Modeling Versus Direct Instruction

Welcome, welcome, welcome to Nrm chair expert experxperts on Expert. I'm Deax Randall Shehepd. I'm joined by Monica Lily Patman This was a big exception As you know, UCLA and USC are rivals. They're the enemy if you went to UCLA. But I got over that so that we could host our guest who is a professor at the University of Southern California clinical. psychologist and tenud full professor At the University of Southern California, Darby Saxby Also my favorite name of a guest, I think we've had. Great name. Darby Saxby. What a fun fun name. She has a new book out Dad Brain. The new science of Fatherhood and how it shapes men's lives This is really important stuff. Yeah, as she will tell us in this, although historically only men have been researched for medicine, which is an atrocity Mostly only women have been research for parenthood So there's thats that's the counterbalancing disparity. And so she has studied men, thank God. And she's studied dad's and now we've learned a lot about it. and it's very. It's really fascinating chemically like what goes on. Yeah Dad Bod, we get a scientific explanation of Dad bod. sure do Fally. Please enjoy Darby Saxby Dum This episode is brought to you by American Beverage. We've probably all had that moment where someone says something about an ingredient in your drink and you're like, shouldhould I be worried about that? And then you look it up and immediately end up in the wildest corners of the internet with completely contradicting information. All I want is clear transparent information. And I bet you do too That's why American Beverage launched Good to Kn. It's a site where you can look up over one hundred and forty common beverage ingredients, what they are, how they're used, how they've been reviewed for safety, No spin or judgment. just facts. You can decide for yourself. 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They have these lightweight cotton sweaters, which I love for when it cools down at night,'s nice Drape around your shoulders in the summer and then throw it out when it gets a little cool. And it's not just clothes. They do home stuff, ding ding ding, travel stuff, everyday essentials. It's all the same model, quality without the marku. Make your summer wardrobe easier. Go to quintince dot com slash ds for free shipping on your order and three hundred sixty five day returns. Now available in Canada too That's Qu I ncE d. com slash dax for free shipping and three hundred and sixty five day returns. Quints. com slash dax He's in our chair Is child child et you Hey. Oh my pleasure. Hi. Look how many you I really brought a lot of stuff H. Yeah. Yeah, you know, you never know how much downtime you'll have, so I figured I could do some grading, I geting. Sure. Where're in Ohio Beause you know, I'm right up the street from you. I think you'll be the guest we had again. Yes. And were you in the shadow of Cedar Point Oh, of course. Yeahah. Yeah. Were how close to Sandustk? So I'm from Oberlin. So it's like a small college town. It's between Toledo and Cleveland. Right? As is Sandusky? As is Sandusky. Yeah, yeah. And yeah, you know your cedar point well. Oh, come on.. It's my religion. Oh yeah. Did you have a seasonss pass because you were so close? You know, my parents were nerds Yeah. So we actually didn't go there that often, even though it's really close. But my mom now has a house on Lake Erie So we go every summer for like a month and it's like one of the only things to do with the kids is take them to Cedar Point. How old are your kids? They're fourteen and seventeen. Oh Dal, They run wild there. Yeah, o, they love it. Cheese on a stick, the cable ride. I'm so happy for them. I'm ashamed that I haven't brought my kids to Cedar Point yet. Honestly, it crosses my mind. I'm like, I'm not doing a good job as a parent Yeah, you're failing. Yeah. Last year we went to Dollywood for the first time. We're going in June. You are? Yes. So my book tour is a road trip to Dollywood. So it's a book tour, college tour, road trip to Doollywood. It's like a triple purpose book tour. This is fun So we're gonna drive from New York down to Tennessee. Okay and stop along the way in DC. I'll do some book stuff there. My daughter's gonna look at some colleges. T M Vernon Exactly. Yeah. Yeahah, we're gonna go to Charlottesville, at UVA. Nice, whichich is where my husband went. Great school Totally great schoolool and then we culminate at Dollywood. This is the huge upside of being a professor M you have a sumer man. Lucky kids. Okay, so mom and dad Both O one's a surgeon, one's a internist. Okay, so as a kid They were married to what age for you? I was nine when they got divorced. Okay. Ay siblings? So I have an older half sister and then two brothers who are my full brothers. So my dad has four children al togetherher. My mom has three. Okay, so when they met, he had already been married and had a child. Exactly. Okay, now this is very scandalous by all accounts. Yes Your mother had a patient Yes. Okay, please tell us. Yes. So she treated a patient who was dying of cancer and cancer treatment often takes a long time and she fell in love with the patient's husband during that process. Wow. David. And I think that was with the sort of awareness and consent. I don't know the full story becausecause I was a kid when all of this happened? this is why. But so they fall in love And my mom ultimately marries David. Lft your father for David. By the way, I have to imagine that's not an insanely uncommon thing in that situation because you are seeing a man at potentially his best. Or worst. Yes. Caring for a dying spouse. You're going like, wow, this person's very loving, they're committed. You're showing a very nice side to yourself. Yeah. And I think he truly did love his wife.. You know, it was tragic. So it wasn't like he was looking to move on and she just happened to be there. It was a process How old was everyone in this situation? I was nine. My brother Beau was six and my brother Tom was three. And how was your mom? Oh gosh. She had me when she was thirty onece. so she was forty. Oh, Okay. Yeah. Now I'm forty nine, so that seems young to me. R. Right. But at the time, she was super old. Yeah Yeah. Did they tell you Right away, what happened? We knew that my mom was moving out and it was sort of a process. like she moved to an apartment down the street and then later that year moved across town. Oberland is a small small town. So across town is like miles. I could ride my bike between our houses. Yeah. And so then we did this joint custody thing. So every other week I would switch between my mom's house and my dad's house But at first my dad just got sole custody because my mom was the one who left and the courts in Ohio were like poor. Yeah'm gonna give the kids Divorced woman. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Also we're of a similar age. And so I'm a child of divorce. Certainly in my neighborhood, I want to say it was like one in every fifteen houses, not half. It was still like, I wasn't allowed to hang out with certains cause they didn't like that I had a single mom. Yeah. L I felt like the first kid I knew whose parents were divorced. Yeah, evenven though, yeah, statistically, it wasn't that uncommon. How much does your dad fall into the surgeon's stereotype? Becauseuse your dad's a surgeon. and there's a stereotype and we've interviewed bunch of them and it's pretty fucking consistent. I'm gonna have to pig. So you're gonna to say the stereotype is what like power hungary I don't even know power hungry but a little bit arrogant. A little I don't want to say narcissist, I the wrong word, but there's this true confidence and a bit of, they feel like they've mastered something that is almost godlike. Yes. Yeah, yeah, ye. I think some myopic thinking a little bit. It's crazy. So I helped my dad do surgery. We did these sort of charity trips to the Dominican Republic when I was a teenager And I was allowed to scrub in and kind of assist. Oh my God. I know, which is like probably really unprofessional actually. I think there was one time I almost passed out, but it was the first time I'd ever saw my dad in that role. And I was like, it's like a superpower. it is. Like you were literally cutting into a human body saving them And then you're moving things around. It's like a crazy. them back together and they work. Yeah, and they work. So I was kind of blown away. It's worthy of some confidence. Yeah ye. And I always thought my dad was like a pretty humble low key guy, but in the OR You have to be like the king. Yeah. So that's the other factor that I don't even blame them so much is the role is such that you are at the top of the decision making. This is the same as a director. Like if you've been directing movies for twenty five years, guess what? You start kind of thinking everyone should value your opinion a little more than they should. It's just kind of inevitable. Yeah. as a professor running a lab, I work with my grad students and I'm like, they To listen to me. Yeah. It's a powerful narcotic. Yeah you go home and you're like, Oh right no one here gives a shit. Oh no, my kids could not be less impressed. Yeah, yeah ye Suffice to say Dad had virtually zero experience dadding even though he was your father until this divorce And he had a quite a rocky road, but he did figure it out. So just tell us what the experience was like once mom was out of the pictchure. Yeah. and I will say that my dad having read the book, thinks that he was very involved when we were little. So in his defense And when I tried to qualify it, the book didn't make it so. But he was, I think, an eighties dath. He was pretty hands off. He was not super involved in Our daily routines, our bedtimes. He didn't know what time he went to school, probably. He didn't know what time your school ended. He was doing his own thing. Yeah, yeah. He was going to the Masonic Lodge. So my mom left, all of a sudden, he is the sooule parent. and he had to figure a lot of stuff out. L he made dinner for us. He cleaned the kitchen. You got need lunch for school. woke us up, he packed our lunches. He actually made really good lunches good at it. I think the meticulousness that you need to have where you're scrubbing in as a surgeon, made him like a very natural cleaner of the kitchen. Sure, sure sure. I think he kind of leaned into it. He was tracking our routines. he was driving us to school. He became The parent. But Andy also had moments where he like threw TV sets out in the snow and stuff, right? He had a temper. