Darby Saxbe (on Dad Brain)

Episode overview

Darby Saxbe (Dad Brain: The New Science of Fatherhood and How It Shapes Men’s Lives) is a clinical psychologist, tenured professor, and researcher on family stress and the transition to parenthood. Darby joins Armchair Expert to discuss growing up in an academic household, her parents’ dramatic divorce, and watching her surgeon father suddenly learn how to become the primary parent. Darby and Dax talk about why fatherhood research has lagged behind motherhood research, what happens chemically and neurologically to new dads, and how hunter-gatherer societies, Barcelona playgrounds, and Swedish “latte papas” reveal very different models of raising children. Darby explains why “dad bod” is a real thing, how dads’ brains physically change when they engage in caregiving, and why kids may need more community, boredom, roughhousing, and freedom than modern parenting usually allows.

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Short transcript highlights

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1. 0:00Welcome, welcome, welcome to armchair, expert, experts on expert.
2. 47:51challenge for a lot of couples. Yeah, I would even add too, it's like the general pattern,
3. 1:48:34As much as I don't like getting up and having to deal with it, I absolutely cherish that every day of my week starts...