Paternology (FATHERHOOD) with Darby Saxbe

DADS. What makes a good one? What if you had a bad one? And how can fatherhood turn the tides on toxic masculinity? Also: diapers. The brilliant USC research psychologist, fatherhood expert, and thus Paternologist Dr. Darby Saxbe covers everything from prehistoric family systems to social media expectations as we chat about male hormones during and after pregnancy, division of labor, dad bods, gorillas, TV dads, seahorses, trans dads, oxytocin, gender reveals, and how it truly takes a community to raise a kid. Her brand new book is “Dad Brain: The New Science of Fatherhood and How it Shapes Men's Lives,” and it’s great reading for anyone who was the result of a sperm and egg. Including frogs.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Alie Ward?

  Oh, hey, that's the lady who has a podcast who you call Dad Ward because she doesn't mind embarrassing herself. So now you are mine. Hey, let's talk about dads. Who are they? What do they do? And in the words of many, many patrons who wrote in with questions, why do so many of them suck so bad? How did the good ones get it right? And we're going to find out. Hop in the backseat. Let's examine patternology about dads. You horse around back there, I'll turn this podcast around. But first, let's indeed thank those patrons for all the sweet and funny questions you sent. And if you'd like to submit yours before we record an episode, you can join the fam at patreon.com/ologies for one hot dollar a month, which supports us.

• 0:45Alie Ward?

  Also, if you do have little ones, we have Smologies. Those are shorter, kid-friendly, G-rated episodes. We put into their own feed, available to subscribe for free. Wherever you get podcasts, just look for Smologies, S-M-O-L-O-G-I-E-S. Thanks to everyone who leaves reviews for the show, which always melt my heart, and they help others find ologies, such as the still-warm one from Slugworm, who wrote, "Longtime listener, first time reviewer. Fell so in love with science again. My long-lost curiosity with nature that I changed my degree to biology. I graduated with honors this last year, took a class in Costa Rica, went on birding trips, worked on a decades-long research project, made a program for kids, and so on." Slugworm. If I told you how much that meant to me, this would be a very long episode. So thank you so much.

• 1:29Alie Ward?

  Thanks to everyone who leaves reviews. I read them all. Also, thank you to sponsors of ologies, who make it possible for us to donate to a cause of the ologist choosing each week. This episode is sponsored by Seed. Bloating, irregular bowel movement, gas. When your gut is off, it gets your attention. Seed's DS1 is a three-time award-winning probiotic, clinically shown to improve regularity, reduce bloating, and alleviate gas, so you can move and eat more freely. Take better care of your gut with Seed. Get 25% off with code 25OLOGIES at seed.com/ologies. These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA. These products are not intended to diagnose or treat. Cure or prevent any disease. You have to say that.

• 2:12Alie Ward?

  Being safer on the road starts with the person behind the wheel. That's Mazda's philosophy when designing every vehicle. Their proactive safety features help keep you more aware, connected and engaged during every drive, which means your car does more than help protect you. It makes you a safer driver, which helps protect everyone. That's why Mazda has been named Consumer Reports' safest new car brand. To learn more, visit MazdaUSA.com. Consumer Reports does not endorse products or services.

• 2:44Alie Ward?

  Okay, paternology, it comes from the Greek for pater, father. Don't get it twisted with paterology, which is the study of God the Father in a holy, churchy way. But capital T, capital P, the patriarchy, also comes, obviously, from the same root, the rule of the father, which many anthropologists trace the patriarchy to an envy of motherhood and creation. Patriarchy deserves its own episode, but let's crack into this can of worms about dadhood with an absolutely brilliant, highly lauded clinical and research psychologist and USC professor of psychology, who runs a lab, Nest, dedicated to studying family systems and specifically how dynamics and stress and hormones change with parenthood, is their focus.

• 3:29Alie Ward?

  And I've been hunting them down for years. They're my neighbor. They live literally three blocks over. So they just came to my home studio with my small poodle mutt, Grammy, snoozing in the corner to chat about fatherhood, the Industrial Revolution, male hormones during pregnancy and after, what defines a good dad? Diaper changing, division of labor, dad bods, gorillas, toxic masculinity, and their new excellent book titled Dad Brain: The New Science of Fatherhood and How It Shapes Men's Lives. You can get your hands on it. Get it as a gift for a dad, for your spouse, for yourself. So essentially, this book is valuable for anyone who was the result of a sperm and an egg. I genuinely think the more fathers who have this book, the better world we can make. So without further hype,

• 4:14Alie Ward?

  let's get into it with author, researcher, psychologist, and paternologist, Dr. Darby Saxby.

• 4:39Alie Ward?

  Thank you again so much for doing this.

• 4:41Speaker 01

  Oh, my pleasure. My sister, by the way, is a super fan. She loves your show. She was so excited that I was gonna be on it. She listens to it all the time.

• 4:51Alie Ward?

  What's her name?

• 4:51Speaker 01

  Kat.

• 4:52Alie Ward?

  Oh, my gosh. I'm glad that she could vouch for us because sometimes

• 4:58Alie Ward?

  you worry that people are like, is this someone just talking to dolls in the basement, you know? Oh, but for an introduction.

• 5:07Speaker 01

  Darby Saxby, she hers.

• 5:10Alie Ward?

  I've been interested in talking to you and people from your lab for literal years. Can you describe some of the research that goes on there?

