Why Fathers Matter - Dr Anna Machin

Why do we need to change the narrative around fathers? We need to change the narrative about fathers partly because the one we have at the moment is a complete fiction, which is kind of made up from many myths and stories we've been told in our culture over the years. About the role of fathers, about their importance to their children, about how they become fathers, how they learn the knowledge to become fathers. And actually, all of this is based upon absolutely zero academic research. Absolutely no observational research at all. It's just stories that we've told each other, anecdotes. And because of that, the myths we've built up around fathers are just that, they're myths. They're not actually true, and they are very damaging to fathers. They're damaging to men. And they're also damaging to their families. Um so, the work that I do, and those of my colleagues around the world, we do it because we actually want the facts to be out there. We want the stories we tell about fathers to actually be accurate. Which myths do you wish that you could put into the ground and fully bury about dads? Uh the first one I'd bury is that fathers men are not instinctive parents. So, we have this story, and I hear it a lot still from the dads that I study when before they have children, which is that like mom is an instinctive parent, she's somehow like magically able to do this, whereas dads have to learn. And because of that, they tend to see what mom does as a gold standard of parenting, and whatever they do as a secondary, bit of a failure. And actually, it's not true, and we'll probably go into that a little bit later, but we've we've discovered that men are as biologically primed to parent as women are, which as an evolutionary anthropologist makes perfect sense to me. But that's probably one of the biggest ones, because it really undermines a man's confidence. That he feels that actually, if he just goes with what his gut is telling him, he will be okay. He really A lot of them lack a lot of confidence, and they do very much belittle themselves in relation, for example, to what mom is doing. Yeah, it's there is a demonization of fatherhood, and I want to get into this later as well, but I wonder how much of it is a cope in response to single parent households and us trying to not make children who grow up in single parent households feel like they're falling behind, because if we minimize the impact that fathers have on children's rearing, then the people who do grow up with just mom don't feel like they're missing out as on as much. And this is a trend that we see, you know, it's the tyranny of the minority is somehow sometimes how it's categorized, but yeah, it's so so fascinating. One of the other things, William Costello, who's one of David Buss's students out here, told me a story that you taught him about how fathers saved the human race from extinction because babies' heads got too big. Yeah. Okay, so what happened? So, our brains are six times bigger than they should be for an animal of our of our size of our body weight, and we're also bipedal. So, we had this massive problem with our anatomy about 1.8 million years ago to start with, where our hips had narrowed cuz our we'd gone bipedal, so the birth canal got narrower. But, we had this big increase in the size of our brains, for example, compared to chimps. And we got to this point about 1.8 million years ago where the head would no longer fit through the pelvis at full term. So, we started having to birth our babies very preterm, basically. We should be pregnant for much much longer than we are. Uh and that meant you have this helpless baby, and mom wasn't able to do that entirely on her own. Um particularly if she had like toddlers and everybody else around her. Initially, women helped each other with kin, and that was fine for about just over a million years. And And about half a million years ago, our brains took a massive leap again and suddenly just relying on your sisters, your grandmother, your mom, whoever it might be, wasn't enough. And actually the race our our species was threatened with extinction because these babies were not surviving. And so what happened? Whoops. What happened next was that the the next genetically related person had to step in. Now that was dad. Now this was a big thing for mammals for a mammal because only 5% of mammals actually have investing fathers. So we're really rare and we're actually ape that does it. So this was a big big evolutionary step for mammals to take for dad to stick around. But if dad hadn't stuck around, the species I would argue would have died out because there were all these babies and none of them were surviving and none of those genes were carrying on down the generations. So we would have hit a really difficult demographic problem. Lots of interesting things there. First off, if it wasn't for the width of women's hips, how long do you think they would gestate for? We don't really know, but it's probably getting to maybe pushing towards elephantine levels. So it'll nearly probably Yeah. If not slightly longer because you've got a big brain to grow in there and that takes a lot of energy and it takes a lot of time. Mhm. So there is a So but if It's it's it's not quite an arms race, but it is a an evolutionary trade-off between how much mom needs to walk and uh how long the child needs to gestate for. Yes. Yes. And the way we dealt with that and the way we dealt with this demographic nightmare is we birthed our babies earlier and earlier and earlier. And that's why when you look at a chimp baby, it's like bounding around the trees after a week. And you look at a human baby and oh my god, you've got years before it's going to be doing that. Just a puddle for the next 2 years. Yeah, exactly. If any you know, if anyone's looked after a newborn baby, you know how unbelievably helpless they are and that was the trade-off. But that meant that in the classic classic statement, it then started to take a village to raise a child because you suddenly have this kid who was helpless but was growing this enormous brain that was going to need loads and loads of support. And MPI, male parental investment, just to like really really drive this home, how rare this is. 95% of all mammal species have zero male parental investment and none of the other ape family do. Like we we are we are the outlier. Yeah. And the reason for that and and that's why we then go on to this argument of how important fathers are. Because if fathers hadn't been important and if they weren't still important, they just wouldn't have evolved. They just would not have evolved because evolution it hates what we call redundancy. So what it what it doesn't do is it doesn't invent or cause to evolve two roles which are identical or near each other unless they're really needed. So it wouldn't have caused a human father to evolve unless he was absolutely critical for the survival of the species. It just doesn't work like that. So it you know. Go go back 750,000 years ago. What would the typical father have done? The typical father 750,000 years ago would have probably acted very much like a chimp father and would probably have probably sided several children with several different females because reproductive success, in terms of evolution, the only thing that's important is reproductive success. How many kids are you having? Are they surviving? Are they themselves reproducing? Okay. So before we had investing fathers, before dad had to do that, he would have been spreading his seed because that would have increased the likelihood of reproductive success. But we got to this tipping point where he was doing that and oh my god, none of them were surviving. Okay? So actually your reproductive success is pretty much zero. And so evolution will have selected for those men who stuck around and actually started investing. But the But the problem is you get to the point where a man you could say, "Well, he could just carry on, you know, siring several children with several different women." But the problem you have is that first of all, he wants paternity certainty. So, if he's doing that, that means all the other That means the women who he is mating with are also mating with other men. And then you've got this conundrum of, "Oh