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's overwhelming. Yeah. especially if you haven't been doing it. Exactly. And I think he was like, what is happening here? His life has really fallen apart. Yeah. And he was depressed. And yeah, like my brother's one morning wouldn't wake up to go to church and he took the TV set out of the wall and was like go ye. Yeah a snowbed. Yeah. It might shock people to know how often those types of solutions cross your mind. Yeah. Like when yourre dad, you're just kind of like, Okay, so the problem is these iPads, easy fix. I'll throw these fuckers in the trash. We have these impulses. I can eliminate the problem entirely. It's not the move, but I have to fight through a lot of these urges. Yes, I've made the threat to throw my kids' phones out the window. Yeah. Many, many times. Yeah, yeah. You then go on to get a PhD in psychiology? Yes, in clinical psych. What's so funny is in your book, you say that all research is re search. I had never heard that term and we heard it yesterday. Yeah. Or Monday. Yeah. weere. It is. you guys all know that is standard, but I'm like, how could we have interviewed this many social scientists and not in one week, every time you interview one, you should be like, what's wrong with you? do that anyway And someone finally said. And I asked that question like you don't study something on accident. We're all trying to answer some weird question. The Erk does since childhood. And that person said, yeah, well all research is rese search and then use set it So you were drawn into studying parenting. Does it start specifically with fathering or is just general parenting? So originally transitioned into parenthood, and I was curious about couples and how they navigated relationships and roles. And I worked on this big study at UCLA, which was called the Center for the Everyday Livves of Families. where we basically camped out in families homes. Oh boy. L anthropologists. Yeah. And there were a bunch of anthropologists on the study team. it was this cool collaborative study And we tracked them around their houses. We borrowed this technique that you use for primate research called scan sampling, where we were recording their movements. Like every ten minutes, where is everybody? What are they doing And so we had this really cool corpus of data, and I worked with the cortisol data, which is stress hormone data to see How are their physiological stress levels tracking with their relationship quality and how they feel about their homes And so that kind of got me interested in Family stress. and then I wanted to kind of go to the source, which is, you know, when does a couple become like a triad? When do they start a family? basically And so when I had the chance to start my own lab at USC I knew I wanted to do a transition to parenthood study. And I got interested in fathers actually in part out of convenience Which was that I knew I wanted to do a brain scanning component. And as a postdoc who was starting to plan this study, I was not allowed to go into the scanner because I was pregnant. So I was working on a neuroimaging study and they were keeping me out of the neuroimaging suite. And you can scan pregnant women, but it's just like a couple layers of extra And so I was like, how am I gonna to study women's brains? Well, why don't I scan the dads? And then as soon as I thought of that, I got really interested because I kind of dug into the research on fatherhood and there's so much It's scanned. And I got fascinated with that. Yeah, so historically, medical research has been extremely asymetric and we've studied Men you know, at a really high rate to the detriment of a lot of women's health But this is completely reversed, right? I think in the book it says one in ten journals on this topic are about fathers. The rest are about mothers. Exactly. so our parenting research, research on the parent child bond, research on the transition to parenthood, it's completely mother centric. Right. So we just don't really understand men's experiences of parenting as well. And I think there are emerging research programs that are attempting to answer these questions, and that was one reason I was Excited to write the book Okay, so Let's start with just mammals. How frequent do mammals father their offspring? And mayaybe we should pick some terms, right? because you can father offspring, but we're going to talk about the process of raising or being involved. So should we call that fatherood? Yeah. So in the book I kept calling it hands on fatherhood. and then I was like, I'm talking about mammals. so should it be like pawuse on fatherhood? Y You know, like tendrils on fatherhood, depending on. So I guess active fatherhood is a good term, right? So you can sire offspring, but to be involved in their actual rearing turns out, humans are pretty unusual because we do have human fathers who are actually involved in day to day care. And so actually, if you look across all the species, fish, males are primary parents. Birds buy parental. males do a ton of parenting frogs, lots of male parenting. But in mammals It's fairly unusual to have biparental. Is that because of mammary glands? Is that because we have a unique style of feeding our young? Exactly, which is where the term mammal comes from, right? So it comes from milk. So literally it's baked into the term that this is a mother centric animal. Right. And I mean, you do have some examples of primates and rodents where males are participating in rearing What what makes humans unusual is the sort of flexibility and the fact that we raise children kind of collectively. And so that's called cooperative breeding or alo parenting. and that's sort of our signature of how we raise kid Yeah We only kind of see this in primates. You see this in primates to varying degrees, right? Yeah. Really social group animals where you're gonna have aunties helping and you're gonna have wet nursing and you're gonna to have a lot of different things. Exactly, like a lot of shared care. So you kind of need a complex social brain that can track who's safe. And the reason I think that style originates is just because our babies require so much care. Like our human babies are so half baked when they emerge. And so you really need this tag team. And then fathers become really important Okay, so Now let's talk about ing and gathering groups or societies or whatever you want to call it. First, we must point out the vast majority of the time we've been here. We've been here for three hundred thousand years as a species, give or take And Agriculture comes around sixteen thousand years ago. So we're talking about ninety five percent of the time we have been here. We lived a certain way, which I think we regularly underestimate M can I get in some debate sometimes? And I'm like You have to accept that we were designed and wired to function in a certain dynamic that we no longer do. and there's a ton of challenges that come with having left that design. Right. Rather left that context with the same design. Yeah. So let's talk about what parenting looks like for hunting and gathering groups. Hunter gatherers live in these small sort of mobile bands of twenty to thirty people. There isn't a lot of private enclosed space. We don't have our big houses and our backyards. So everybody is helping everybody and parenting looks pretty collective. And that can include fathers. So there's all this cultural variability in how much men are doing in hunter gatherer societies You sort of have these egalitarian social structures because you sort of don't want to compete for resources because everything is shared. And you have some flexibility around gender roles because women actually are bringing in as many calories as men. A way way more. They're responsible for like ninety percent of the calories. They are really important resource gatherers, which is why it's funny when people are like, women shouldn't work. They should just mother. They've been working since the beginning of time. No what's very weird is that they didn't work for a few hundred years. That's it's really weir. Like we have this strange blip where women sort of stayed home and were specialized to the domestic realm. But again, they lost their whole support system So kind of they had to. Yeah. So going back though to, I talked to an anthropologist who studied This hunter gath a tribe called the Aca. And the men are super hands on with the babies. They're holding babies. I think they're within arm's reach of their babies about forty seven percent of the time They let a baby suckle from their nle.' not even giving Exactly. likeike you'll see a group of men hanging out and they're drinking wine and they're all holding babies. You know. I know, it's adorable.. But there's huge variation within hunting and gathering groups. So then the other one is, what is it the Kings's bigigie mount of for. Yeah, the Kipsiggas. And if you think about how much fathering are men doing It's like, well, how does the culture make its living? In the Kipsigis, which is a different tribe where there's this totally different style of fathering, there are all these prohibitions against men picking up babies and interacting with babies too much in the first year after b. It's emmasculating. It's unmanly. Exactly. But how did that even evolve So there, the resource gathering is more risky, it's more hazardous. and so you end up just getting more specialization. You're not bringing a two year old along on this hunt. Exactly. So you might be involved as a father with older kids, right? You're gonna take older kids along to show them how to hunt But you are not carrying babies around the way the A are. Well think of the Inuit. O the males are hunting whale and other fish. and they're out in these Canoes, you're not bringing one or two or three. you know, you're not bringing out a young boy until they're pretty self sufficient. So in that case, it would make total sense that that's how they would function. Exactly. I think there's a lot of dynamics that are worth thinking about from that hunting Gatheran. And we kind of already talked about it, but I often say, in my own experience parenting I feel so blessed that I studied Anthro because many new parents talk about the moment they drive home from the hospital with the baby in the back seat and they're like, o Jesus, we don't know what we're doing. But I've watched hundreds of hours of video of children in hunting and gathering societies. They rear themselves. a nine year old's in charge of like twelve kids. Everyone's climbing a tree, many are falling out, peopleeople are breaking bones. They're so fucking resilient. It's crazy. If you get to see how we actually live for so long So I kind of didn't have that panic just because I got to observe how we're really designed to do it. We're pretty resilient. Yeah. Kids are designed to, I think, be somewhat free range. Having a parent who's on top of a kid at all times is actually not always the best. Minimally, it's not how we live for most of the time. we Exactly. You got mixed age playgroups is like the classic kind of configuration for how kids are learning, they're learning from their peers. Even if we had stayed egalitarian in sharing the parenting duties, it still would have become much, much different because to your earlier point, we lived in longonghouses. There was always someone around to help. Everything was communal And then we ultimately evolve into like single house dwelling with just two people. And even if both people had split it, which they didn't It would have been infinitely more stressful. This is a uniquely stressful way to rear kids the way we do it. Yeah. This is not how we evolved as humans, we need community support. and yet we live in suburbs we're car dependent, We don't have our extended family nearby. We don't have those multig generational networks. If you knocked on ne your neighbor's door in any apartment, Lllen said, I need to watch my baby for three hours while I go to. they would panic, right Or you'd be like something's wrong with them. Yeah, Wh would trust me your baby. Yeah, yeah, yeah exactly. It's a very bizarre way we're living in some regards. It's like money driven, really. Yeah. I mean, that's part of why we live away from our parents and stuff. It's like we're gonna to go chase success. and even your house is an example of success. Yeah, totally. It's this kind of late capitalist W to live Yes. So you had a Fulbright fellowship and you went to Spain in twenty nineteen and you got to kind of observe how they do parenting there. So what did you gather from them? Becauseuse obviously there's huge cultural differences in how we're all doing it around the globe. So tell us a bit about different places and how they're doing it. Yeah, it was super fun. So my kids were pretty young when we did that. They were eight and ten. It was right before the pandemic So it was good timing And we did like the playground tour of Barcelona, just like every playground And there were a lot of young parents out and about. and I think it's because Like most countries, except for the U S, there is really generous maternity and paternity leave So your home, you have flexibility in those early years. and so the whole society just feels a little more oriented to what young kids need. Public places like Our apartment is on a square where you you have the cafe where people are smoking and eating tapas and you have the old guys on the bench gossiping. and then there was always a play structure. All the squares have a little play structure. So there are just a lot of public spaces for