• 5:17Speaker 01

  Definitely. Yeah, so I run a lab called the Neuroendocrinology of Social Ties. So the acronym is the NEST Lab. And NEST is kind of like an apt metaphor because we're very interested in family relationships and stress and how people connect with each other. And we've been studying specifically the transition to parenthood over the last 15 years or so. So we have this long-running longitudinal study where we bring couples into the lab when they're expecting their first child. And we follow them across the first postpartum year. So we are looking at their brains. We're looking at their hormones. We're looking at how they talk to each other.

• 5:59Alie Ward?

  And you can also see her 2018 paper, The Birth Experiences Questionnaire, A Brief Measure Assessing Psychosocial Dimensions of Childbirth. It was in the Journal of Family Psychology. And it's a 10-item questionnaire measuring stress and fear and partner support during birth. And it looks at prenatal stress and anxiety and social support to try to predict how the adjustment into parenthood is gonna go. And Dr. Saxby's lab has also found that something called meaning-making, or how a birth story is related or remembered, can predict relationship strength down the line. So what stories you tell about it? Did you have a kid that's disrupting your norm? Or did you become a dad?

• 6:41Speaker 01

  So very interested in how people relate to each other and sort of what that portends when a couple transitions into this new reality of parenthood.

• 6:52Alie Ward?

  And that's a major role shift.

• 6:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:55Alie Ward?

  And we hear a lot about motherhood and everything from birth trauma to intergenerational trauma and how taxing it is on the body and women's maybe disproportionate roles in raising kids. And I thought it was so fascinating that you wrote your book, Dad Brain, about fatherhood. And I feel like, is that not studied as much?

• 7:25Speaker 01

  Definitely not.

• 7:26Alie Ward?

  Okay.

• 7:26Speaker 01

  One of the first things I did when I was starting to work on the book is I just did like a PubMed search. It's like, if I say maternal and then I say paternal, how many articles am I gonna pull up? And the ratio was like 10 to 1. And, you know, it's interesting because biomedical research, as I'm sure you know, is actually male biased.

• 7:45Alie Ward?

  Of course.

• 7:46Speaker 01

  Like, there are way more studies of men's hearts, of men's lungs, of men's brains. The lab animals we use are mostly male. But when it comes to parenthood specifically and looking at parent-child bonding, the work is almost exclusively focused on moms. And it's interesting because dads are actually participating a lot more in childcare. So we've seen these generational changes where men are reporting more time spent with kids compared to their fathers, their grandfathers. Like, we've seen this huge uptick, but the research has not totally caught up to that.

• 8:22Alie Ward?

  How much of your research has to be done studying like social media and how people identify and what narratives they tell, at least publicly? Do you even have to dip into that?

• 8:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, no. I don't formally look at social media, but as a human, I do.

• 8:42Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 8:42Speaker 01

  And I'm like, there is this really crazy rise of like the momfluencer and like the parenting culture on social media, which I think is actually kind of bonkers. I think a lot of it is designed to stoke anxiety in women. It's like, if you put your kid in time out, you're causing brain damage, or... If you let them cry before they fall asleep, you know, it's child abuse. And so there is this stress level that I think a lot of new parents have. And that's another reason why I want to talk about dads and get dads more into the picture, because moms are isolated and struggling and they need more helpers.

• 9:22Alie Ward?

  And now you've got two teenage children, right?

• 9:24Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 9:25Alie Ward?

  So for 15 years, been studying this and your children are about that age. Did it coincide with like, oh, man, I'm popping out some babies. I better figure out the science behind this.

• 9:41Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 9:42Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 9:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, like.

• 9:44Alie Ward?

  Me search.

• 9:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, research is me search. And it was true that, so I was a postdoc when I had my kids. And I thought I was the best prepared person on the planet because I studied family relationships as a grad student. I had been part of this huge study at UCLA called the Center for Everyday Lives of Families. We followed families around their homes and we tracked what they were doing. And I measured their cortisol. And so I'd been watching parents and kids interact. I was like, I'm an expert. This will be a snap. And then we had kids and both my husband and I were just like totally rocked by that and struggling with sleep deprivation and confusion about what we were supposed to be doing and feeling totally inept.

• 10:30Speaker 01

  And I was like, if I'm as well resourced as an academic, and this is still hard for me, this is a really interesting nexus to focus on because it is this big sea change for a lot of people.

• 10:44Alie Ward?

  What surprised you the most? Was it the sleep deprivation? Was it like the overstimulation? What was it?

• 10:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it was the sleep deprivation. And then also just like the fact that you can't just put a baby down and walk away. It's like it never, like the switch doesn't ever really flip off. Like, actually, the thing that surprised me most is when you're breastfeeding, especially with a really new baby, you have to do it like every two hours. There's just no off button.

• 11:10Alie Ward?

  Do you find that resentment builds from that? Because the birthing parent is like.

• 11:19Alie Ward?

  I had this succubus in me for like a year. This beautiful angel that I can't wait to meet that's also draining my life fluids and continues to. And do you find, I would be resentful as hell, even though there's nothing biologically necessarily that could be done, but is that part of the friction in the couples?

• 11:42Speaker 01

  Definitely.

• 11:42Alie Ward?

  Okay.