my god, I I'm now possibly investing in someone else's child and I don't really want to do that." So, the way I deal with this is I do a thing called mate guarding, which a lot of primates who do couple up do. And I'm going to stick by the female side. But if you stick by the female side, you're not mating with anyone else. And you slowly move into this thing where we have for a greater or lesser period of time what we call parental monogamy. And that the father sticks with the woman, only mates with that woman, and helps to raise the children because that's the only way his genes are going to survive. So, I got sent something by Mac and Murphy earlier on. And this is This is really interesting. So, this is a pushback against alpha Tate alpha male sort of hyper Andrew Tate approach as being what's classed as reproductive success. And the tweet from him says, "I've always been skeptical of sexual partner count as a measure of male reproductive success. In our species, concealed ovulation and contraception make it rather unlikely that a man will produce children through anything other than long-term committed relationships." And it got me thinking about how this is reflected ancestrally as well. That, you know, spreading your seed around, even the most alpha of alpha males, it doesn't track using wolves or chimp tribes or silverback gorillas as the model for us because the children come out in a very different sort of way. And as you identified, and anyone that's read The Ape That Understood the Universe knows, humans are grandchildren optimizing machines. Mhm. That's the thing that needs to happen. Once you get to the stage of grandchildren, sweet like I hands are off the wheel, so to speak. But yeah, I think it's a really nice reframe. And it also maybe explains, I don't know how long 500,000 years is evolutionarily, pretty long time. But I think a lot of men feel in them a a little conflict that you know, they want dad, but they want Chad in their own lives. They want to kind of And there is a battle that I see amongst my friends, I'm 35 and I'm seeing these former degenerates start to calm down a little bit. And but they still have this sort of vestige of what they used to be, but they have this desire for what they want to become. And I almost see perhaps the 750,000 year ago version of them battling with the 250,000 year old version of them. And I do think, you know, it's who's going to give men sympathy for oh, poor poor party boys like starting to settle down like you you know, the adult infant, the juvenile that it really needs to grow up. I'm like, yo, I'm I'm on board. Like I'm I've been around enough of these These are my friends. But I do think that it's interesting to see the knobs and the the dials start to get tweaked a little bit. You know, we talk a lot about the the change for women they've hit uncharitably hit the wall or largely just I realized that this is now the time for me to settle down. But no one really ever talks about the equivalent with men. And I do think that I see it in my friends like I I need to grow up. I need to stop being such an adult infant. Yeah, absolutely. And and and in fact, I do have a colleague in in Finland who does study male baby lust. And it's something that again, we don't we don't talk about. We talk about ticking clocks for women and the fact that they get this sudden insatiable desire to have children. But men have it, too. And it's partly because of as you go as you age, your testosterone naturally declines anyway. Um and so test what testosterone is really, really good at in high volumes is helping you find a mate. It's really good at focusing your attention on that scene. It's really good at giving you all those features which women find attractive. It makes you very driven about finding a mate. But as you age actually it declines. And it's a natural um decline and you start to focus more upon having a family. The other great thing about it, which is the fascinating thing about testosterone, is when you do become a father for the first time, it drops significantly, like really significantly, up to a third. And it will never return to the pre-birth level as long as you remain in contact with your child. So testosterone is a very powerful hormone, but I think it's until very recently we didn't realize how important it was in shaping fatherhood, shaping human fatherhood. Yeah, so there's an interesting parallel I think going on here that what was needed ancestrally was uh resources and protection, primarily I'm going to guess from a father, right? Like if you're spending 20 hours a day with an infant in your arms, it's hard to go picking berries or taking down a wildebeest. Similarly, you are physically more frail and the child is unbelievably frail, therefore you need someone to play uh the bodyguard hypothesis, I think your uh ex-boss uh told me on this podcast, Robin Dunbar. So I think that there is um an equivalent change that's happened culturally uh socioeconomically in the modern world which almost reverses this. So women finally have access uh financially uh and educationally to not be dependent on their partners. And emotionally there is a push to almost reprogram some of the maternal instincts and some of the pair-bonding instincts that women have. You know, there was a a famous article in the New New Times last year by Chelsea Conaboy that said maternal instinct is a myth that men created to keep women down. Um and I think what this has created is that an assumption women don't need men financially, women don't need men emotionally, so women don't need men parentally either. That's the stage that we are, at least in some corners of uneducated popular culture getting to. Yeah. Uh and that certainly is that men are dispensable. I would never forget reading something about the Y chromosome and the Y chromosome has does have very little of any use on it in terms of genes. And so this argument that one day it'll die out and actually we won't need any men. And what that really misses is actually fathers aren't really there for mothers. Fathers are there for their children. So whether or not as a woman you feel that you need that that that partner in your life and I will get into the single parent thing in a minute. What is very clear from the data that we've collected and colleagues around the world in the last 15 years is that your children do need you. So actually it's not about as a woman I've got my own money, I can protect myself, you know, da da da da da da. It's actually but your kid needs the input from that father because actually what fathers bring to their children is very different from what mothers do. And when I started 15 years ago the mantra was fathers had no role in child development because mothers were the environment of raising that child mostly. She was the major input into that child's life and therefore you didn't need dad around really. And we have found again, not surprising from an evolutionary point of view that fathers actually have a very separate, unique, and important input into their children's development. And if you don't have that, then first of all it has to be found from somewhere else. So actually the argument from feminists or women or whatever it should be shouldn't be I don't need this man. The question should be yes, but does your child need this man? Because actually that's what he's there for. Um so maybe you don't want a partner in your life. Okay, fine. Co-parent. You know? Okay. You can live separately. This is fine. You don't have to be romantically involved. You don't have to have any financial aid. You don't need to ask him for any protection. But what about the kid? Just fundamentally, what about the kid? And I think that's that's the argument. quite surplus to requirements now, I think. Um you know, we had this as you identified uh bit of uncertainty around fathers, I think. Uh I had this really um very formative conversation in a group a couple of months ago uh just before we uh I found out that I was going to have a chat with you. And it was so timely cuz I'm thinking about this and the role of dads and so on and so forth. And um it was a mastermind filled with a couple of billionaires and a bunch of millionaires. So, these people monetarily, in terms of resources, are very very successful. And they