it's the other thing, you know, millennial dads are also stepping up as far as childcare. This is the cleanest proof that the nudge theory is just wrong. The culture has already shifted. We're already there. We're we already want dads to be more involved. And we still don't have the policy because leave costs money and the companies don't want to do it. So, in a lot of countries, even when they offer paternity leave, men don't take it because they're still worried about retribution at work or the culture doesn't accept it. In Norway, they had a use it or lose it system. Men would get four weeks of paternity leave only for the dad, and if he didn't use it, it's gone. He can't transfer it. That was actually very popular. It changed participation from 2% to 70%. So this huge difference.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Um, it is possible if you fund it, if you mandate it, extremely possible, but you will never ever get it by saying pretty, pretty please.

SPEAKER_02

Uh another thing related to like um paternity leave and number of children that I read about. Countries where people have paternity leave and take paternity leave, the the dads tend to want less children. They realize how much work it is. It's like, oh, okay, send me back to work. Let me not do this all the time, please. Yeah. It's like, yeah, and when you actually have to be in the trenches like that, then you realize, okay, this this is enough. One or two kids, or you know, however many you can handle a paternity leave for is enough. And it just shows how like having a million kids is a very patriarchal thing, um, because all the labor is falling onto the women folk and the men have no clue how much work that is. It's so extractive. The children are extractive pieces of property that in that situation. And anyway, so the case where paternity leave will actually improve the quality of the men's understanding of childcare and family life and the value of how much work it is to care for a life.

SPEAKER_00

That's a big improvement. If every member of Congress knew how much of work it is to raise a baby, yeah. If they're not gonna put their money where their mouth is, then it's not gonna happen either. The whole next part, I'm gonna talk talk the I'm just trying to transition into the next part. Um there's a whole section called the business case for a dad brain. I skipped it. I said I'm not reading that. Trash, trash, throw it in trash can. I'm not reading that. Um, I don't care whether being a good father makes you better at your job. I don't care. Why are you working hard? Chump, why are you working hard? Lame, don't do it. She talks to this guy. I I didn't write down his first name, Sullivan, who's kind of an activist in terms of uh this type of stuff. And he said, he encourages companies to institute care days for obligations like caring for a sick child or aging parent. So not just paternity, but general care. And I said, wait a minute. He encourages companies to have care days. Yeah. They're gonna say no. And then what are you gonna do? You're gonna be like, oh well. He said, when parents and caregivers feel like you trust them to do their job, they're going to work harder. And I was like, I'm not. Nope, you can't do it. I'm not gonna work harder. Under no circumstances will I ever work harder unless I absolutely have to. And you shouldn't either. Listeners, don't do it. Don't do it. Mm-mm. That is chump behavior. Uh oh, so this uh this politician, here's another example. This politician she talked to, he started a group called the Dad's Caucus, which I thought was very cute. This is a quote champions issues like paid family leave, the child tax credit, and the need for changing tables in the men's bathroom on Capitol Hill. Okay. You know, I think this is just cute, but she phrases it as if they have not achieved the changing tables thing. So did they get the changing tables or not? Can they, members of Congress, not even get changing tables in their own government building that they of the government they are supposedly running? Is that how effective they are? Is this supposed to be convincing me that they're on my side? They can't even get changing tables in their own workplace. That's the best she can imagine, is begging for scraps. And if they say no, what are you gonna do? Beg some more. Please, please, please, please, please, please, and promise a line will go up. They're gonna say no. They're gonna say no. I mean, they have been saying no. Anyways, okay, then I did like uh I did like this part talking about happiness. And does having children make you happy? I really I thought this part was very interesting. Uh, we often think about happiness in terms of what she calls hedonic pleasure, you know? Simple pleasures, pina colada on the beach type of thing. And obviously in parenting, that type of happiness is quite lacking. But there's another type of happiness which she calls eudamonic well-being. We experience when we work at a job that is hard but deeply fulfilling, when we overcome a tough challenge, or when we deepen our connection to someone we love, which basically describes parenting. I I've seen it described as the hard parts of parenting are very tangible. Sleep deprivation, physical work, but the good parts are very intangible. It's it's feelings, it's this eudaimonic well-being, this this kind of feeling of fulfillment or or connectedness. But yeah, our culture very much focuses on the first kind, the hedonic pleasures. Um, okay. Ah, she lost me again. She had me for a minute, she lost me again. Okay, I'm gonna read this quote to you. Some of the biggest resource hoarders in our society are parents who will stop at nothing to get a leg up for their child with no compunction about taking a spot from another, perhaps more deserving child. The biggest resource hoarders is like a Karen who wants to get little Mackenzie on the top soccer team. Ish that's the biggest the biggest resource hoarders in our society.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

But you cannot name any bigger resource hoarders than that who hoard like maybe billions more resources than that.

SPEAKER_02

Oh Yeah. The cultural hegemony of uh her framework is so strong. The framework is so ideologically entrenched. Can't see it. Can't see the water.

SPEAKER_00

But oh you know, but you know what the solution is? Do you want to know what the solution is to that?

SPEAKER_02

Uh-huh. What is it?

SPEAKER_00

Is it to make sure everyone has the resources they need? No, we just need to be nice. For every story of a parent pushing their child's interests ahead of others, there is a story of someone who was inspired by their child's birth to care more about the fate of other children across the globe. What? Obviously, that can only be the lesson. The lesson can only be we just need to have more empathy for each other. We don't need to change this system that's forcing the children to fight in the arena. We just need to be like, oh, those children need to be nicer to each other.