• 11:43Speaker 01

  Like mom has a big head start in a lot of ways. If it's a biological pregnancy, she has felt the baby kicking and has this relationship already developed. And then the baby comes out, is dependent on her for food. And I think dads often feel like a third wheel. They're not sure how to be involved. Mom is exhausted and already feeling like she's doing too much. We actually did a study about this in my lab where we brought the pregnant couples in and asked them to map out how they plan to divide baby care. Then we brought them back after the baby's birth, did the same scale. And in every case, moms were doing more after birth than the couple predicted.

• 12:26Alie Ward?

  Hmm.

• 12:27Speaker 01

  So, and that's not, it's like, it was surprising to us as researchers, but every single mom I've talked to about this is like, that's the least surprising thing I've ever heard, right? Because you can have these beautifully egalitarian intentions, but there are some biological realities in the early months. And so I think it can be challenging for dads to fully participate unless the couple is really proactive about it.

• 12:53Alie Ward?

  Mm hmm. In part of the foreword to your book, you obviously had an acknowledgement that a lot of the roles are cisgender and hetero couples. When you're doing your research, how do you figure out which demographics to study and which underrepresented groups to include? How, or the, even just the wording around it?

• 13:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, it's a really important question because there are all these gaps in our research and so much parenting research, like I said, is focused on moms, but even more of it is focused on cisgendered heterosexual parents.

• 13:28Alie Ward?

  So Darby says that to really study something in depth, you need good sample sizes. And this first research was to hone in on cisgender hetero couples because there's just such a lack of info there when it comes to fatherhood. And then further down the line at some point to gather large enough sample sizes to include a range of genders and types of partnerships in parenting. And for gender roles and identities, I think you will love the neuroendocrinology episode with Dr. Daniel Fau and we'll also link a pride page with some excellent episodes from LGBTQIA plusologists that we love. But for these rounds on paternity, they went wide in other ways.

• 14:05Speaker 01

  But we're very lucky to have a lab in LA because we were able to get a really ethnically, socioeconomically, racially diverse sample.

• 14:14Alie Ward?

  What about the anthropology of how children were raised? It's changed so much even in 50 years, in 60 years, and then pre-industrial revolution and maybe the loss of multigenerational housing. What kind of role have fathers had historically?

• 14:34Speaker 01

  It's actually changed a lot. And for 95% of human history, we lived like hunter-gatherers. So we were foraging, occasionally hunting. Women actually brought in more calories than men in many societies. And so, you know, the whole sort of like, when people say like working mothers are unnatural, it's like, no, mothers have always worked. And in fact, they've been major generators of income, calories, resources. And so the model in hunter-gatherer societies is a lot of cooperative care. It's like allo parenting, which is cooperative breeding, like we are all collectively raising kids.

• 15:13Alie Ward?

  And Darby tells me that in some hunter-gatherer societies, like the Acha in the Congo, fathers are within arms' reach of babies about 47% of the day. And they hunt and socialize with them in their arms or on their back. Some dads even let babies suck their man nipples for comfort. But agrarian models of living, starting back around 10,000 years ago, and then the Industrial Revolution, starting in the mid 1700s, changed the game.

• 15:38Speaker 01

  Like, most humans were subsistence farmers who were just growing what they ate.

• 15:43Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 15:43Speaker 01

  Mom, dad, and kids are all working together, right? Again, like, moms are working, kids are working too.

• 15:49Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 15:49Speaker 01

  Everybody's working together at home. And then, once you industrialize, you have this separate domain, which is the workplace, where someone has to physically go out and earn money. Interestingly, the first factory workers were women, like the mill girls, like the Lowell textile mills in Massachusetts. Women were considered better factory workers because they were more expendable. They weren't needed at home on the farm because they weren't working as hard as the men.

• 16:19Alie Ward?

  Oh, wow.

• 16:20Speaker 01

  So, they went to factories. That sucked for them because the factories were exploitative and had bad conditions. And then ultimately, like, unionization happened, wages rose, men started being the ones that worked outside the home. And so, we kind of did this weird social experiment, where, like, work became men's thing and home became women's thing.

• 16:41Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 16:42Speaker 01

  And women were the primary caregivers of kids. But I think, like, you hear all this talk about how that's the natural order of things with neo-traditional gender roles, tradwives, all of that.

• 16:55Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 16:55Speaker 01

  And it's like, this is like 150-year blip.

• 16:58Alie Ward?

  Woof.

• 16:58Speaker 01

  This is not actually our most normal configuration.

• 17:02Alie Ward?

  Yeah. So, allo-parenting is natural. Community members taking care of and helping raise children who are not their offspring, be it aunts, or uncles, or friends, or grandparents, or neighbors. And for anyone who thinks that maternity leave is time away from work, think again, it's work, it's just unpaid. And birthing parents have always worked, even while pregnant and postpartum. But jobs that you clock in for to get paid, a resource to trade for other resources, evolutionarily speaking, that's pretty brand-new. Or I should ask, culturally, did you ever interface with the Jerry Springer Show?

• 17:41Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 17:43Speaker 02

  Okay, when it comes to two-year-old AJ, Collins, you are not the father.

• 17:52Alie Ward?

  Side note, Jarrett reminded me that was Maury Povich. That was not Jerry Springer, so no emails. You are not the father. This notion of people getting out of paternity, I feel like seems antithetical to our anthropology because it seems like we are wired to reproduce at some point. Males, I feel like, are thought of as like sire as many of your genetics. And then you come to like, phew, got out of that kind of a situation just by virtue of genetics. But has there been a change in dad's willingness

• 18:37Alie Ward?

  to actually raise a child versus just father one over the last decade or so?