said, "Look, let's just do a round table. We've all eaten dinner. Uh does anybody have any challenges that they're facing uh personally or professionally? Throw them out into the group." And I think there was one round one uh sweep that went round. And on the second one, this guy said, "My wife is 6 months pregnant 7 months pregnant. Uh all that she's talking about is the baby, and I don't feel anything. And I feel ashamed at the fact that I'm not like when's this cascade of hormones going to come? Is it going to come when the baby arrives? What if it doesn't? What if I'm not meant to be a dad? You know, I want kids, and I can't wait to have kids, but I I don't feel anything, and I'm scared I'm scared of telling her maybe she's going to think I'm less of a man. I'm not going to be a good father. Maybe she's going to want to leave me." Um it's there was just like pouring out of this guy uh self-doubt and and and concern and shame and guilt and terror. Uh and I it really it really touched me. You know, this guy opened up and sat right across with another guy equally successful with three kids. Uh and he said, "Same for me. Same for me. Just hold on. It will come. It's going to take longer. Um but in the the point being, you know, when we're talking about men and dads feeling surplus to requirements, there is a the it's a very vicious sort of double-ended sword that's happening here where culture is maybe feeding an increasing narrative that women can survive without dads and dads are surplus to requirement and we don't want to make the single-parent household people feel uncomfortable. And what that does is it slots almost perfectly into these fears that fathers innately have. So, you have this almost sort of um extrinsic and intrinsic narrative being woven together that certainly to the guy that was sat next to me, it it played right into the fears that he already had, and it didn't make him feel like he was any more secure. Yeah, absolutely. And that's why in a way I do the work I do and I publish the work I do in a in a in a helpful format. So, that's why I wrote my book, and that's why we have to get this information out there about dads because what he was feeling is completely and utterly normal. I can think of only maybe three or four men that I've studied who haven't had that concern, and I've studied many, many men in this process. And and the other guy at the table was right. It will come. But we don't tell men that. You know, we hear this thing of, "Oh, the baby will come out and you'll feel amazing and you'll feel elated and it'll be amazing and you'll immediately love them." Probably not. And actually, quite a lot of women don't feel that either. Let you into a little secret. But um but it's because and we can explain that. We can explain that. Mom, when she's pregnant, is there's raging hormones everywhere. When she gives birth, she's got a massive flood of hormones which help her give birth actually, but as a side effect are amazing bonding hormones. So, we've got oxytocin, we've got dopamine, we've got beta-endorphin in there, accelerating the bond she's going to build with that baby. And that's done partly because babies are tough and you don't want her to leave it on a hillside. So, okay, let's give her some really good, you know, chemicals, side effects, and she will Dads can only build their bond because they don't go through that physiological process, they don't breastfeed, for example, they have to build their bond through interaction. Okay? So, for example, the drop in testosterone doesn't occur until the baby is born. So, that's first of all a big tough thing. So, you're not getting this drop in testosterone, which makes you more motivated to care for the baby with and also releases more of an effect from your bonding hormones. High testosterone blocks the effects of bonding hormones. Okay? So, if you drop the you get much more of an effect of oxytocin and dopamine and things like that. So, he's not getting that head start during pregnancy, he has to wait for the baby to be born, then you get this baby who's born, if your partner is breastfeeding, then basically in those first few weeks there's very little way in. Because she's breastfeeding, the baby's either asleep or it's crying or whatever it might be, and it's very latched onto mom. And that's a really tough period. I've had dads who very much that has driven them to postnatal depression. Okay? So, it's a very serious depression as well. Oh my god, yeah. The rate is about 10%. And it's and it's it's genuinely postnatal depression. And again, that's something we need to talk about and highlight for men. So, what I always say to men is I explain to them physiologically what's happening. I say to them you'll build your bond through interaction. In those first weeks, baby's not doing anything, so that's really hard. If you can find a way in. So, maybe your thing is baby massage before bed, maybe your thing is giving it a bath, maybe your thing is reading a story even if it doesn't understand you, it still works. Um find your thing, and it's your thing, nobody else's thing, okay? And try and do it every day. But until your baby starts to interact with you, until they start smiling and babbling and laughing and looking pleased to see you, and then at 6 months they start playing with you, and then you can do rough and tumble play and all these wonderful things. Until that time, it's going to be tough. But it will come. And but we don't tell dads that. So they they sit there thinking either baby doesn't like me or oh my god, I'm not feeling anything for this baby or and or, you know, mom's really good at this. Why am I so awful at this? How come she's got a bond? How come she knows what's going on and I don't know what's going on? So they build this massive massive pressure and actually we just need to tell them. We just need to say this is normal. And the fact that you were talking at a a man's group, that's brilliant. You know, we have in the past set up n- antenatal groups just for men. And they are amazingly powerful because Antenatal groups? Yes. So so prenatal groups. Before the baby is born. So in the UK, you know, you go to those and you go with your partner and mom's there and very little is focused on dad and dads tend to not voice their fears in those environments because they are they're there as like the supporter and the rock and then they have thought they're not going to say anything. Well, look at how much mom's going through. She is the one that's going through everything. And they're all it's all about supporting mom. What can you do to support mom? Um but actually, if you do a man's group and particularly if you bring in men like happened on your evening where there's a dad there who goes, "It's okay." They open up amazingly and they will tell you all their fears and all their and then having some experienced dads there is really powerful because they will turn around and go, "That happened to me, but I can assure you it's all fine." And they can ask all the silly questions that they think are silly and they're not going to ask in front of a load of women and also most antenatal teachers are women and it's just a really powerful thing to do. But we have to prepare these fathers. You're like saying to them, "You do all this preparation for mom." And you read all these books and they say how to support mom and how to do this. And that's really important. I get that. But there's very little out there that actually says, "And what about dad?" Because he is actually going through a profound emotional, biological, physiological change as well. It's just not quite as obvious because there's not a big bump, you know? But actually, his brain is changing just as much as hers. We know that now from scans. You know, we can see the change in a man's brain when he becomes a father. But we just need to share the knowledge, I think. And that's why it's very important to me to do a lot of talks, to do a lot of podcasts, to write The Life of Dad because I want to And that's written for fathers because I wanted them to have a book that wasn't about supporting mom, that wasn't about what's happening to mom, that was about what's happening to them. Because I think that's really important. What? You've mentioned about this adjustment in androgens, so testosterone