SPEAKER_03

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00

We just got the 10-minute warning, but that's actually perfect because that was the end of the book. Okay, okay, yeah, yeah. So my takeaways, I don't know, like I said, the centrist garbage. This is centrist garbage. And this is the real disappointment because this is what passes for left in America. When I was looking her up, they were calling her left. They call this guy Reeves left.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, this is not. This is not, and that's so frustrating. Yeah, I feel like there's a lot of opportunities, a lot of missed opportunities to take uh the thought further, and it just didn't go there. And I think and that is centrism. Put a period where a comma should be, you know.

SPEAKER_00

Yes, yes. Oh, this poor guy was in jail, but period, that's all you know. I'm not saying anything else about that. But poor, poor Dale from the LAPD who put him in jail also has a hard time. So who's to say?

SPEAKER_02

And it's like uh the reliance on empathy as the solution. It's like empathy, empathy is a tool to the solution, and the solution makes you so uncomfortable that you don't want to even think about it. The solution is if you care about people, you will make sure that they get the resources that they need. You will make sure with government policies, with labor movements, with everything, you know, all of these tools that have existed in history and currently exist, but they don't want to go use that empathy to its full extent and do the solution part of it, you know?

SPEAKER_00

They're a little bit afraid of using power because they see that as an authoritarian thing. But by not using the power, you're letting the corporations have the power. Yeah. Which is not better. That's way worse. They're they're ceding these decisions to the worst people in society. Comfortable enablers. Comfortable enablers. Basically, her boldest take is like, oh, employers should offer care days. But if they say no, I'm not going to do anything.

SPEAKER_02

I worked for a company that was really wonderful in terms of all of the private perks that it gave to moms and parents and everything like that. But it shouldn't be reliant on a private company to do that for you. Like, that's winning the lottery. Not everybody can have that if you just leave it to private companies. You need a uniform system instituted by the government to do that for you. Also, private companies they shouldn't have that much control over your quality of life.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

That's the whole the privatization of all of these solutions is terrible because then you don't have any kind of uniform expectations for our quality of life.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, with with reference to the the companies and convincing them or whatever, she does have a line at some point saying, Oh, well, why will they offer this leave if they don't think that dads are, you know, that valuable? And I was like, Right, because they have to, because it's the law, because you make a law that says they have to offer and it doesn't matter if they like it or not. What's the big mystery here? Yeah. If you want to operate business in this country, you have to follow XYZ laws. That's what government is for. Like, I don't, I don't get this whole they don't just do everything they want, they're operating under a system of laws that we have control over as the people, supposedly. Supposedly. Um, so, anyways, yeah. And I don't think Sac Darby Saxby is the villain. You know, she's kind of writing at like the edge of the mainstream American liberalism. And I don't know. I I really think her heart's in the right place, but I just think without that deeper dive, she's never gonna get there. I don't know. She she's Gen X. She grew up drinking that cold war Kool-Aid, maybe she Yeah, so to steel man the book, right? The hormone brain myth busting is legitimately good. Like, I did like that aspect of it, that she kind of busted a lot of these social media myths about hormones and so on. I I didn't personally find the brain stuff that interesting, but if someone did, I think it would be a good book to check out. And yeah, involved Fathers Matter, Culture, not biology. I do think that is a good, a good message. If I was gonna give the book a rating out of five, I will give it three out of five. It was mid. I mean, I I like the science stuff, but I just couldn't get over the politics stuff. I would say for re readers, if you're particularly interested in brains, it would be probably an interesting book for you. And if your favorite president was Obama in 2010, if that's your vision of a perfect world, then this is definitely a book for you.

SPEAKER_02

And yeah, so that's my take. I don't know. Any final thoughts? No, thank you for sharing that. I think it it gave me a lot of things to like jump off of in terms of gaps and childcare and labor and what conversations would be great to actually have in interpreting the brain results that she she's gotten. Even though I'm not a scientist, I think that's information that's useful that to know about.

SPEAKER_00

It's a pop science book, so it's supposed to be for the mainstream audience to be able to read it and understand it. And I did learn a little bit about brain stuff. And I did like that she tried to engage with the politics. I mean, I do think that was the right angle. That's why I also think unfair for us to talk about the political aspects of it because she doesn't shy away from that. She talks about it. Yeah, but I just uh didn't agree, didn't agree with where she took it or where she where she didn't take it. And yeah, I mean, I'm not saying I'm right about everything. I don't even know what her arguments would be because she didn't even make them. She didn't even make the arguments for why this is the right way to do things. She just assumed this is how we have to do things, it's unchangeable, status quo, and the best we can do is these little nudges. And she never really defended that position. So I can't say maybe maybe she would have a really good convincing argument why neoliberal capitalism is great, actually, but she didn't make it.

SPEAKER_02

I've I've never heard one.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I mean, I used to think that way too. I mean, it's it's the water you swim in. You don't even know it's there, you just assume this is how things are. Also, there's a famous quote that you'll never understand something if your paycheck depends on you not understanding it.

SPEAKER_02

Right. Absolutely.

unknown

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00

I mean, I do think there will be, you know, in the communist utopia, we would still have brain scientists. I do think that's a valuable job. She can keep her job. Dictator Rosie, the dictatorship of the proletariat. Sarah's gonna be like, no, Rosie, I want to work in the mines. I'm gonna be like, no, brain science to you. Not a lab. No, not a lab. No, I wanted to mine coal.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Okay, but it was great talking to you. And thanks so much. And I had really enjoyed the conversation. Thanks again for having me. You're welcome. All right. Bye. Bye bye.