kids. and so it feels more integrated. And what were you observing about fathering there. I would see men outside our apartment window pushing strollers around and hanging out with each other And there was more of a sense, I think, of connectedness and a kind of society of fathers that you just don't see as much in the states when you're kind of more isolated in your home. What happens in Sweden? what's going on in Germany? So my husband's sister lives in Sweden and I raised her kids there and you've got really generous year plus long maternity leaves. And you also have really affordable early childcare that's high quality So the stress level there for parents, I think looks really different And for fathers in particular, because you have these kind of paternity leave incentive programs that are designed to normalize and destigmatize dad's taking leave. So basically the couple gets a certain amount of leave, some of it is earmarked for dad. If he doesn't take it, it goes away. They lose that benefit. So a lot of men take it because that's a free benefit. It's like vacation days. Yeah You gott to use them. Totally. So you have it's called the latte papas, which is like this society off guys who are like holding the little to go c and just walking around cities The B Oans on and stuff. Exactly. So again, it's just like a very normalized thing that men are going to be very hands on because it's baked into their policy. It is so weird because I feel like even here, even when there are paternity leaves, a lot of men don't take the full thing Well, again, it's em masculating Yeah. It's like your buddiess work and be like, you're fucking going up you know, like there's a stigma about it. And there's studies on this that men are really reluctant and they think they're going to get punished at work. And I think we still have this idedeal worker, idea. that you sacrifice everything for your job. And if you take time off after a baby's born, you're a slacker. Or minimally, you're removing yourself from advancement.. You're not out competing a coworker. someomeone else will get the account. There's a lot of different pressures. Yeah. Okay, so when you started studying this in your lab We had some stereotypes, right? We had this notion that mothers are natural parents and mothers and nurturers And then we know all these physiological changes that happen to them both when pregnant, we know about their hormones changing. We all accept this and know this. And then just the general assumption is like probably nothing happens to dad. Even I think When we first had kids I was susceptible to that. where I was like, I think this crying is at a different volume to me than it is to her. I think she has better chemistry than I have currently for this. So let's talk about first what you started finding when you would look at what happens to dad between conception and birth. because there's all these documented changes for mom. What happens to dad in that period? With mom, you can literally visibly see her body changing, right If it's a biological pregnancy And with dad, there's a lot going on under the hood. So there's research that suggests that testosterone levels drop Oxytocin levels change, a hormone called prolactin changes as well. What does prolactin do? You can tell from the name it promotes lactation. Okay. So it's very good for breastfeeding, which obviously is not that helpful for dads. And in men, surprisingly, prolactin levels before birth seem to predict At least this is what we found in our lab predicted dads kind of bonding and motivation to parent in the early postpartum period. So we found that guys with higher prolactin levels, prenatally had more enjoyment of the infant postpartum, we're spending more time with the infant postpartum. And it's interesting because in fish, and I mentioned that fish are primary caregiver fathers If you dump prolactin into the water Fish will start acting really paternal So it's actually a hormone that kind of turns on Fatherhood and fish. and it turns out might work in a similar way in humans. Wow Well, the testosterone thing is fascinating. I'd like to hear what the current theory is on why that drops to me, it seems quite obvious,'s like you're gonna need maximum patience and minimized aggression. Yeah. All right. Yeah Eactly. I don't want you to squeeze and pop the baby. Yeah like we just don't need a ton of testosterone. You that grips Exactly. you're scared and there's a baby crying, you knowt how to solve it. Do we think that's why it lowers Yeah, we need high testosterone if we're competing for mates. It will help us to be competitive, to focus on our status, to be aggressive And it's not that useful when we have a new baby. It's not as adaptive to sustain high testosterone levels. Testosterone comes at an immune cost for the body So having jacked up testosterone is not that helpful to us when we're in a context that doesn't require that competition. it doesn't reward it. Exactly. And so even in birds, you see higher testosterone at the start of breeding season when birds are like trying to find a chick. I mean female That's where we got it. Testosterone levels will drop once a male has sort of completed mating and needs to take care of hatchlings. So it's like this normative change that's occurring over the transition to fatherhood and then there's probably a rebound, right? and then dad Maybe knocks up a new bird, but it looks like you see kind of similar patterns in humans, rats, and primates as well. So testosterone levels sort of fluctuate with your reproductive demands and also with your reproductive strategy. So if you want to maximize your number of offspring, you probably want high tea But if you want to actually do a good job of parenting, you want lower tea. And also you're not as prone to create more progeny that you would have to then care for but be divided because you've just had this one. It's almost like going out asteris a little bit for a primate. Right. There's like this life history theory that sort of determines When does it make sense for our hormones to change to support our different roles? Yeah Stay tuned for more armchair experts. If you dare, we are supported by All State Checking all state first could save you hundreds on car insurance. Not checking your gas gaage before hitting the road? You genuinely thought you could make it, you were wrong. That's a very long stretch of highway where you learned exactly how far fumes can take you. And it's notough far enough. Yeah. Checking first is an excellent plan. So check Allstate first for an auto quote. 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Make sure you enter our show name after checkout so they know we sent you Helixleep dot com slash armchair Okay now. Till this book, I would have thought I was, well, not terrily unique, becauseuse I did get some anecdotal information. but we were one time at an ultrasound appointment at the OB and they're measuring Kristin's weight. and I decideed to hop on that scale. and I just simply hadn't been on a scale in I think four or five months. And I just looked at it and I go Holy shit, I've gained like twenty pounds and I didn't even notice. That's never happened in my life where I just gained twenty pounds without noticing. And I've talked to other dads who have done that as well. you observe that? what's happening there? Totally, so Dad bod is a thing. It's like this humorous trope. Yeah, exactly But it's a real thing. men actually do often gain weight across the transition to fatherhood. And it kind of connects back to what we were just talking about. like that normative change in testosterone is one of the drivers of sort of adiposity or weight changes. Yeah, reduction of muscle mass, with burning less calories. so there's that element working. I was more thinking of it in a nurture context, which is like, she's eating like crazy. so I'm just joining her. L, is that what's going on? You see it in primates too. So they increase in body size across a mate's pregnancy. It might be because a larger body is more imposing They can more easily pick up offspring And it's also like you want some reserve in case there's scarcity. Right. You might have to be giving your resources to another. That's really evolutionarily poignant, right? Is I need a little buffer because I'm about to share now. Yeah, which is true, I think for why women gain weight, right? Because we gain more weight than our babies are gonna awayigh. Like I was super bummed when I realized that It only four e. Yeah five. It like this baby is not thirty five minuts. Where does the extra weight go? but it's like you actually need some reserve because who knows, there could be a famine. Well, and you're going to be burning two thousand extra calories a day to produce milk breastfed. Exact whatever the number is, it's something very high. Yeah, it's a high calorie demand. so it's like your body actually has to be sort of beefed up. So it might be that there's a similar process happening for dads. Yeah, ye. What other things are happening in that window before baby arrives? So there's the body, there's the hormonal drop. What What's going on psychologically behaviorally? So the hormones are changing. so psychologically, we can see mood disorder risk. postpartum depression is something we think of as like a mom only phenomenon on It can totally emerge in dads. There's evidence that new dads have about twice the prevalence of depression as just men in the general population. Oh. whileile mom's pregnant. It can be before birth, it can be after birth. Yeah. so it's like we call it postpartum depression, but it's really paranatal. It's like across that transition. And if you think about it, it's like a lot of the same risk factors that moms experience like Sleep deprivation, increased stress, identity, conflict, role confusion, relationship stress, and hormone changes. It's like that perfect storm. So that's affecting men too. Oh my go, the moms are gonna hate this. They love that they and claim the hormone changes. I talked to a perinatal psychologist and we actually talked about this exact thing. She said she's gotten a lot of p push because she's tried to get postpartum depression in men more recognized. and some of the advocacy groups are like, can't moms just have this one thing? R. And she's like, yes, but also if men are struggling, that's not great for moms. E exactly. No, it's helping moms to understand them. Yeah ye important. Yeah. Okay again, this is very anecdotal, but this is what I've observed I've seen a lot of people trying to get sober tell themselves You're gonna to get sober when I have a child. And then you watch them and I've watched addiction ramp up, not decrease in a very unmanageable way as that date approaches. It's over then. so cram it in now And I'll even admit that During the first pregnancy, There is a new finality on the table that is very unique. I can't undbt. It's permanent. Yeah. And I think that creates some angst and some fear And you feel like, oh shit, truly now I'm an adult. I see a lot of antsi behavior in expecting fathers. Yeah, it's like getting a face tattoo. Yeah. But even that, you could get rem It's maybe the only permanent thing. Yeah, you're going to be a dad for the rest of your life. No matter what now. You might not be a husband for the rest of your life, You or not have to show up or not, maybe you don't raise them or whatever But that c will exist. Exactly. Yeah. I think it's terrifying to a lot of men. Yeah, it's quite a ride. And women. Yeah, yeah.one It' scary. Okay, how do dads experience childbirth? It's interesting Because if you think about it Men have not been present at childbirth for most of our human history. Childbirth has been this participatory experience where human women need a lot of help, but it hasn't typically been that the helpers have been men And so we're kind of doing this experiment In just this last like one hundred and fifty years, right, where you have males as part of the birthing experience, either as doctors or as fathers. And stereotypically, men were kept out of. Oh, they