drops. It It actually drops a little, I think, when you get into a committed relationship, and then it drops a little bit more. and then it strup Yeah, exactly. And then it dramatically Yeah. Yeah. Dramatic drop. What? What's going on with gray matter? What's happening to our brains? Okay. So, what we see in the brains is we see two key changes in the brain, which we see and they're identical in women. And we see First of all, we see changes in the very core of the brain, um particularly in the limbic area of the brain, the amygdala, uh and the hypothalamus, which are related to risk detection, which is understandable. So, as a parent, you need to be very good at risk detection. You need to look out for those for those risks to your baby. Second really big ones are in the outer areas of the brain. So, we see the areas related to empathy increase in size, which again is obvious. You need to be very good at reading your child's emotional needs, what their emotional state is, what they're going to need, and particularly when all you've got is somebody screaming at you, you need to be very good at that. The other thing is all those really good parenting skills like attention and planning and problem-solving and organizing. So, those areas of the brain are associated with that. Some of them related to executive function. They also increase in size. So, you see all these areas becoming primed so that you are as good at this as you possibly can be. And we see that happening in men and in women. I wonder if uh the hardcore productivity pilled corner of the internet gets a hold of this conversation and finds out that their executive function can be increased by having kids, they might start having children. Suddenly everyone's having children, yeah. Having children is a productivity hack. No, they'll say, "Look, look think about how much I'm going to be able to parallel process. My my Google calendar's going to be completely put together. Um Yeah, you'll just be knackered, but anyway. Yeah, true. Yeah, the the sleep offset may may derogate that. Talk to me about um this risk detection Mhm. stuff and fear stuff because there's these videos on the internet. It's um uh dads What is it? It's like dads doing unbelievable things. The child's about on the corner of the couch and falls off and this father gets like some Odell Beckham Jr. reverse crow grip thing or like they pluck some pluck some before a random tractor accident occurs or whatever, you know, like So there's there's this increase in that, but does this mean that parents, specifically dads, but also mothers, is their baseline anxiety is that raised? Does this bleed across into the rest of their life, too? Do they have a sense of fear, anxiety, stress, whatever occurring as well? We do tend to It's partly It's a quite a complex multifactorial thing. You do see an increase increase in cortisol in young parents, obviously. Um it is a very stressful thing to do, not only with the lack of sleep, but also with the sheer amount of learning you need to do and the fact that yes, you have to you have to have this heightened risk detection. We do find that men, and it's probably to do with the drop in testosterone, definitely become more emotional in situations which they feel relate to them. So I always get my dad saying, "Oh my god, I now can't watch charity appeals on the telly, you know, without crying." And it's partly because you've got a drop in testosterone. but it's it's it's emotional in a a sad direction. It's not like they get more aggressive emotional. No. No, they tend not to, actually. That's probably because there's a drop in testosterone. So we don't see in some male other animals who don't tend to do the caring side, but tend to do, for example, defense of the nest. We will see more aggressive behavior. That tends to be caused by the increase in a hormone called vasopressin, which actually isn't terribly important in humans. Men Men have kind of replaced that with oxytocin. Um so, we don't tend to see increases in aggression, but we do tend to see increases in in stress response, and we see increases in, yeah, vigilance, basically. Just sheer vigilance for what's going on. Yeah, that's very interesting. Okay, so let's roll the clock forward. This imaginary father and his imaginary sleep deprivation has got to maybe 3 to 6 months in, and the baby's a little bit less of a puddle on the floor. I've heard this story of, you know, it's very important for the child to lie on the father's chest, skin-to-skin contact. How much of this is bro science, and how much of this is legit? Absolutely legit. If there's one thing I will tell a father after birth is put that baby on your chest. Um but still here, even though we've spent years trying to um educate the medical establishment, we still find that fathers aren't offered it as routine, which is ludicrous. Um and we still have to say to them, you have to be assertive enough to ask for it and say, "Please give me the baby. I want to put the baby on my chest." The reason for that is ba- human babies are sensory beings, like a lot of little baby mammals. They do everything. Their senses are very heightened. One of the senses that's not heightened is vision. But they are amazing at smelling. They're amazing at at feeling and touch. So, if you put them on your chest as a father, what happens is they first of all, they smell you, and they start to smell who you are, cuz they can't really see you. Secondly, a wonderful thing called biobehavioral synchrony happens. So, when you put a baby on your chest, they their physiology starts to go into time with your physiology. So, they'll come to the same temperature as you. Their heart rate will come to the same heart rate as you. Their Their blood pressure will come to the same blood pressure as you. Okay? Also, touch is the key release of bonding hormones. It you know, oxytocin, dopamine, beta-endorphin, if you want to release those, the best thing you can do is use touch. Um so, skin-to-skin contact after birth, skin-to-skin contact at any point during the baby's life is really, really critical for fathers. So, it's something that's routinely given to women but not to men. And actually, in a way, arguably, it's more critical for men because moms got that little bit of head start with her bonding hormones having gone through childbirth. Um but, it's really critical as the first interaction between a father and child, I think. Robin taught me about the release of bonding hormones when finger over skin movement is kept at 2 cm per second or less. Yeah, there's a particular Yeah, no, that's true. There's a particular rhythm, and it's why we find some touch or some stroking irritating. And some stroking really lovely. And I suppose you you know, you might have we you know, you you have a partner who strokes you, and sometimes you're like, "No, that's really And it's usually because it's at the wrong frequency. We have these special, special hairs and special nerve cells in our skin, and it's just a very particular stroke rate that works. apparently, that was if you run that back, and you look at the primatology side of it, it's a pace at which it would be quick enough to be able to find and groom fur. But, if it was any quicker than that, you're not going through and actually being able to pick out whatever the the things are. Okay, so we've spoken about kind of some of the challenges that both dads and moms face. What is the difference in the roles that moms and dads are supposed to play? Like, why why are they here when it comes to the raising of children? Okay. So, we have to this this is where it can all get horribly political, and I can be misquoted horribly. Um and picked up by both sides of the argument. From an evolutionary point of view, as I mentioned earlier, evolution hates redundancy, so it will not cause two roles, like parenting roles to be exactly identical if they're not if that's not required. Um so what's happened in human evolution is that there are some things that both parents do. So both parents are care, both parents are highly empathetic. If you look at the brain activity in the brains of mothers and fathers when they're interacting with their children, we see equal we see synchrony in empathetic areas of the brain, we see synchrony in, you know, the caretaking