• 18:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:46Alie Ward?

  Okay.

• 18:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I think if you look at Time Diary data, right, like, big studies of, you know, like, the American Time use study, you see men are spending more time with kids than previous generations, and they're reporting that they enjoy it.

• 19:00Alie Ward?

  Oh.

• 19:01Speaker 01

  Oh, well, that's something. Especially after the pandemic. I think there was this shift in our feelings about work. I think a lot of people, like millennials, Gen Z, started thinking like, I don't want my life to be my job, right? It's like a different mentality from the boomers. And they're like, I want to have time at home with my kids. And so I think it's a value shift as well. But that said, there's a lot of variability around this, right? Because like, and this is interesting, like, the time trends really track with education, which is like a new thing, that's a new disparity. So the most educated, affluent dads are the ones that are spending the most time with kids. And it's the non-college men

• 19:44Speaker 01

  who are actually spending less time with kids than non-college men of previous generations. So there is a little bit of a divide that's emerging in how men are kind of showing up as parents.

• 19:57Alie Ward?

  And does that socioeconomic divide, is it just like you, if you are making less money, you have to work more in order to put food on the table and to pay for gas and to pay for health insurance and all of that? Is there more hustling that happens?

• 20:15Speaker 01

  I think that's a big part of it because we also have this gig economy, right? Where people are maybe patching together multiple jobs. So you don't always have the stability. But it's also intensive parenting culture. We have gone from your job as a parent is just to keep kids alive to your job is to curate kids' experiences, run their extracurricular schedule, optimize their learning, right? And so like both moms and dads are spending more time on childcare than they did in previous generations.

• 20:49Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 20:50Speaker 01

  So I think that's part of it, too. And it's the more affluent parents that are the most intensive and the most invested.

• 20:56Speaker 03

  Let's pack my daughter's lunch. Today, she's having a caviar flight with bolognese, cream cheese, smoked salmon, and fresh figs for dessert.

• 21:05Alie Ward?

  It seems like so much pressure to line up a preschool before you have even given birth and so many extracurriculars. And it's so hard to get into college. I mean, there's a reason why my daughter is so hairy and small and a dog. I'm just like, I don't think I can handle it.

• 21:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:24Alie Ward?

  For me, like, motherhood didn't resonate. I'm like, I feel like I'd be an okay dad, but I don't know if I would be a good mom. And I would just get overwhelmed and drop the ball on permission slips and dance classes and stuff like that.

• 21:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm a better dad than I am a mom. I'm lucky because I have a husband with a flexible schedule who actually does a lot. But I definitely resonate. And I think a lot of moms feel like that. Like, if I could just be the fun parent and sort of swoop in, like be the traditional dad.

• 21:53Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 21:54Speaker 01

  That's actually a really great role.

• 21:56Alie Ward?

  And yeah, hence dad word. So thank you for being my kids, even though I don't pay your child support. But I long to support you in other ways. Why do we want to be dad? Why do you and I want to be dads more than moms?

• 22:08Speaker 01

  So it's a mix of biology and culture, right?

• 22:10Alie Ward?

  Okay.

• 22:10Speaker 01

  So like, we know that men, and you see this even in primates, tend to be more active, physical playmates with kids. Even gorillas will like, you know, pick kids up, chase them around, be like, it's called proprioceptive touch, moving a baby around in space. If you think about tossing a toddler up in the air.

• 22:29Alie Ward?

  Mm hmm.

• 22:30Speaker 01

  And catching them. So I think a lot of human men gravitate to that style of parenting as well, like roughhousing. And that's really great for kids. Kids really like that style and I think they learn from it. They learn better risk tolerance. Like, it's psychologically healthy to engage in that kind of play. But it's also socialization in the sense that we judge mothers so much more than we judge fathers. And if anything goes wrong with a kid, if they show up in mismatched socks or they don't have their permission slip, it's like mom's fault.

• 23:00Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 23:01Speaker 01

  And so I think that's changing. Like, as men are participating more in childcare, Gen Z men are increasingly likely to say they will make doctor's appointments for kids. They will check kids' homework. They will do some of the mental load stuff that traditionally has been like mom's domain.

• 23:18Alie Ward?

  Yeah, which is, I'm not even a parent and that pisses me off because I'm like, you won't, you didn't make doctor's appointments? Like, I've heard stories of people being called as an emergency contact and they're like, we couldn't get ahold of mom. And it's like, call dad. I'm in a meeting, like, call dad. I feel like the bar is like, did your dad show up and acknowledge that you were his? He did a great job, you know? But whereas women have to be like, is the food organic? But you're not too pushy with it. You can be an almond mom, but you also can't feed them Cheetos for lunch. But yeah, for dads, it does seem like, he hugged me and what a great dad. I'm wondering too, what starts chemically when birth happens?

• 24:02Alie Ward?

  You talk about dad brain. Is there sympathy weight gain that starts ahead of time? Where does fatherhood start?

• 24:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, so there's a lot going on under the hood for dads. And I think. Because pregnancy can be so visible on a woman's body, we're like, oh, of course, she's totally transformed. We don't often think about that for men, that their hormones are also changing, their brains are also changing. So, you know, in my lab, we've looked at things like testosterone, which changes in men around the birth of a baby.