would tell you don't go in there. Yeah. L it's better for your marriage if you don't see that. Totally. Yeah, in the fifties. Yeah, fifties the dad is handing out cigars in the waiting room He meets the baby once it's been washed. Yeah Yeah her makeup's on. Exactly. Yeah she's brushed her hair. Seeing birth, I think really rocks a lot of dad's worlds, right? It's like both in, I think, really good ways and also in ways that can be hard. because It's this powerful experience. There's nothing like it It can be scary for mom, it can be scary for dad, things can go wrong. thingsings can also go beautifully well. So there's just a lot of variability. It's a very heightened experience. And increasingly people have emergency C sections, which is the way it happens, certainly in LA. It's like almost everyone you meet with children our age the same story. It's like I was in labor for fourteen hours, the heart rate crashed emergency That was my experience, right? I'm not only seeing that, I'm also seeing my wife get operated on. I saw my wife opened up and her organs being moved. it's like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Yeah. This is terrifying I'd say the beauty of it And I just want to flag, I'm just gonna tell my real experience. I'm really paranoid, It's going to sound like virtue signaling. like I'm an ideal. I don't want that to be. I'm just gonna tell you the truth. Yeah The amount of Respect and admiration you have for your wife when you see what they go through In my opinion is not to be missed. You go whoa, whoa, whoa. Well, first of all, you might have the moment I had, which is like you're so afraid you're going to lose her. So that's its own experience. And then to see what they go through, you're going to minimally be grateful to that person for the rest of your life because they through that for this thing you love. It's very powerful. Yeah, it is very powerful My first birth was pretty straightforward, but the second one, I lost a lot of blood, it got complicated. and my husband was terrified. And I still hold out against our son, you know, every so often. Clean your room. If it was a Nobel Peace Prize you can go like, okay, you're now even. That's right. You're just now even. You're out of the hole. Yes, you've made up the debt Okay, so once the baby's there Dad's brain changes. We in our lab scanned men whose partner was midway through pregnancy We then scan them in again about six months after birth And we found that men's brains were losing gray matter volume. which is probably reflecting a process of streamlining and pruning and becoming more efficient. Yeah, sounds it's kind of counterintuitive. Because mom's brain shrinks too, that's a little more well documented. and you think, Ohh my brain shrinks was like, no but it weirdly is working more efficiently now. Exactly. And the brain shrinks at other windows in the lifespan too. So in early childhood, we're in this kind of stage of lots of exploration and tons of inputs And then as the child kind of gets ready for school age The brain is actually losing gray matter volume and it's becoming more streamlined and kind of canalyzed along certain pathways.. So it reflects the process of learning. It's like you're consolidating. It's almost like if you think about refining a product, an engineer, one of their main tasks is like which of these components is redundant, I can get rid of. Your whole goal is to keep getting it smaller and smaller and small and I gu that's what's happening in your brain Yeah, exactly. You want like an efficient brain And the parts of the brain that seem to shrink are the social cognition. regions. which are linked with empathy, responsive caregiving So that sort of supports the theory that it's not like a deficit model. somethingomething isn't getting taken away, but it's rather this adaptive plasticity You presumably have samplple groups where it's like there's varying levels of participation, A you seeing more shrinkage in increased participation? What's happening there? Yeah, exactly. So as men are spending more time with babies, we see more gray matter volume decrease. So it was the men in our study who said they wanted to take more time off after birth They were spending more day to day time with infants They told us they enjoyed interacting more with infants. they had stronger bonding with the babies even before birth, and then they had stronger bonding after birth. Those were the dads that seemed to show the greatest changes, like the greatest reductions in grreay matter volume. So those dads looked the most like prerevious studies that have focused on moms, transitioning to parenthood As men engage in parenthood, they're kind of building this parenting brain. I just love how flexible the human is. I know. Yeah. It's really wild. And if he doesn't do that, his brain will be perfectly set up to do whatever occupation he's doing. We often think of the brain as like this fixed organ, but it is reshaped by our social experiences And parenthood is one example of a window of plasticity where we want a brain that can mold itself to serve the functions of a parent. Yeah, this incredibly new and novel experience we're all having. Yeah. It kind of goes against this idea that women are natural nurtrs. That's why I think you say we debate, but I'm saying this. I think anyone can be a nurture. Oh ye, yeah a woman. And that's exactly one of the reasons I wanted to write this book Be we sort of assume like women are built exactly parent instinctively And it's really the opposite. It's as we engage in parenting, we learn and then we sort of build a neurobiology that supports that. Yeah. Yeah humans are built to nurt. Exactly. We all have this sort of parenting brain That's ready to go when we are ready to deploy it. What happens to dad's hormones in a month's baby has arrived? It's a continuation of that lowower testosterone and so.. And you have a beef with oxytocin, ye You lay out your bef with oxytocin? I love it and I hate it. Okay, tell us. And it's because the research literature is a mess on oxytocin because it's super hard to sample it once So youve probably heard, it's the cuddle hormone, it's the love hormone. Women get a dump of it after an orgasm.. Exactly. If you hug for twenty seconds, you get a really black Yeah a massage. And all of that has a grain of truth, but it's It's hard to sample it because by the time it gets to your bloodstream It's already moved on. like it's an organ that's active in the brain. So if you really want to sample it accurately, you need to take cerebral spinal fluid, which you know, not a great. No one's signing up for. No one wants to come into the lab and do a spinal tap. It's hard to sample it accurately. and then the way that you assay it in the lab, this gets kind of in the weeds, but there are different ways to look at it and those ways don't always track well with each other. I think another fair way to also look at it is We really have only diagnosed I don't know, six neurotransmitter. L we only have a chemistry set of five, six hormones, and we have behavior that's in the tens of billions of permutations. So at best you're looking at some ratio of many different hormones in concert to produce an outcome, right? Yeah. We're so attracted to a singular cause We'll go, boom, that's it dopamine. It's causing all this. Well, it's like in conjunction with a lot of things, right? Exactly. We are filled with all these different inputs. We sort of glorify oxytocin or I often hear as a cortisol research, people say, my cortisol is too high. I have to treat my cortisol. It's like, no, you want high cortisol in certain contexts. And I think this is true with testosterone too. You want to be flexible. You want to have a biology that can adapt to your context. And so there's no such thing as overly high this or overly low that. It's like how flexible are Yeah, I think what they mean is that this system has been hijacked, which does happen all the time and your cortisol levels are responding as if you're being chased by a lion, but you have a deadline, dude. You know, there's some hijacking of the system. Yeah, because we live in these complex worlds that don't reflect what we need to survive. When I teach this to my undergrads, I always say if I'm having a fight or flight response because I'm stuck in traffic What am I gonna do? like run across the freeway? not adaptive. So it's like having all the blood go to my Lge muscles is not helping. hit your brake pedal extra hard. Yeah, yeah. it makes me yell at the other drivers, but that's not super adaptive either. Right. But it's like the cortisol's not the problem. It's the situation that hijacked the cortisol response. Right. It's our interpretation. that said what's happening to dad's cortisol. Yeah the babies arri. So the cortisol literature also a bit of a mixed bag. Some studies find higher cortisol in new dads. someome studies find lower cortisol It's very situational. But we do know, and I found this in my lab that Hormones like cortisol, Plactin and testosterone within couples. So it may be that dads are kind of in training with a pregnant partner. or with a new mom to sort of help jumpstart their own process of Whether it's neurobiological remodeling or behavioral repertoire. It's like there's something about proximity to the There's a mirroring, right? Yeah. Dad's and moms' hormones are fluctuating, if not at the same levels, in the same pattern is. Exactly. So there's like a synchrony within cohabiting couples which is dangerous and beneficial. Right. And actually, I've found that when cortisol patterns get too strongly linked, that's a risk factor that makes couples support more Dsatisfaction Yes, Yes. Yes. Someone should be resetting their cortisol at all times probably Yeah, you need to be balancing. I feel very blessed in that we read this. So we got this book Brain Rules for Babies in anticipation of our first child arriving. and it maybe the introduction It says quite starkly I'll forget the number, but it was either sixty or seventy percent. A child will make sixty or seventy percent of relationships worse. That is the data, right Yeah And I was like, just helpful to know going into this, this isn't going to make us happier with one another per se. Odds are it's going to make us less satisfied with our relationship So like you got to be extra aware of that high probability So let's talk about what you call the parenting crisis. I often say to people, like if you think that having a baby will save your relationship, That ide If anything, it's going to make it harder. It's gonna shine a magnifying glass. Exactly. This was true for my husband and I, like you go from being fun time friends who can go catch a movie or go out to eat to like you're running a small business and your product is the care and feeding of your baby. It's the most important product of all time. R. But you have to strategize and trade off In the middle of the night, maybe neither of you feels like getting up. There is so much more of a breeding ground for conflict. When you're both tired, you're both kind of figuring out these new identities. You don't really have the same opportunities for fun. So it is a real challenge for a lot of couples Yeah, I would even add to it's like general pattern, there's lots of exceptions, but also You've probably chosen to have a child at the moment where you felt most stable and kind of financially sorted and all these other Th you were waiting to gel before you commit to that. So it's like you're probably going from the high watermark of the relationship. For Kristen, I was like, oh, we're starting to travel a up financially, we're good. So it's gonna be a huge swing. Yeah. And you're like, how can I screw this up? Yeah, let's see you can fuck this whole thing out. This is like just when my husband and I got to a place where our kids were older and could take care of themselves, we started getting pets you're like. my God. Why do we have more things to take care of? Have there been any studies? This would be so interesting Studies of couples where the father is not the