areas of the brain. But beyond that, there are some really distinct differences and they seem to relate partly to the evolutionary age of the two roles and partly to the fact that mom's role is quite biologically constrained. Um partly by childbirth, partly by breastfeeding, particularly in the early stages where dad's role is much more flexible. So what we have found is that if we look at peak activations in the brain when we're looking at interactions with mom, dad, and baby. The peak activations in the maternal brain are in the core of the brain. So the limbic area of the brain, the unconscious brain, very very very ancient, as old as time. Um and that's where nurturing is and attachment is and risk detection is. So there's really fundamental caring things. So, you know, you look at the tiniest little vole or mouse and it's got the same thing happening in its brain. Dad's, obviously that bit lights up, but the peak in activation is actually in the neocortex, the the newest bit of the brain, which is understandable cuz it's an evolutionary quite young fatherhood. And there we see a lot of uh activation in the social cognition areas of the brain. So that's at the front of the brain um and that's to do with being able to sort of maneuver your way through the complexities of social life. Um and there is lots of different things involved in that, so it might be social communication. It might be things like empathy. It might be things like what we call sharing, caring, and helping. Um but it can also be things like resilience, mental resilience. Um and so dad's role I've kind of reduced it in a a simple catchphrase, but dad's role is to scaffold the child's entry into the world beyond the family. So what dad is there to do is once all that very initial nurturing has happened and the baby's starting to to grow and maybe mom has another baby, is to take that child uh and this is what would have happened 500,000 years ago. Take that toddler and start to prepare them to go beyond the family. So the first thing they might do is go to preschool. And we know from research that the attachment a father builds with their child, the sensitivity of their parenting to that child is the biggest predictor in how well that child transitions into preschool. So how good are they? How how good are they at sharing, caring, and helping? How good is their social communication? How good is their emotional inhibition and regulation? Those are all driven mostly by the relationship that child has with their father. Because it seems to be that dad is the key to this. And what's really interesting is as an anthropologist I study fathering around the world. So obviously how a culture views fathers does vary. Um and we have certain views in the West and those aren't necessarily the views shared around the world. But what we do see is regardless of whatever culture you're in every dad is doing that social scaffolding. When you reduce everything away, that's what he's doing. So it might be, you know, I studied a a group in Kenya called the Kipsigis who are tea planters, quite a patriarchal community, very male-driven. But dad will take will first of all as soon as the child is able, he will take the child into fields to teach them how to use the crop. But the most important thing he does is he takes them to the market. And he teaches them how to build the social network that's going to enable that kid to negotiate and sell the tea. So he will do that. Even in the West we do that. You know, dad might be might you know, get the really good um work experience gig because he's built a really good network on the golf course or at the country club or wherever it might be. And so dads are very involved in making sure their kid has the network, has the social skill, has the resilience to actually survive in our world. And part of that resilience is things like taking appropriate risk, helping you know, helping them deal with challenge, helping them deal with failure. Um and we see that from very early age. That's what rough and tumble play does partly. And so dad is there to make sure this kid has the skills to survive outside the family. And that seems to be the key role of fathers. What is the role of challenge? That seems to be one of the key differences that you found between mom and dad. Yeah, the role of challenge is because you know, we live in a really difficult world. And you as a as a child and as an adolescent have to learn to deal with that challenge, navigate that challenge, get over it, deal with failure, dust yourself down, get yourself back up, maybe find a different way around it or whatever it might be. And so you and you need to you need to be given those challenges in a way as a child which is challenging but not too much. And that and that's difficult. Um you know, some some parents shy away from that completely and it's the whole cotton wool ball thing. Others might go a little bit too far. Um but it's really important your child confronts challenge and it seems to be the dad is the key one in doing that. And it starts because of rough and tumble play. So rough and tumble play starts at around six to nine months. It's when you see fathers and most fathers do this and most people recognize it. You know, it's when you you know, um it's quite robustious. It's quite physical. There'll be wrestling, there'll be tickling, there'll be running around, there'll be jumping off stuff, there'll be throwing each other around the room. And it's really critical to child development. Um when dads say to me, "What's the one thing I can do with my child to build our bonds, to help my child?" I'll say, "Play with them." It is the most critical thing. And this whole fun parent thing kind of annoys me a little bit because actually, when dads do it, they're not I mean, it is fun, but they're not doing it cuz they're fun parent. They're doing it because it actually, developmentally, is critical to the child. Because the child starts to learn about reciprocity in social relationships. Play has to be fun for both people. Otherwise, it's, you know, it just ends. So, there's a give and take of play. It's understanding, you know, am I actually pushing the other person too much that they're not enjoying this anymore? So, empathy is involved. It's about physical challenge. Oh my god, this is quite difficult, but I can surmount it. It's about risk. How can I assess risk? Actually, flinging myself off of the top of this climbing frame it might be too much. So, and it actually starts to build the child's ability to see all those things. And that just goes on throughout life. So, we know looking at adolescence that the biggest factor in a child's mental health when we look at the parental input is actually the relationship they have with their dad. Dad is like the superhero of mental resilience in adolescence. and girls? For boys and actually, for girls, it's even more powerful. And we think that it's only really been studied in the West, though there's been a few studies in China. Um we think that's because in a patriarchal world, if you have a dad who spends time with you, who inputs into your life, who values your opinions, first of all, it's amazing for your self-esteem. Uh and it's saying, you know, you are valuable, what you say is valuable, and I'm going to support you in saying it. And in a patriarchal world, that's quite a powerful message to give a girl. That it's okay for you to voice who you are. And I am here and I'm going to support you in that. Um so, actually, it can be a bigger impact on girls than on boys. So, that's just getting up into adolescence. Just to round out that sort of conversation about play, what does play do for the father or for the bond with the father beyond the child in isolation? I know risk, I know reciprocity, I know empathy. Yeah. Okay, so it's one of the key ways that fathers build their bond is through play because as I've said, you have to interact with your child. Um and one of the key ways you can do it is through rough and tumble play because because it's fast and it's breathless and it's exercise and it's touch and sometimes there's a little bit of pain, it releases a lot of oxytocin and particularly beta-endorphin which is your body's painkiller and is released during exercise. And those are really powerful bonding chemicals. And