• 24:35Alie Ward?

  Up or down?

• 24:35Speaker 01

  It tends to drop.

• 24:37Alie Ward?

  OK.

• 24:37Speaker 01

  And that is not at all unique to humans. Like, bird males drop in testosterone, rodents, primates, like biparental mammals. You see these reproductively linked changes in testosterone. Seems adaptive. Brain structure changes, so the brain loses gray matter volume. And that has been seen in both moms and in dads. And so there's this conserved kind of parental brain that seems to be streamlining, getting more efficient.

• 25:06Alie Ward?

  And for more on this, you can see the chapter in her book titled "The Incredible Shrinking Father Brain", which details that scans pre and post-baby in fathers show that two separate groups of men in separate studies showed areas of brain shrinkage suggesting that they lost brain volume between the prenatal and the postpartum scans. And the volume loss occurred in that gray matter. That's the type of brain tissue that contains neuron cell bodies, she writes, and it continues. "Strikingly, we're seeing volume loss in parts of the brain that engage in what neuroscientists call 'mentalizing', which is thinking about others' minds." Dr. Saxby continues that "losing gray matter may sound worrisome, but it isn't necessarily a bad thing.

• 25:50Alie Ward?

  It can signal pruning of sorts," she writes, "eliminating the weaker connections to increase efficiency." And she offers this analogy that if you've ever watched a long, meandering director's cut of your favorite film and you wish for the faster-paced theatrical version, then you appreciate the value of a good edit. A tighter, leaner story is easier to follow. And a leaner brain may also work faster and more efficiently. A new parent's brain, she says, has to manage many new mental inputs, so a more efficient processing system is an advantage. And yes, adult brains can change. They're not fixed, as was once assumed.

• 26:28Speaker 01

  I think what's happening for men is more like an experience dependent plasticity. Whereas for women, it's more like you have this hormonal cascade that is potentiating some of these changes.

• 26:40Alie Ward?

  What would be the evolutionary advantage of losing your dominant sex hormone to a degree? And having your brain shrink, like it seems like you would need the opposite.

• 26:55Speaker 01

  Yes, I wrestled with this with my editor when I was writing this book because I'm like, I want to sell men on parenting.

• 27:01Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 27:02Speaker 01

  It's like, wait, you know, but I think there are some benefits later in life. But um, so the testosterone actually does really tie into reproductive strategy.

• 27:11Alie Ward?

  Hmm.

• 27:11Speaker 01

  So like some of the early work was on birds. Birds show high testosterone at the start of a breeding season.

• 27:18Alie Ward?

  Uh huh.

• 27:19Speaker 01

  Because they need to be out there looking for mates, right? And then, once you've successfully mated and it's time to hatch, testosterone drops. Because it's somewhat costly for the body to maintain high testosterone, like it costs your immune system. It's taxing and you don't really need it if you have already completed mating.

• 27:41Alie Ward?

  Uh huh.

• 27:42Speaker 01

  Right? And in humans too, like it shifts depending on your strategy. If your goal is to have as many offspring as possible, like you just want to spread your seed as widely as you can. You want jacked up tea, right? Because you want to be out there like competing for status, looking for mates.

• 28:00Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 28:01Speaker 01

  But now we have this kind of more modern version of parenthood that's high investment and high nurturing. And so it's less about quantity and it's more about quality.

• 28:12Alie Ward?

  Right.

• 28:12Speaker 01

  Like, we want to put our resources into just a couple of kids who will survive to adulthood. As opposed to like just trying to max out the numbers, right? To kind of like play the odds.

• 28:24Alie Ward?

  Did that change with different types of birds? Like, you know how some birds, they hatch, they're going to go day two. And then there's others that are these weird pink wrinkly ball sacks with mouths. And they take like a while to even get feathers. Like, did that change with the birds where, okay, this is a different kind of investment?

• 28:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, totally. So there's the, it's altricial versus precocial. So the precocial birds, shoot, which I might have to Google.

• 28:49Alie Ward?

  That would make sense because they're precocious and they're like, I'm ready to go.

• 28:53Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 28:53Alie Ward?

  Right?

• 28:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. It's like they're. I think it's them and right, like they just come out and they're walking and they're talking and they're just doing everything.

• 29:00Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 29:01Speaker 01

  And then you have these, like you said, these like pink little ball sacks that like, they can't feed themselves, they can't ambulate, like they need a lot of extra time to kind of cook. And that's when you need that more intensive parental care.

• 29:16Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 29:16Speaker 01

  So, yeah, like, and our human babies, like, we are one of the most altruistic species, right? Because we come out super unready to go anywhere.

• 29:27Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 29:28Speaker 01

  We cannot even like turn over.

• 29:31Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 29:32Speaker 01

  So you need round the clock care in order to survive as a human baby, which means like it's too much work for a single person, right? It's too much for just a mom to do.

• 29:42Alie Ward?

  Human beings are not like fish, just shooting a chis cannon into the water and praying to make a thousand million babies so a few survive. And if you do have like a fish dad, just blew a load and then drifted off to the horizon, I'm sorry, you deserve to be within his reach at least forty seven percent of the time. What do you think defines a dad? What do you think defines fatherly behavior, like of all the traits?