biological dad. Yeah they still experience all these hormonal changes and things like that Totally. Yeah. So I talk about there's one study where they looked at adoptive parents and it was gay male couples who had adopted a baby And then they compared them to heterosexual couples With adopted children? I think they were all biological parents. Okay, great. Yeah. you had this adoptive sample And they had in the heterosexual couples like a primary caregiver and a secondary caregiver, I think they basically treated mom as primary dad as secondary. And then in the gay male couples, they said, who's the primary caregiver, who's the secondary caregiver. And what was cool was that the primary caregiver, g male dads looked just like moms If you looked at their brain responses to baby. and the secondary caregiver dads looked like heterosexual. Wh. So it kind of shows you how again adaptable the brain can be, right? that men build these primary caregiver brains. Yeah. Part of this crisis in you set is like you have this whole new list of chores. So when you're observing outcomes, is this crisis less or more when things are split more equitably Yeah, so it seems like couples fare better when they have a more egalitarian balance. But what's interesting is that parents are pretty bad predictors of what that's going to look like. We did a study where we brought couples into the lab. These were the couples in our longitudinal sample And we said, what's your plan for splitting up baby care? We gave them a worksheet. We asked them to sort of estimate on a scale for each of ten different baby care tasks. And then we brought them back six months after birth and said, well, who's doing what And in every case, they had overestimated how much dad was going to do before birth. And I guess did they even agree about how much mom and dad were doing when asked six months later? Dad thought that he was going to do more. and then after birth, he thought that he was doing more. That's right. Yeah. So dads were sort of estimating a higher contribution at both time points, but the couple was also just overestimating how much of an even split they were going to achieve Yeah, so this is tricky and I think it's like it's so generational, right? So when I Compare my parents scene to my fathererss I mean, A, he split when I was three, But even when he was there for my brother upntil eight I'm doing a thousand X of what he did. It's really hard to quantify What's happening There are these markers that seemed obvious like my goals were like, I want to do half the feedings. So at night we both have to wake up four times. I want to do two of those. Diapers. I was hell bent on every other one. I'm gonna do it. There's some aspect the kids you go to mom? There is something primitive going on that needs to be acknowledged even though V'm veryy progressive and I want all this to happen. There's some realities to once you have a kid. It's like we were both present nonstop, but in the car, Lincoln would be like, Mama, Yes, honey. Mama. Yah hun She just loves saying mama over and over again. There is a pull on mom, even if all the chores are split evenly. Right. There's an emotional drain that is really hard to right size. Yes. And I think it's hard to optimize a balance. ahead of time. We were not surprised actually that Moms ended up doing more after birth because there are a lot of reasons for that. If she's breastfeeding The baby gets more comfortable with her early on, Ms also have this head startart of pregnancy to kind of develop that bond. and moms may even just have more time off from work And so moms themselves may want to be the primary parent. It doesn't necessarily mean that there's something wrong But we did find that the more dads were doing, the happier they actually were with parenting. So dads who were participating more had lower parenting stress. And moms had better relationship satisfaction. Yeah This is where I'll say that this go against any fear I have a virtue signaling. I reverse engineered selfishly why I wanted to do in my mind half. I didn't do half. I'm sure I didn't do half. and I'm sure I overestimated what I did and I'm sure she has a better account of what I did. But my reasoning was, I'm very opinionated. I care a lot about what decisions we make The school and the sleep schedule and all the stuff. I can't sit idly by and just have my partner make all those decisions. It felt very important. And I knew I needed to earn my seat at the table. I'm like, there's no way I can blow in at night and kiss them good night and then tell them what approach I think we need to use because she'll go bullshit. You don't even know them. You don't know they're like, let me melt down over this. And so I just selfishly very much wanted to make decisions together knew you don't get that right if you're sitting it out. So that would be my call to dads. It's like, if you want a say in this, you gota fucking earn the say. Yeah. And I think a lot of men increasingly, because you flagged a really important thing when you said you're doing so much more than your dad did or than your grandfather did. Contemporary men are doing way more hands on childcare than men of previous generations in the US And I think men themselves, if you say, what are the most meaningful things you do in your life, being a parent is up there and it's a similar number of men will rate that as their highest priority as women. Yeah, ye. So it's also like not only do men want to be involved, it's like there's a value. pride ye. Yeah. I know we live in L.A and we send our kids to a charter school that's pretty progressive But And I might be mis evaluating it, but I do drop off every morning. If it's not fifty fifty, it's probably three thousand seventy. There's dads everywhere. When I was a kid in elementary school, I never saw a child's dad once in my life. You know, unless mom was in the hospital or something. So relative, I can a little bit understand why guys of this generation are overestimating our outputs It's like it's so drastically different. Well, women are also working so much more that you have to decide who's taking the kid to school. It's not a given, but my parents both worked. So it was a split. Whever could do it Often was my dad because she also was gone. So I think as women have become much more in a bread winner position. It's helped with a lot of this egalitarian nature of parentood. Yeah funniest thing happened when I was home in Georgia. I was with all my friends. they all have kids. Last weekend? Yeah, last weekend. All the kids were running around. and these two their dad and their mom were sitting next to each other. They came up to the table and they said, Can dad take us to the grocery store? And I started laughing so hard and even he said, why aren't you just asking me? He was sitting right next to her. It was so funny. That was the instinct was to ask mom's permission. It just't reallys That's the default. Yeah lot of the time. Well also it might be game theory, right? So they know mom says yes more than dad. If they ask dad to go to the store, he's gonna to say no, but if they ask M, they're used to getting a yes. so maybe mom will be able to get dad to say yes. There's lot of It's smart. strategy going on. Maybe if they were separated, but the fact that they were right next to each other, it was such a stark C clelearly that's the person to ask. R. But in our house, we have domains, right? There's stuff that's no problem for me to say no to. There's stuff for her that's no problem to say. And they just know. if they want this thing, they go to me, if they want that thing, they go to her Yeah, they' they're clever little mon. They know who to ask. Yeah. My kids know who to ask for takeout. My husband is much more likely to order Are there ideal roles for dad in regards to parenting? I'm thinking about like play and sports. And I know for my girls, like wrestling, they just love to wrestle me. Mom did not want to fuck and wrestle. I loveved to wrestle. Are there roles that we are more geared to take on. Yeah, the kind of rough housing parent The play parent. so dads do a lot of what's called proprioacceptive touch which is like moving babies around in space, ready for moving a child around, like picking them up babies, chasing them, tickling them. And so there's a lot of evidence that dads just gravitate to that style of play. and that that style of play is really rewarding for kids. Kids seek it out, they benefit from it It builds their confidence, it builds their risk tolerance. their balance, their agility. Yeah. And I think the sports dad is kind of a continuation of that. It's a domain that a lot of dads feel comfortable kind of having mastery of. Yeah. I think we always get into these murky waters of what we're supposed to be doing versus what kind of yields better outcomes. Are there domains that are best served by mom or dad? I mean, play is one of them, but can you think of others? Yeah, and I think even with play, like I'm always careful to not be too gender essentialist, right? Be there are totally moms that love to wrestle and are physical and they're totally dads that are the more cerebral parent or the more affectionate parent I think what works best for kids is when each parent has their own relationship and the kid gets exposed to different styles, right? You can have a really secure attachment to more than one parent. And the research suggests that dads and moms don't actually have dramatically different levels of attachment to their kids So it's healthy for kids to realize there are safe, secure caregivers that I can depend on And if this person isn't available, I can go to this person. Sometimes that's a child carere provider, sometimes that's mom or grandparent or a dad Different people have their own style. and kids again learn to be adaptable, they learn to be flexible So there's no dead end streets or are there and we're just afraid to admit that Like what would a dead end street be? I don't know. I just think of this imperative someone said and it's just proven to be true, which is like, You should not teach your kids to do stuff. If you want to take them skiing, bring in an outsider. they don't do well listening to you for that kind of thing. Or if you want to teach them piano lessons, get someone else that doesn't have all this murky. So I just wonder if we're trying to encourage men or women to do things that like it's not really gonna bear the outcome we want Yeah, I do think because we don't have the collective network of caregivers that maybe we evolve to have A lot of pressure is on mom and dad, the nuclear family, and they're trying to play all roles in a kid's life. And I think as to whether parents can be good teachers, I know for my kids, definitely not. Yeah They don't wantan to listen to me. My son is in a phase where he wants to make hip hop beats all day long. My husband is a music producer. Oh. And you think Yeah It's like, you know, Dad does this for a living. He could advise on your beats like no interest. I think it's good for kids their own things. Again, a brand new concept with the exception of when someone's partner died. The step parent is like an entirely new Construct Stay tuned for more armchair experts If you dare This episode is sponsored by Better Help So Monica, here's something that really stuck with me. BetterHelp's twenty twenty six state of Stigma repeport surveyed two thousand Americans and revealed that eighty five percent of Americans believe getting support is wise. Yet seventy four percent say society discourages people from doing so. That's a huge gap. Most of us agree therapy is a good thing, but there's still something holding some people back from actually going Right. And I think that's where just talking about it, normalizing it makes a difference. I mean, as you know, I'm obsessed with therapy I've been in it consistently for years and years and years. and I have said this and I I shouldn't say it, but I do think if you're struggling and you've been struggling for a while and you haven't sought therapy, I judge you a little bit. Oh Okay yeah. 