because it's so fast and so in a way time efficient, it does it in this soup top way. So you could give your baby a massage and that would be lovely and they get some beta-endorphin, they get some oxytocin. But if you rough and tumble play with them, it's much much more of an impact, it much higher levels of those chemicals. So it's actually a really good way of building a tight bond pretty quickly with a child. What's really really interesting is rough and tumble play is mainly a Western phenomenon. We do see it in other cultures, but it's rarer and that is because most fathers in Western cultures don't have much time with their children. They are time poor because of the culture we have and they're the primary breadwinner. And therefore this is developed to enable them to very quickly bond with their children in this time efficient way. high ROI uh strategy for bonding. Yeah. Yeah. Whereas if we go and look at let's go and look at the Aka, okay, who are in the Congo, they are the most hands-on fathers in the world. They spend at least about 55 to 60% of their day in actual physical contact with their children. They don't really do it, but they are with their children all day. They're carrying them, they're singing to them, they're telling them stories, they're going on the on the net hunt with them. They don't need to do it in the same way. And so they don't. I know that it's going to be hard to make the comparison because of the difference in culture and so on. Is there something different about the upbringing, the risk tolerance, the empathy either in childhood, adolescence, or adulthood of the children who are given this more protracted lower intensity bond with dad uh from the Aka as opposed to the high peak high high ROI thing. I'm wondering if there's something that the rough and tumble play gives or doesn't give that a flatter longer equivalent of play per day does. No, we don't really see any difference actually in terms of bonding, in terms of attachment, in terms of adjustment of children. Um the only difference actually between something like the Aka and maybe some Western fathers is the degree to which they will allow their children to confront risk. So, little Aka baby, little Aka toddlers walking around with knives. You know, it's it's a hunter-gatherer society. They don't quite have the same uh I don't know, lack of tolerance for for severe risk and actually children learning skills early on. So, actually that's really the only difference you see with them is that they're there, you know, lighting fires and carrying knives and doing all these things at a very young age, which probably most of us would kind of balk at, but they seem to be fine. Roll the clock forward then. Let's get into adolescence and the particularly useful role of dads when we get there. Yeah. So, adolescence is a key time um and it's a time when we see a lot of rewiring of the adolescent brain. So, when you go through puberty, there's a lot of de-wiring, re-wiring. And it's a difficult time for children. It's a particularly difficult time mental health-wise because we're starting to see a change in the focus of attachment from parents to peers. And that means that actually your ability to navigate the social world at that point is really, really critical. And we see a lot of the mental health issues that young people have manifest themselves within the social sphere. So, things like social anxiety, for example. Things like body issues. They tend to be within the social sphere caused partly by the society in which the child lives. And because of that, it seems to be that because dad is the one that has the skills to scaffold the child and also the person who has been like the key resilience builder in the child. That continues into adolescence. But what's really interesting is dad doesn't really have to do anything amazing. So you don't have to spend hours with your adolescent or you don't have to you know spend lots and lots of money. Actually, what seems to work with adolescents is just feeling that you as a father value their company. And you as a father, as a busy person, have taken the time to spend time with them maybe doing a hobby they like. Or it can be something as mundane as washing the car, walking the dog, making Sunday lunch. Just something where the dad has said, "I'm going to spend this time with you." And what's really interesting is is how children view whether or not their parents value them differs between moms and dads. So children think their mom values them if their mom remembers their favorite breakfast cereal. Or you know, makes sure their sports kit is packed or all that kind of thing. They value their dads because they value they feel their dad values them because he spends time with them. And that might be because you know, dad's time is seen as this very concertinaed thing. Um so it's about doing those things with the child. It's about having a secure attachment to the child. And secure attachment starts as soon as birth begins. But if you can maintain that secure attachment all the way through to adolescence, it's really really powerful. And we know that what you do with your kid as an adolescent as a father carries them well into young adulthood. So there've been studies showing that dads who have good secure attachments, who spend time with their children, first of all those kids have much high self-esteem. They're much less likely to have things like depression or anxiety. They're much less likely to report loneliness. But as a as a young adult, for a start their mental health is better. But also for example, just dealing with things like stressful things in their daily life, they are much more capable of dealing with those things. So, what I'm thinking Yeah. I've got it in my head about trying to fold into the discussion of teen girl depression, 60% of 12- to 16-year-old US females say that they have regular or persistent feelings of hopelessness, etc., etc., etc. I'm trying to work out or deduct the base rate from that of fatherless homes. I'm trying to work out, you know, whether Jonathan Haidt is correct at folding this at the feet of smartphones and hijack of female comparison during the time that they switch from parent to peer association. And how much of it is a little bit more fundamental than that, and it's absentee fathers. That could be absentee fathers due to it being single-parent households. That could be due to the increase in living costs and the fact that dad needs to work more, which means that they're not as involved. That could be if Jonathan is adamant that it needs to be to do with technology, it could be to do with the distraction or the increase in distractibility of dad from screens, which means that he's not spending as much time with kids. But, yeah, looking at the pathologies and challenges that young men and young women are facing as they get into adolescence and then young adulthood, can you draw lines between fatherless homes or a lack of male parental input into raising kids up? Do you know what? You've mentioned so many different factors there, and they will all be important because it's a multifactorial problem. I want to make two points. The first is that we need to be very careful about what we mean when we talk about a father. Okay? In the West, we associate the word father with biological father, and so we talk about father absence. Because the biological father is not in the home or not in the life of the child. If you look in other cultures in the world, that obsession with biological fatherhood is a little bit strange. So, in some societies, the biological father doesn't really factor at all, particularly in matriarchal societies. Uh in many societies, they have what's known as a social father, and that can be a grandfather, an uncle, an elder brother, lots of people. So, in South Africa, for example, it's quite normal within the black communities for the grandfather to raise the children because the father has to go away to work. And that's perfectly normal, and the grandfather has a special name for father. Um in some societies, kids have whole teams of fathers who all do something different. And that might be the biological father and loads of social fathers, who knows? So, I think we need to be very careful about talking about absentee fathers, because