• 30:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, so there's like, there's dad as in genetic contributor of material, right?

• 30:21Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 30:22Speaker 01

  Then there's sort of like active parent, which is like the hands on dad. And so my book is mostly focused on that. But I would say like, if you think about what is a good dad, it is somebody who is sensitive, who's nurturing, who is protective, who looks out for the vulnerable, like all traits that I would actually say are qualities of a good man, like not just qualities of a good dad.

• 30:47Alie Ward?

  Do you feel like when?

• 30:51Alie Ward?

  People are looking for mates. And maybe they're thinking in the back of their head, like, I would like someone who might be like, I got dad. Like, what types of things are courting behaviors versus like, actual traits?

• 31:07Speaker 01

  It's a good question, like, are men just pretending to be sensitive and caring? I know it's tricky because we send confusing reproductive signals.

• 31:18Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 31:19Speaker 01

  I think some women are drawn to men that are really aggressive and competitive. And those might not be the traits that actually map beautifully on to being patient with a little baby.

• 31:31Alie Ward?

  Mm hmm.

• 31:31Speaker 01

  But then again, we also like, and there are all these examples from like fish, primates, frogs. Females are drawn to males that actually are taking care of offspring.

• 31:44Alie Ward?

  Oh.

• 31:45Speaker 01

  Because I think it's actually like, we're smart and we know that if he's doing a good job, then that's going to increase our own reproductive odds.

• 31:52Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 31:53Speaker 01

  Right? In the book, in the dad bod chapter, I talk about how actually, women like dad bods.

• 31:58Alie Ward?

  Uh huh.

• 31:59Speaker 01

  Like, if you, if you survey women, they, like, half of them will say, like, dad bods are better than a six pack.

• 32:06Alie Ward?

  Yeah, well, can we define a dad bod?

• 32:09Speaker 01

  So I would say like softly muscled, but not like ripped.

• 32:15Alie Ward?

  Uh huh.

• 32:16Speaker 01

  So it would, it's not necessarily like a Homer Simpson bod, right? It's like a sort of larger, softer body.

• 32:23Alie Ward?

  That's so funny, because if I see guys who are like, three percent body fat and veins bulging out of every muscle, I think they're spending a lot of time in the gym. And their meals are probably more about protein shakes than like, sitting down to some anyaki and a candle at dinner, you know what I mean?

• 32:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:44Alie Ward?

  I have these biases where I'm like, That jacked is too jacked. I think about the lifestyle behind it, which is funny. Okay, so this dad bod as a physical archetype sauntered up to the fire pit about 10 years ago, popularized by then-college student Mackenzie Pearson in this viral essay titled, "Why Girls Love the Dad Bod: If Your Man Can Rock the Dad Bod, He's a Keeper." One might say this is the seminal text. But what is a dad bod? Do I have one? I asked your friend Wikipedia, and it described it as, "The physique of a man who was once athletic or moderately fit, but now has a beer belly or spare tire,

• 33:26Alie Ward?

  while the arms, legs, and chest are usually in relatively good shape." So like a front dump truck. But you gotta check your visceral fat, boys, because that's a predictor for some health problems down the line. The worst dad is a good dad who becomes a dead dad. Not to bring it down, my friend. Speaking of friends, though, partners, loves of your lives. Is there a kind of alienation that's to be overcome, where you do feel like suddenly you were maybe best friends with your partner, and now her BFF, she's never been more in love with, you know, just starry-eyed, not necessarily limerence, but obsessed biologically with this child?

• 34:09Alie Ward?

  What is that alienation like?

• 34:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I think that's one reason that relationship satisfaction drops in new parents, right? We know it's this big risk factor for couple satisfaction. How dads navigate that depends, I think, on maybe what their expectations are and sort of their own just ability to get in there and, you know, help and get to know the baby too. But I think it can become really challenging for some men who then almost feel competitive with the baby.

• 34:43Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 34:44Speaker 01

  Like, my partner suddenly isn't looking at me like I'm number one.

• 34:48Alie Ward?

  Yeah. What advice or what types of therapies or strategies are good for...

• 34:56Alie Ward?

  Soothing that or overcoming it?

• 34:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, you can do couples' therapy in advance of a birth. And there's some research that suggests that that's helpful. Because it's just like couples need to work on their communication skills.

• 35:09Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 35:10Speaker 01

  They need to figure out, like, suddenly you're going to have more responsibilities on your plate. Like, how do you divide up household labor? So interventions that help couples talk about these issues can be really valuable. And also, like, postpartum depression is not just a mom thing. Men can experience it, too. And new dads have higher prevalence of depression than men at other times in the lifespan. So men may also benefit, not just from couples' therapy, but from their own therapy, either before or after birth. Like, you just want to catch those issues, I think, before they turn into problems.

• 35:46Alie Ward?

  And if you're like, hey, do you know how much time and money it takes to raise this little monkey that I have? Therapy? In this economy? Here are some alternatives. You could start a group thread with your friends who are dads. You can hop on a message board, read and write about your experience. You could start a book club with other parents. You can reach out to elders who matter to you. You can even look for community parenting classes, or seminars, or support groups. That time investment, researchers found, will make you a better dad. Your kid will be happier. Everyone in their life will benefit, including your partner, if you have one, and you, tops. That postpartum depression, I'm wondering, I can understand the hormones and the chemicals in,

• 36:31Alie Ward?

  you know, a mom and a birthing parent. But when it comes to the fathers, is that also purely neurotransmitter levels? Or is that partly, like, grieving the life that you had? You're a different identity now? Is it more situational?