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Their matching technology is seriously powerful, and candidates can actually explain in their own words why they're interested in your job. That context up frront saves so much back and forth. There's a reason they're the number one rated hiring site on G two. Save time and meet great candidates sooner W Zip Recruiter. fourour out of five employers who post on Zip Recruiter get a quality candidate within the first day. Try it for free at ziprecruiter. com slash stax that'sziprecruiter. com slash stackax. Meet your match on Zip Recruiter. You yourself had a kind of a fun arc with Dave that I'd like to hear about. and tell me what the role of a step parent is a father. I've had only bad exper well, the last one was good, but I've had really bad experiences. Yeah, I had a sort of bad experience that became good. I did not want my parents to get divorced. I blamed my stepfather And we had a really combative relationship when I was a teenager lots of fighting, tears, yelling And he was a really good cook. so that was actually one thing that helped me forge a connection with him. But beyond that, if you would ask me when I was like a fourteen year old, I would have said my stiffdad sucks. And it was really only as I got older that I appreciated He was a poet, he was a writer, he was a translator. He was an English professor at Oberlin, where I grew up and was this like source of wisdom. He loved to travel. It sounds like the antithesis of your father who's a surgeon in many ways. Yeah. differentifferent vibes. And I think I got a lot from both of those relationships. When I became an academic, it was partially because I had seen David I mean, basically his job just seemed fun. He could come home early after teaching a class and play Nintendo baseball. and he just seemed like he had a really chill job. And my parents were always working, so I was like, well, obviously being a professor is great. Yeah. That' my plan. Yeah I think you were right. I think I was. How little did I know how hard it would actually be to get there Now it's great But he really inspired me. I think I learned a lot from him. It's a tough role. It's totally hard. You both Don't want to supplant the parent, but then also you are acting as a parent So it's just a ed You're like a perpetual substitute teacher. Yeah, totally. But the rewards for stepfathers, do we observe those in the same way we see the biological fathers? Yeah. I think our framing around stepped parenthood has been so negative that people see the bad stepfather, the bad stepmother, and even in fairy tales like the evil stepmother If you look at the research, a lot of kids who grow up with step parents say this relationship is really valuable. And so to whatever extent a real bond can form It can serve a lot of the same positive functions that a biological parent bond can form, right? Like we don't need to be biologically related to a kid in order to take care of a kid, that kind of goes with the whole alo parenting idea. We evolve to sort of know how to take care of each other. and that could be through adoption, through stepped parenthood or through biological parenthood. Tell me how fatherhood would best be seen as a public good. How would we all benefit from that? The more we can kind of empower men to participate fully in care The more we can value care as something that isn't just the domain of one gender That requires some investment. I think it requires really smart policy And it requires kind of cultural change, right to kind of see men as natural caregivers. I think it's interesting. we're living in this era where it feels like there's a resurgence of neotraditional gender roles. The tradwife and the sort of breadwinner male To me, that runs a little counter to our evolutionary history, which is about flexibility and not about getting locked in to This is the job of moms and this is the job of dads. So I really think that if we were a society that really valued the welfare of young kids We would be a society that champions fathers Not to the exclusion of mothers, but fathers are really important for motherers's well being too. And we would be a society that really puts its resources into how do we nurture next generation of humans. Do we have any proof of concept elsewhere that we can say this is a worthy investment that it yields some kind of a result we all want or benefit from? Yeah, definitely. Be it like you're an employer and you don't have kids, you don't care about kids and you're't thinking about kids. It's like, I don't want you know, I can see that being a tough sell unless we have some data that would say somehow the whole tide lifts, but yeah, what do we have to demonstr The research is finding that when Companies have parental leave, paternity leave. It's good for retention It's good for employee well beinging It's actually unfortunate just in the last few weeks, there have been some headlines that some big companies are actually cutting their parental leave programs, sort of a cost cutting thing. But it's really good for worker loyalty and for worker productivity And then we have these international models, where we have more generous leaves in other countries. And you do see that as dads are getting more access to federally funded paid paternity leave, they're getting more involved. It's better for the couple relationship, it's better for mom's health outcomes It's better for the kid's health outcomes and it's better for the father himself. Yeah, so let's talk about the fun benefits, the kind of long term impact that fathering has on men In the short term, right, you're losing gray matter volume, your hormones are changing. It's this set of challenges In the long term, the evidence is that becoming a parent is neuroprotective So work on both fathers and mothers finds that if you look at how the brain is aging. You have markers of a younger looking brain when you have children. And so these are big scan studies that look at thousands of people in later life. And they find you can use like a computer machine learning algorithm to basically gauge the age of a brain And people's brains look younger relative to chronological age. if they are parents. And you see that for fathers as well as for mothers, which tells me it's not just a pregnancy hormone thing. It's about caregiving, it's about social integration. And we also know from longitudinal work that the quality of a man's relationships is what's really important for his health and wellbe in late life. Now men tend to be lonely. Yes. R. Men are at risk for social isolation, which we know is a factor in all cause mortality. Worse than smoking It is super bad for you. And we know this from the longest running longitudinal study, which was done at Harvard. They recruited men who were undergrads. and a comparison sample of inner city Boston teens They followed them through the ends of their lives and are now following their grandkids. So this is like a hundred year study. And they found that more than your income, your job prestige It was the quality of your relationships with people close to you that predicted a longer, healthier life. So the more I think we can encourage men to invest in relationships the more we can benefit their health. We have this manosphere idea that men need too be making lots of money, dating lots of women, driving lots of Lamborghinis. Lots of Lamborghinis. That is not really what's good for men or anyone or anyone or for society yet. Well we going to try it out before we decide who try it. I guess it's worth a shot. I'm trying it. How many lamborghinis can you tryve Exactly. One study that came out that made headlines last year that thrilled me to no end was this impact on men Having daughters specifically, are you aware of this one? It's cumulative as well. And so on average, it was like one point seven years longer A man lives per daughter and there doesn't seem to be an end to that. So if the man has five daughters, he's looking at like eight and a half years extra life. Yeah. Well, I think it's that social connection. Do you have a support system in later life? Do you feel like you're part of a community? And we know that that is so important for human health Yeah This would definitely be kind of more of a psychological analysis of it. but I think Men interacting with little girls. allows them to embrace a whole side of themselves that has been excluded to them. Yeah. For lack of a better word, the sweetness of the exchange H has to be restorative. It's just such a beautiful feeling cry thinking about like just what my little girls give me, what they allow me to experience? I don't know where else I go get that Right, we don't really let men have a lot of variability in how they express themselves. We have very strong opinions culturally about what makes a man masculine and dressing up like a princess and doing a tea partyually's not a part of that. Yeahah, yeah yeah. But I think a lot of men enjoy playing with different sides of themselves. Yeah. And that's totally healthy and fun. Al also think when you have a son and you're a man in this country twenty twenty six you still have this notion like I've got to toughen this kid up, right? Like That's my role here is to present him to the world capable of taking on any challengers. That's not the funnest way to parent. like making a kid tough doesn't feel good, No one enjoys it. Whereas you don't walk in with that ridiculous notion with your daughter make them both savvy and aware of the world, but I don't think they need to punch other guys out at the bar at any point, you know? Let's hope not Yeah tell a coworker to fuck up. like all these things we think we have to pass on to men that we don't necessarily think we have to pass on to girls. Right. Like we're tough on our sons in a way that we're not. hate leads to the He's gott to go to playground and watch how Parents handle boys versus girls. It's a lot more grabbing them by the arm. We're still pretty rough on boys. Boys need a lot of love and care and nurturing. Maybe the most. Yeah, maybe the most. Yeah, their instinct is to smash everything with a stick. You gotta be like extra on them to show them a different way. I just wantan to finish on this because I read your New York Times article that I really, really liked. It was just kind of a general call to ignore your kids to some degree. So just Tell us a little bit about what's happening in What we could adopt maybe from hunting and gathering. Yeah, totally. And the idea for that outbed came actually from research for the Dad Brain book. Oh did. Which was that I was interviewing this guy Barry Hewt, who iss the anthropologist that studies the hunter gatherer Fathers And he was just telling me about childhood in this society. The model of parenting is just different because it's about learning less through direct instruction like you're in a classroom and more about modeling. like you're following adults around and you're emulating what they do. And I think we've got it totally backwards in contemporary society where we parents follow our kids around and create our lives that are molded around their interests. We're taking our kids to tons of activities putting our kids in special classes. Kids actually aren't getting the opportunity to watch adults work Our jobs are so atomized and hard for kids to grasp because they're happening on screens that kids aren't moving around the adult world very often with this sense of here's what I can imitate and what I can be. So my argument was that parents should just do boring things with kids because actually it's good for kids to learn how to be patient and watch other people. And maybe that means taking them on social calls or to the gym or to the bank. I remember going to the hardware store with my parents as a kid being borered out of my mom you know Talking to a neighbor, you being stuck with your mom talking to the neighbor one hundred percent. When is this gonna end? Yes, like having tea with the ninety year old woman down the street, having to sit there. That's how you learn how to