actually, if you look at many children who are in single-parent households with a mother, if you ask them who are the significant men in your life, they will come up with some. And we assume there is no father figure in their life, but that father figure doesn't have to be the dad. It could be the grandparent. It could be a teacher. It could be a coach. It could be a brother. It could be your mom's best friend. Um it doesn't have to be the biological father. It has to be someone who is willing to and might even not even consciously know what they are doing. But they are feeding into that child's development. So, first of all, I would make that point. Um that we are very biased in the West towards biological fathers, and we needn't be. Um secondly, it's very multifactorial. Um certainly, I think I think part of the reason I support fathers in relation to more equality in the home with things like paternity leave and things like that is because they are important to children. And they are important to child development. And we find that children who have more input from their father do tend to be more resilient. And they do tend to be have more successful outcomes, particularly girls. So, you know, that is a factor, having that that father figure in your life. And that's why we do try and fight here in the UK for more rights for fathers. Um but then again, I agree, social media is an issue. And I talk about that in a very different area of my life, talking about the mismatch between uh the speed of evolution of the human brain and the speed of our ability to innovate. So, we have a very very ancient brain that can't cope with the way we've innovated the iPhone, for example. We are not made to operate within that environment, and it's a major it handicaps our brain's ability. Uh we don't get all those lovely positive bonding hormones. We don't we are seeing something that quite often is lying to us, and we're not terribly good at spotting what's lying to us if it's not right in front of us. So, theory of mind, we are not very good at theory of mind at a distance. So, social media certainly has a role, I think. But it's not the only role, and it really does depend upon the child. So, there's a real interplay between the child's personality and social media. So, you will get a child you could get it one child who was on social media 8 hours a day and would be completely unaffected by it. And then you'll get another child who is more vulnerable. It's really really complicated. But I think the reason why I try and unpick the fatherhood bit of it is because kids have evolved to have these two roles in their lives. And the science shows us that the dads are primed to do this role. The science shows us that the fathers are important developmentally to their children. We know that where fathers have secure attachments to their children, the children have better outcomes. And we know that that's good for society. So, the reason why I fight for fatherhood and more equality in the home uh is because of that, and because it is good for children. It's good for fathers, it's good for families, and it's good for society. It's good for women. If you can get fathers if you can get equal paternity leave for fathers with maternity leave, women can go back to work sooner. They have less of a career penalty. They're then sharing what we call the career penalty with the fathers. The gender pay gap reduces. You know, so it's kind of for those of us who campaign and do the research of fathers, it's kind of a bit of a no-brainer, but um convincing governments is another issue. Yeah, why is it the case, given that there mothers want the best outcomes for their children? Mhm. Mothers also want the best outcomes presumably for themselves. Mhm. These are facilitated through making men more integrated, through making them more necessary into the raising of children. Mhm. Is it just short-sightedness and a lack of insight into your work that's causing a kind of anti-dads surplus of requirements male narrative at the moment culturally, do you think? There are several things. Our media culture hasn't changed enough. So, we still It's getting better. We still We have less representations of the completely useless dad um or the surplus dad in adverts on telly and sitcoms, but it's still there. It's a very ingrained uh belief. Homer Simpson, Peter Griffin. Oh, you know, and if you've ever watched Peppa Pig, I mean, I love Peppa Pig, but Daddy Pig is just the worst representation of fatherhood you've ever seen. Um he's completely useless. Um uh and that's funny. Um so, there's that. There's there is and I am feminist to my very core. Unfortunately, there is an element of feminism that doesn't want men to be involved. And they want the primacy of the woman to be kept as a parent. Um and they feel that men are moving into what is a female space. Now, if you look at the evolutionary story and you look at the science, that's obviously completely ludicrous, but it's a belief. And I have had quite I've had backlashes from fellow women because of the work I do. Because I should be studying mothers as a woman. Um so, there is that backlash. Governments just don't want to invest in it, you know? It's we've had the system we've had for such a long time. It doesn't matter. I can hit them over the head with my research and my book till I'm blue in the face. And we have all been doing it. Recently in the UK, we've had a massive consultation on paternity leave. We all trooped up to Parliament. We all presented everything, which has been, you know, it's highly, highly convincing. We could show you the child outcomes. We could show you how much the cuz ultimately it's all about money. We could show you how much the government will ultimately save. But first of all, they're not going to save that money for like three decades. So this current government I'm not interested cuz I will be well retired by then. Um, and they've just come out at the end and changed practically nothing. There was a real reluctance to do it. You know, um, even though we've got perfect examples from northern Europe where it works very, very well. Yeah, it's it's a shame. It's a shame. I've been having a lot of conversations. I had a lot of conversations about dating for a long time and now I'm having a lot about the role of men and masculinity and what it means to be a man and so on and so forth. And um, yeah, it's unfortunate that any gains for men are seen as a a loss for women. You know, there's a zero sumness to a lot of the conversations. And um, yeah, what else? What what have people said you're this self-confessed feminist with her bonafides out front uh, writing a book about men and dads and saying that we need to give them more budget and more attention and more care and more sympathy and more resources. What's the pushback been like upon you? The pushback is the pushback is I quite often get the response quite an angry response. So I I every now and then I get called in to do radio phone-ins. And quite often I will get somebody on the phone saying to me, "These men, you know, haven't given birth. They haven't been through the pain of it. They I particularly if you're talking about postnatal depression actually. They should all just pull themselves together. So that's a classic. Um that there are limited resources and all those resources should go to women. Um and I can kind of see that argument here with the NHS, but what really gets me is the lack of empathy because empathy doesn't cost anything. It's limitless. But we have to pay the zero-sum game with empathy as well. So if we give any empathy to men, then women get less. No, actually, that's not what happens. We're just empathizing with both of them. Why is it that it's seen as a loss that you're supporting a man? You can actually support both. It's amazing, but you can. So you very much get that attitude that you take you give to one, you're taking away from the other. Um and I find that sto- I find it astonishing and I I you know, when people say particularly the pull themselves together thing to me, I said, you know, I do say to them, "Would you ever say that to a woman who is struggling?" So why do you think it's okay to say that to a man? You know. Um but it's it's it's very ingrained. I think it's I think they feel threatened. Um