• 36:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it's all of the above.

• 36:48Alie Ward?

  Okay.

• 36:48Speaker 01

  Right? And it is for moms, too, right? It's like, moms, we know there are these big hormone shifts that can increase risk. But we also know that moms are grappling with, like, a new social role, a new identity, this new set of responsibilities. It's a perfect storm. It's like stress, hormone change, brain change, sleep deprivation.

• 37:08Speaker 01

  You know, just like changing routines, like you're not exercising as often, you're not seeing friends as often. So people can also get isolated.

• 37:16Alie Ward?

  You know, it's funny, I was talking to a guy at a cafe down the street.

• 37:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:21Alie Ward?

  That we've probably have both been to.

• 37:22Speaker 01

  I've probably seen you there. Yeah.

• 37:23Alie Ward?

  I know. He had a great laptop bag and he was maybe a little bit older than than me. And I said, this is a great bag. And he said, oh, thanks. It's from Portland Leather. And I was like, oh, cool. Heard of them, you know? And he said, I used to be a big fan of theirs and then I got an email from them. Never will buy from them again. And I was like, what did it say? And he said, well, it said, trigger warning, Happy Father's Day to everyone who celebrates. And he was so, as a dad, he was so offended that there was a trigger warning for Father's Day, but they wouldn't have that for Mother's Day. And I was like, well, that's probably a little bit of like a marketing, you know, kind of like internet speak. And these are a lot of social media posts that are like,

• 38:07Alie Ward?

  Happy Mother's Day, Happy Mother's Day, Happy, and then Father's Day. It's sometimes I see posts that are like, Happy Father's Day to my mom, who really handled all the shit. There seems to be so much trauma around fatherhood. From adult children. Where is that coming from?

• 38:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, I think culturally, we are really in flux, right? Like, our understanding of masculinity has shifted a lot over the last few generations. Our understanding of men's and women's social roles. And I think the traditional father that a lot of us had was a guy who was pretty checked out. Maybe absent, maybe hands off. I mean, I write about in my book, I had an unusual experience because my dad became like a primary caregiver after my parents got divorced.

• 38:56Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 38:56Speaker 01

  So I kind of got to see him go through a little bit of a transformation of his own.

• 39:01Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 39:01Speaker 01

  But I think that's atypical. And then it's like contemporary parents are trying to figure it out in this more egalitarian way, but that can also lead to a lot of struggle. So it's just easy for people to disparage dads. And I mean, I'm kind of with that guy, like, let's actually. Celebrate good dads and not just like make it this thing that we're like all kind of mad about.

• 39:23Alie Ward?

  Yeah, and I have so many questions from listeners. Can I fire some off of you?

• 39:28Speaker 01

  Please.

• 39:28Alie Ward?

  They had great ones. And before we get there, we will take a quick break for sponsors of the show, none of whom are Portland Leather. I did try to reach out to their marketing team. I didn't get a response on LinkedIn. The main corporate number was disconnected, couldn't figure out a way to reach them. Did I even look for the cell number of the marketing director and text it to no avail? I did. Did I check who their spouse was on Instagram and think about messaging? I also did. Anyway, couldn't get ahold of them. But I will say, a lot of email marketing campaigns these days allow folks to opt out of mothers and Father's Day promo emails just because they're emotionally charged. So that's likely what's behind it. I spent hours on this for no reason, but I did find an article with an interview from the company's,

• 40:11Alie Ward?

  let's just say outspokenly confident CEO, who was asked if he had a story from childhood that he'd like to attribute his success to. And he said, absolutely not. Maybe there were too many good stories? Maybe he has dad trauma. I'm not sure. Let's give some money away, though. So this week Darby shows Homeboy Industries. And Homeboy Industries, love them. It's the world's largest reentry organization for formerly gang-involved and previously incarcerated people, serving more than 10,000 people annually. Their program provides comprehensive social services and job training and helps people heal from intergenerational complex trauma. They say whether it's access to tattoo removal, educational classes, case management, mental health, or housing services,

• 40:56Alie Ward?

  or, yes, parenting programs for dad, and Darby works with them for those. Homeboy Industries transforms lives through healing, love, and community. Also, if you're ever at LAX in Terminal 3, Gate 33, pay a visit to Homeboy Cafe, which benefits a nonprofit. Also, great sandwiches. Thank you to sponsors of the show for making that donation possible. This podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. If you haven't heard me gushing about Squarespace for years, it's an all-in-one website platform. Whether you're trying to grow a business you have, or if you're just a baby business getting started, it has everything you need. That's where I secured my domain name. It helped me build a professional site. I can update it so easily. I've been using Squarespace since before Ologies existed.

• 41:41Alie Ward?

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• 42:26Alie Ward?

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• 42:48Alie Ward?

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• 44:16Alie Ward?

  Okay, let's talk about what makes a good dad with your questions via patreon.com/ologies. There are so many good ones. Actually, the first listener question, we're breaking form. It isn't from Patreon, but it actually came by text. I actually asked on my family group chat if anyone had questions about fatherhood. And my brother-in-law, Steve, said, what are some key factors or qualities of a father that are most needed to raise healthy and successful children? And is any of that dependent on the goodness or badness of their own dad?