talk to other people, how to take turns in a conversation And so if everything is crafted around the kid, how are you not gonna produce a narcissist? If you are the center of the world And then you leave the house and you find out very abruptly, Ohh, no, no, you're not the center of the world You have to join other people's worlds. Right. L That's actually better for kids to learn how to Go along with a group, how to be an observer, how to integrate yourself. And I think we sort of do try to create these kids who just the whole universe is revolving around them. And it's not normal in the grand scope of human history. No. And despite being a parent who, as I wrote in that op ed thinks that parents should let their kids chill out I somehow have gotten sucked into the team sports baseball club team. Well, it they love right?. And it's like my husband's saying he loves it. He plays baseball. He's a coach I got no problem with someone whose kid desires to do something and you support that. That's not my issue at all. My issue is the kid doesn't like soccer. Half the people there, I see it. When our kids were in soccer ours hated it and then half the otherids hate it. I'm like, what are we all doing? Why are we insisting that this is something that has to be done? No one here's enjoying this except the ones that are into it Yeah I know, but then that becomes a finish what you start. I mean, there's so many layers to all of this. likes I do think a lot of kids are like, I want to playcer Johnny' playingcer We're going do it together. They start. theyre like I hate it. But I do see a value and well you're a part of this team and you got to see this or you don't ever have to do this again, but we're seeing it through. Iute understand That's how we handle it all. We just didn't come back for the second season. Yeah, that's fine. But it's like team sports are real. They teach you things and they teach you that. You've committed to this. But we had a great expert on It might have been a childhood psychologist who was saying It's also important to figure out what it is your kid likes about it because you could not be diagnosing the right thing. Like a lot of kids that like soccer, they like being outside or they like being with friends. It might not be soccer they like. You got to actually figure out what is the thing that they are craving. It might not be the obvious thing. Yeah. in another cultural context, that could just be them running wild with a band of kids. That's right. with hammers and some nails, saws they shouldn't have Yeah Machetes. Yeah. I had access to all that stuff. Well, Darby, this has been delightful. This is a great book. I'm really glad you're studying this. I think to your point, the more we appreciate that dads are designed to do this too I think that'll help further an expectation that they should do it. Yeah, I can't see an outcome that's worse with dads being more and more involved and taking on more things and feeling like, no, they're designed to as well. I agree. I think dads can feel empowered that they actually do know what they're doing and can learn. Okay, so the book is called Dad Brain The New Science of Fatherhood and How it Shapes men's lives. Thank you so much for coming in and I look forward to reading all the work you do in the future Thanks. this was super fun. He there, this is Hermium Permium. if you like that, you're gonna love the fact t, Miss Mona Cute shirt. Thank you. I'm wearing one of our new merch items. It's very cute. It's so cute. It's like a butter, like a very light yellow. And it has a really cute crft. V's veryy eighties. Yeah, it has like the eighties Graphic And it's it's It fits really well. I really like the fit on it. It's got a nice, nice fit. Kind of cropped. Not really, but just ye. I think it's a little shrunken. Yeahah. Yeah. It's very cute Crazy happened yesterday night. For both of us, you don't even know yet Oh wow. Okay. Yeah. This is going be no you go Beuse it's like, you know this they got more eventful Wow Yeah, there was a huge crash I was I was working or yeah, I was I was in my office doing some work and then there was this C. I made dinner so it felt like this was coming from the kitchen And it was this enormous crash And did you think at any moment there had been a vehicle crash outside your house No, it was definitely in my house. Okay. Yeah, it just was so loud and Thunderous. Yes. and then I went out there And There's a full Mirror in my bathroom size of the whole wall size the entire wall mirror completely crashed all over the ground. I didn't say it last night, but there's got to be a couple hundred years of bad luck. I mean,'s that's an enormous mirror. If one little mirror Wh do you say that? That's a crazy thing to say to me. I was looking I was like, oh there's so many broken yards. There's so much broken mirror Yeah. So that sucked. It's because right you had a sink A temporary sink A temporary sink I had a temporary sink in and they had taken it out yesterday to put in the new, the real sink prepare it for that like today or tomorrow or Monday or whatever. and Sink was They underestimated how much that sink was holding up the mirror. Okay. I have a really interesting H. I have to go really quickly to sign something. Okay. Is that okay? No or I won't get it I didn't have to sign it actually. Are you d it? No But I caught him. What was it? A DHL package. But what was in the packy? Boots that I got from an a the auction. Oh, okay. you are involved in a boot auction Well, I went to Lake's Auction. I too Oh, right, right right. And I won these boots I just got delivered. And you normally have to sign for DHL. They are strict about that. but not He started running. He was already in his the van was on. to do this You were waving your arms. You're like, I am here. I canign. you didn't said I left it at the door. Yeah. so it's been delivered. I don't want to interact with you. It's already delivered. Yeah Okay, back to your mirror. Oh yeah. You took it really well. Yeah. Oh as I said, I'm privileged. I'm very privileged because Well first I called or I texted my dad Bill and my uncle Joe. and I said Well This just happened Um think must have been doing more than giv water. Exactly. And Bill called was just like, o my God, you know, he was And he was very sorry and same with Joe. And I was just laughing. Yeah, good. It just really but again, that is very privileged. I mean, at first I looked at it and I was like Oh How do I do that? How do I clean this up? Exactly You know, you're you're in the sweet spot of they just finished your house. So they're gonna to respond. Yeah, they're finishing it. Where it gets dicey is like in one year if that mirror falls off. right? Or in three years. like at what point do these builders are no longer responsible Yeah, you know, in fifteen years And that's That's where my story takes place. Okay. So yes, I thought, well, fuck, I wish I had a husband here who would deal with this Um, D So I just told Joe I'm just leaving it. Yeah I'm just gonna leave it. He said, Yes, leave it. We'll take care of it tomorrow. Perfect. And so yeah, that's extremely privileged. I knew I really wasn't gonna have to deal with it. I of course am having to deal with it in other ways. Now we need new mirror. Now we need, you know, that's a whole Annoying to do, he just textsed me very sim. Oh my gosh Um, yeah, it was just Very startling. Very loud. Very scary Um, than God you aren't in there popping a z it Right orr even on the toilet, I mean, it was it was gllass was everywhere everywhere. And your child and her friends had come over like twenty minutes before that. They might have caused it with their energy. They had crazy ener. sleepover Three of them teenagers fucking all got in these crazy outfits. They painted their whole face And I so relate to this. This was me at this. They just wanted to go out makeake a little noise, you know, they want to they want to stir up trouble but really not not really They're not ready to Yeah. They got a response that they should get Yeah, they And there like these boys are crazy. I'm like girls look at yourself. What exactly? What did you think? What did you think you were just gonna like Pe were gonna just not notice? Exactly. Yeah, they all look like rainbow bright or something. They look nuts. It was really cute and fun. They came over and I did think, oh my go, what if one of those kids was in the bathroom when that happened? And then I get sued What of I. Yeah, you. But you took yours well. I was really impressed with how chill you were about it. Yeah. I Again, that's privilege. It is privilege. In my journal this morning, I wrote I amm dying under the weight of my possessions. Because we were in Nashville last weekend and I really went there because I had a boat lift installed in my dock so that I can get my boat out of the water and it doesn't get all gunky. Yeah. They put it in. it's too shallow. Bat got stuck on the thing Go to my bus to get something. the bus inverters have collapsed. This is huge. The inverters have stopped. all the batteries have now collaped. That's a huge project and not cheap The whole weekend was like I came to just fix one thing and I left with like eight things I had to fix the so not Yeah, was I'm not going to bore you with the list. But while we were there, the sprinkler fire suppression system in Kristen's office started leaking Okay. And it's hard wood Right in front of that. Right. It warped all the wood, ran down the plaster wall, fucked that all up. It's all pushed out. They had to tear out all the wood. You know, it sucks. It's It suckss And then it gives you this same anxety It's like, I don't know the fucking leak that time. It's only a year old or two years old. What is it going to leak again in two years or we'll be out, you know, whatever So already like stress to the max Yeah Go to bed last night. I was up pretty late researching our guests today three AM Kristen No maybe Delta got sent upstairs. Dad, come downstairs. There's water leaking out of the ceiling att three AM go down into the bedroom they're sleeping in Sure enough, there's a fucking like, thirty six inch slice in the drywall in the ceiling and it's just leaking water out. I'm like, where the fuck is that water coming from? I like step out I'm looking, Ohh, my room's above it, but is my bathroom? No? I think my dresser' above that Pull a panel out of the ceiling and realize, oh, the air conditioned coil system is in there. It has sprung a leak and it's spraying water And it's three in the morning. And you're like, okay, how do I shut all this? Yeah? I like turning the air off. still not shutting off. And' meaning the breaker. now the whole all the air is off and it's still leaking and we buckets under the thing and it's three and I'm like, I got to fucking wake up at six. drive delta to school B back in bed, I was like, listen, it's a dream known a home It is. And it's also it's stressful. By the time I lay down at four thirty in the morning to go back to sleep I was like, I'm gonna move into a one bedroom apartment second these girls are out of. Cool And I'm gonna have no worries. R. But that's not true. No I want all the upside. But sometimes when it rains it pours. Yeah. two ceiling leaks in a week With massive damage. That sucks. I wouldn't feel bad for me. I have too much shit. That's what I was kind of saying this morning. I was like, Yeahah, you you too much shit. I know Yeah, it is, you know, I just I so rarely feel like, oh fuck I wish Not even necessarily like I wish I had a husband. I mean, that was the joke. That's a joke I made on Instagram. but like I wish somebody else was here right now. I don't feel that all that often, but In moments like that, I do wish somebody else was around. Uh That's what it activates. I mean, a little nothing crazy. I textgg Jest, but he's he would have come over, but he's in Texas. U And also what's it gonna do? I know it's not about that. It's not about that. Yeah. I'm back in my mail wayay of thking like what can I fix? Not about that. It's just about sharing the experience Okay, you ready