I think they feel threatened by what it means about their identity and it doesn't mean anything about their identity. But I think they think it does. It means that we're taking some sort of primacy away from them, I think maybe. I had a uh conversation I've had a few conversations, but uh Dr. John Barry from the Center for Male Psychology got me thinking about something. So I'm going to read you a little excerpt from one of my newsletters recently. A common question is, "Why don't men just do better? Surely they can try harder in school, employment, and health. Chop chop, men. Hurry up and stop being so useless." Well, no other group is told that when they suffer with poor performance or accolades in the real world that they should just pull themselves up by their bootstraps. We don't tell any other group to talk about their problems. In stead Instead, we spend billions in taxpayer money and private charity to set up committees, departments, campaigns, and funds to solve the problem. In simple terms, if a woman has a problem, we ask what can we do to fix society? If a man has a problem, we ask what can men do to fix themselves? And I think that this sort of imbalance, specifically in certain areas, this isn't everywhere, and there are still areas in which the imbalance runs in the other direction, but especially around parenting, you know, there is this empathy gap, for sure. Oh, yeah. No. Yeah. Dr. John Barry calls it gamma bias, I think is his technical term for it. And um yeah, it it sucks. You could have a guy going through post-natal depression being told, "Oh, you didn't go through the pain of childbirth." Cuz yeah, also I wasn't sure that I was going to be a good dad. And and you now you're telling me that I'm I'm not being sufficiently supportive as well. you know, I can remember one of the one of the guys who I worked with who was possibly one of the worst case of post-natal depression I saw. And he was he his wife the the birth was traumatic. He was left standing in a room on his own for 6 hours with the newborn baby. He'd been shoved in the rain. The wife had been taken off somewhere. Nobody's told him anything. He didn't They didn't give him anything to feed the baby. Baby was screaming. He didn't know what he was doing. So first of all, he thinks his wife's dying. Nobody tells him whether she's dying. And he's left with this baby. Then they get discharged from hospital, and because he only gets 2 weeks paternity leave, that she's in hospital for 10 days. So he's actually home with the baby and the wife who's still very ill for 3 days. Then he has to go back to work, leave her on her own. So he's like, "Oh my god." Feeling horribly guilty, terribly stressed. "How is she going to be on her own?" Gets home at night, tries to do everything, stays up all night with the baby, then goes back to work. Then because, you know, now I have to earn more money cuz I've got a child. Then takes a promotion um to a new job. So you've got the pressure of trying to impress in the new job, learning the new job, still got a sick baby, sick mom at home with baby. And surprise, surprise, he gets post-natal depression. Of course he does. He's got all these different conflicting, you know, with men are told now, you have to be the hands-on father and you have to be the perfect father and you have to be really good at this and you've got all these celebrity fathers with their papooses and it's all amazing. And but you're also still told, no, but you still have to be the breadwinner and you have to be the rock and you're not allowed to have any emotions about this and you're not allowed to have any fears. Because this is about mom. And so that is a massive pressure cooker of stress. And if you and you know, then we add on top of that maybe, you know, you might have had a history of depression before or you might have had a pre-history. Or let's say your partner's depressed. If your partner's depressed, you are much more likely yourself to get postnatal depression. So it's just this massive, horrible mixture that is going to blow. What would you do if you were able to prescribe some cultural, structural, personal, psychological interventions or suggestions for people either as a a group or individually? What do you wish that more people or uh governments were doing? I wish fundamentally that everybody knew this about men. I wish they knew the signs. I wish they knew the story of fatherhood. I wish they understood how important fathers were. I wish they understood what happened to a man. I wish they understood how many different things there are to balance and how difficult it is to be told you have to be this but you also have to be this. And you just have to slot into it, okay? Just so just do it. I wish that they knew that story and I wish there were more groups. I wish when we when parents did antenatal training that there was more time spent just with men helping them and seeing them actually that they need as much support as mom does, but just in a different way. Okay? They just need a different sort of support and they need a different because they are fundamentally going through, as much as I said before, as much of an emotional physiological change as mom is. It's just hidden. That's all. It's just not as obvious. And so I just wish we could share all this information. I wish that, you know, when people learned about what happens to the mom, they learn about what happens to dad. And it's just seen as an equal journey. And what's what's really sad is actually for a lot of couples, it is an equal journey. And actually moms find this really hard when they go into hospital and dad's shoved in a corner. Or dad's not asked what he wants to do or not asked to hold the baby or any of these things. Or when the health visitor comes around after birth, you know, and the mom she'll spend the whole time going, "How are you, mom?" And will never ever at any point say, "How are you, dad?" "How are you doing? Is there anything you are concerned about? Would you like to talk about it?" You know, cuz he's just the guy in the corner, you know, making the tea. Um so I just wish people understood that fathers are true co-parents. And they're true co-parents for a very important reason. And if they weren't important, they wouldn't be here. We just wouldn't have them. We'd be like, you know, our chimp cousins. So, but it's on next? What's what's Talk to me about what's fascinating you now. What's really fascinating me in the in the field of fatherhood actually is and it's partly slightly personal um is uh fathers of of kids with special needs. Because moms themselves of kids with special needs certainly struggle for support and recognition, but for fathers there's again even less recognition. And also this role of trying to build resilience and trying to scaffold your child's entry into the world beyond the family. That is a whole bigger job when you have a child with special needs. Um I have a daughter who's recently been diagnosed with autism. And a big thing for us is, "Okay, how do we prepare her to survive in the world?" A world which isn't really adapted to her needs. And particularly my my husband particularly going forward into relationships and things like that. That's something that's a real focus for him. How can we give her the ability to detect risk? How can we give her the ability to to deal with challenge and to deal with the social complexities which as an autistic person is really hard. So, that's a real key thing for me now. It's a very un-researched area. And so, I'd really like to, you know, start looking at fathers who are in that position, I think. Had the perfect mother for it then. Had the perfect mother to be able to go out and do the first-hand research and be able to come up with the strategies. Dr. Anna Machin, ladies and gentlemen. And I absolutely love your work. I think this is very, very, very important and it's fascinating. And any friend of Robin's is a friend of mine as well. Where should people go if they want to keep up to date with your stuff on the internet? You can follow me on Twitter. So, I'm Dr. Anna Machin on Twitter. And you can follow Well, you can go to my website, which is annamachin.com. And it's all on there. Oh, yeah. And I appreciate you. 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