for this? This was from commenter CB nine one two z seven MD here The women the reason women often have diarrhea when they are starting their periods is due to the release Pros Progesterone? No, Pstaglandins cause smooth muscle contraction in the uterus, but also cause smooth muscle in the intestines to contract. Interesting. So we got an MD answering your belly issues every time you're on your peris Wow, then how come everyone doesn't have that? Not everyone has. Maybe they're being secretive about it and they're too shy Maybe they're embarrassed they have bottom issues when they have Wow. Okay good. Thought you'd want that update. It's not you. it's the proun of Rolanus. Yeah It still caus me though, you know It's still happening to you, but's not happen me, it's still me who's gross. It's still me who's gonna poop in my car. I can't just be like, well, it's the prolactidant That's what I just tell. Like if you werere in your car doing it And someone saw you like, o and you're like,, it's Pbactans. No why them Yeah. You judgmental. I think the first time it happened was also around that time. I do think it was sort of connected to my period. So you just want to, I think you want to be mindful of your calendar. Yeah. your flies and not do a lot of big Cus toown appppintments. I just try to on those three days, Just feel like I never mourn a PMS symptoms are for a full week? Mine are. Okay. So for that week, we never we never get more than a mile away from home. No You can't live like that. I can't live like that. then put a trash bag in your car. Are you excited for summer Kids are getting out of school, not mine, but many kids are out. Well, yeah, when Lincoln got out, Del is still in ye. I am so excited for a summer. When I was this morning, your child, as previously mentioned, was wrapping up her sleep overver It was so cute and they were playing outside summertime for them. and Anna was there and I was like I'm so jealous of them right. But what specific? Yeah, it's the it's the level of carefree. You are never going to have it again Yeah Yeah the kids know the ceilings all fucked up, but they're not worried about that. Yeah That's not. to worry about for two months. Well, you know what they do have to worry about that it'd be easy to like under misreember how powerful it is The amount of angst and preoccupation they have about who's going to who' birthday party and what rung of that ladder. like I got to drive everyone to dinner last, notot everyone. I got to drive the three teens to dinner And I was hearing him in the back seat, My my favorite thing in the world is to drive them places with their friends because they forget I'm there And I What is his stomach Oh It wasn't a fart.. Oh yeah, I sent you a picture of the mirror and you said, what happened? Did you finally fart? And I did laugh really hard. That was very funny. Okay, anyway, they were in your back seat. Yeah and just You do forget the amount of anxiety that you were carrying about all the social pressure.. That's at a peak And you and I aren't sit like this just happened, right? You were like, you going to the Hansess Memorial Day Party? I'm like o, In't inv And you're like, I'm sure you were. And then we both we both looked and we hadn't been sent the invite. That never happened Kristen didn't have it, I didn't it. It was just a mix up. But it's not because your name was showed up on my on On the list, you can see who's been invited and both of you were invited. Was it through EVite? I don't know. Where did you see my name? like on the group email orite O on the Cableless put whatever on Yeahah, exactly So that that never got to me. Yeah, I might be in your spam. No no, I looked. I looked everywhere. I don't it did not get to me for whatever reason. You're have to take this up with Amy because she's like, yeah I send it to them. believe that. Okay. All of it's true. She sent it. it didn't come. So maybe I've blocked paperless post or Yeah, okay. Whatever the reason is, I didn't have it and I searched everywhere. R and Kristen didn't have it. Okay. So neither of us had it And I was like, oh, maybe we weren't invited literally we' like, okay. That's fine. Weo truck along Um, If I was thirteen Yeah. And we had to fight it. It would rattle me now I'm like, yeah, if I'm not Someone doesn' I in a party, fine That's Still rare. Sure I'm only saying I used to be plagued by Where am I? Wh invited me? What am I missing out on? So that's anxiety I had. Although we don't have plane on the trampoline, what I have that offset that is like, it doesn't bother me if I'm not invited to the Hansen party. For whatever reason they thought There's too many people or whatever they thought I'm fine with it. But don't you think like this is eresting but I guess I feel like Maybe I wish you did care You were invited. So this is that this is why I can I can do this thought experiment is like if All of a sudden, they stopped inviting you to things They stopped dividing me to things I would I would be like What what happened? These are my close friends and I used to be invited to all of their things. If they decided to stop, that means something has happened. I've done something or they something's gone on Yeah. and I care about these people. So I'd like to figure out what it is. Yeah, and I am at that place in life where I don't have the thought of like what happened, what did I do? My My only thought is like Whatever reason they didn't want to invite me's kind of I don't care it's none of my business. They decided For whatever reason not to invite me I know we haven't had a falling out. I know nothing weird's happened. I'm sure I'm going to see him next week. I'm not doing any of that stuff where I think like something must be wrong. I'm just like, oh, whatever, you have a party. you didn't invite me. I have parties. I invite some people and I don't invite all people. There's no comment on whether I want to be friends with those people or not. It's just like on that day I had these four people over and I don't know, if you saw it on Instagram and you're upset and you're filling in all these blanks that there's issues now. That's the all on you Wight Again, that's where I disagree, but Yeah Yeah. I guess all I'm saying is I now at fifty one have the internal security of I'm not really worried about thinking about what I'm not invited to. R. And if someone doesn't want me to be at their party, that's totally fine with me. I don't want to be at someone's party Butura it's deeper than just being at the party. It's Is this relationship good? And if you value the relationship, I would think you'd want it to be If I text Amy and she didn't get back to me and then I text her again and she didn't get back to me, now I'd be concerned because we have a personal relationship that we respond to each other If I don't go to one of her parties, that's not how I'm evaluating whether we're connected or not or we have a good friendship. It's more When I reach out to you, do you respond? Do we reciprocate Are you good? Whether I'm at your birthday party or your Halloween party, it's I don't know. that's not what I came for. All right, right, right U yeah. So anyways, I'm just saying I think I have other concerns and worries, but I've also been completely liberated from a big bunch of concerns that used to bother me Well, I just thought like, oh man, they just have nothing they have nothing to think about for two months. Nhing hanging over their head, no homework, no work Even if you don't have work for two months, it's like when will I work? When I get back to work, what are we gonna have to do? Will I ever work again? Well is like it's there's a lot of f thinking about the future when you you're an adult. and that doesn't I don't think that ends and then Yeah, you just you don't get those those summers back. You don't get those summers back So I was jealous, but I'm also so happy for her And sleepovers are so fun And I miss them I do a lot of playing in the set like I said this to you out in the yard. I feel like them in the summer. Right. Like I have that sense of I'm waking up and today I'm gonna play with my friends In my place different, I'm on on a boat instead of a trampoline or I'm on a dirt bike in my yard or I'm playing pickle bowall, whatever it is. I do have that sense of like, oh, it it's playtime That's good. Yeah. That's great. Yeah W do some facts? Yeah, let's do some facts Stay tuned for more arm chair experts If you dare. We are live from Freddy's house. Guests are gathering around the TV, even with a big storm outside. A we worried about the fee. No, they have Xfinity WiFi. Get reliable fiberpowerered gig Wiifi with Peacock includced to stream the beautiful game this summer. Xfinity. Imagine that. Restrictions apply new gig interternet members only S spepeeds vary use of fiber coaxial cable, Peacock offer for Pacock premium with ads currently ninet nine ath value A activation required to access content. terms apply. PeacOock must be activated within first ninety days, mananage existing subscriptions to avoidultiple charges. Third party subscriptions continue until cancellled Darby Saxby. Does't it sound like that could be a character in a fun English? Yes. Darb It sounds like it's from Well, it sounds like it's from Flight of the Concords because Darby is one of the actors on that show. But I'm more picturing like a little girl in a rain slicker in London. Yeah, that's cute. Darby Sxby. It is. Meet Darby Sexby She loves her parents, but not her uncle Mike What did Uncle Mike? Uncle Mike is a chimney sweep who gets dusties all over her favorite stuffies. Oh You see now we got a story. I love it. I bought it. I want to know more. Yeah, well address the situation. more about Darby. But you know, she's gonna to be mean to her uncle Mike and her uncle Mike's just sweeping a chimney She then wants to play with her stuffies because he's lonely. That's what she's gonna figure out.ass She's gonna learn compassion from Uncle Mike by the end. Yeah Hopefully it's like or four books. Her steffie tell her we don't mind getting dirty if it's to keep someone happy and feeling loved. and she's going to give her Uncle Mike, a big hug at the end.. And he's gonna go. Oh, Dorby, I wasn't expecting that. You've never given me a hug And she's going to hug him and then he's gonna cry with such joy that the tears will wash away all the soot. All the dirt.. Oh, I love that ending. It's a te tear bath. Listen, the one thing though I don't like about that story is that the stuffies are like they are being codependent. Only if they mind. Yeah, but they're covered you're projecting. No, they're covered in dirt. But they're stuffies, like they don't care ike the dirter the better. They know Darby doesn't like it and they know like it itches them. Well, I don't know Yeah dirt itches. If you're ye if you're an animal and you have dermis These is stuffies. Okay, but they talk so Yeah, you know, so' we're already playing it. Yeah. ye, yeah. I think they have feelings like physical and emotional Okay you know, one time I got dirt Unless shit te No Okay, this is so gross. I'm sure I've told you that I got dirt stuck in my. I thought you're talking about your stuffies, but you' You this whole time you've been talking about yourself you're Okay, I gota rewind. You don't like hugging chimney sweeps. You don't like I got it. No. Im saying I'm saying I feel for these stuffies because I know what it's like Stir it stuck in your neck How does that happen It couldn't be cleaned How long was this dirty d? You had a dirty neck for a while How long What's going on? What happened to your neck? Okay. I was like ten or eleven or God, I hope my are ye and And I was at my we were at a family event My my grandparent's h and my mom was like looked at me and It was like, what's on something like, what's wrong? Its good. Something was like wrong with my neck Now I have a huge crease across my neck. I've had it like high cholesterol since I was a baby. Okay. I hate it. Okay. but I've always had it. and it was really dark You had been accumulating some dirt and l and stuff in the fold