• 44:54Speaker 01

  Hmm. Hi, Steve. That's a great question. I do think that one's relationship with one's own parents does kind of provide us with scripts that can either be helpful or not helpful. Like, I have a chapter in the book where I talk about men who had traumatic childhoods and like, like how much extra work that takes to kind of like show up as a good dad. But if men care and invest their time and energy, they can break those cycles. So in terms of what makes for a good dad, I think it's not dissimilar from what makes for a good mom. It's like consistency, caring, being present.

• 45:38Speaker 01

  It doesn't have to mean always knowing the right answer or always being perfect or fulfilling kids every need, right? Like, there's this concept of the good enough mother in psychology, which is that it's actually like, no one can ever be a perfect mother.

• 45:54Alie Ward?

  That is great to hear.

• 45:57Speaker 01

  And it's not even great for kids to have a perfect mother. Because it's where a mother falls short that kids learn their own autonomy, right? Like, they have to develop their own solutions when moms don't fulfill their every need.

• 46:10Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 46:10Speaker 01

  And I think that's true for fathers, too. Like, it's less about being a perfect person. And it's more about working hard enough and caring enough that your kid sees you showing up really consistently.

• 46:25Alie Ward?

  Mm-hmm.

• 46:25Speaker 01

  And I say in the book, like, great fathers are made not born. It's like, we think of caregiving as this, like, innately wired trait. And it's really more like a skill that we learn and that we develop through practice and through time. And so it's kind of up to us to decide if we want to make that investment. And if we do, then I think our kids see that and appreciate that, that we're trying.

• 46:51Alie Ward?

  Yeah. What are some qualities that your husband has?

• 46:55Speaker 01

  He's very chill. He's patient. He's been a recording engineer for a long time, so he's worked with bands, which I actually think is a really good quality.

• 47:03Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 47:04Speaker 01

  For being a father, because, you know, he can, like, gently correct a band without antagonizing them or, like, give suggestions, but, like, still preserve a good relationship.

• 47:15Alie Ward?

  Mm-hmm.

• 47:16Speaker 01

  So he's kind of like the guy that, like, he taught our daughter how to drive. Like, he coaches our son's baseball team. Like, he's kind of a natural teacher.

• 47:26Alie Ward?

  Mm-hmm.

• 47:26Speaker 01

  And I think that's a good quality. He does a lot around the house. And he was raised in a really traditional family. Like, his mom was a stay-at-home mom. His dad worked a lot. And he, like, I guess, had the good or ill fortune to marry someone who was really career-oriented.

• 47:42Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 47:42Speaker 01

  So we've kind of had to figure out our own dynamic, which has taken time. But I would say, like, he does as much, if not more, with the kids as I do, which is really great.

• 47:52Alie Ward?

  So trying matters. And what if you're a dad and you see this little critter you made, or made a choice to raise, and you want to get to know them? A lot of folks, Mimi, Addie Capello, Maria J., Ranger France, wanted to know, Mimi asked, what are some of the most important things dads can and should do to bond with their kids? Ranger wanted to know, is skin to skin bonding at birth with the father beneficial to the newborn? And when it comes to oxytocin and things like that, what is behind that bonding?

• 48:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, these are all such great questions. I actually, in the book, I interview a guy that did skin to skin. And there is research on men doing skin to skin. So like, a couple of different studies looked at, like, after mom has a C-section, she can't always do a skin to skin because she has to get prepared.

• 48:41Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 48:42Speaker 01

  And so a few different research teams have tried doing it with dad. And the baby's heart rate regulates better, the baby's temperature becomes better regulated. All of the benefits of skin to skin with mom emerge when babies do it with dads. It's also, I think, like, a way that dads, like, we talked about dads feeling left out a lot of the time after birth because there's less for them to do. It's a way that dads can feel like they're really contributing, like, they're providing this, like, warm body that the baby needs and is gravitating to. So it's a totally great thing to do after birth or in the early months. And oxytocin, it's like one of those hormones that the research is kind of all over the place on.

• 49:27Speaker 01

  There's a lot of methodological issues with oxytocin. I talk about that a little bit in the book. But what's interesting is, like, both men and women early in parenthood have really similar levels of oxytocin.

• 49:39Alie Ward?

  Really?

• 49:40Speaker 01

  So we think of oxytocin as this, like, mom hormone.

• 49:43Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 49:44Speaker 01

  And it's not really. Like, you see it in dads, too.

• 49:48Alie Ward?

  Wow. I mean, that's gotta be so hard, though, because you can't exactly put a newborn and a dad in an FMRI. You know what I mean? And see what lights up. But you can do those sort of hormonal assays and see what's in there, huh?

• 50:00Speaker 01

  Exactly. Like, you can take blood, you can take saliva, you can take hair. And then you can do, like, what we did is we put dads in the MRI and then we show them videos of their baby.

• 50:09Alie Ward?

  Cool.

• 50:10Speaker 01

  So it's like, not quite, like, I actually, really, when I was developing this study and I pitched a couple of people on this, I really wanted to do smell-a-vision. Like, I wanted to pipe a baby's smell through a tube into the scanner. Like, I thought we could get onesies from babies and then it would be like a mix of own baby and other baby. I think we probably could have done it, but at that point, we had so many moving parts in our scan protocol that I was like, this is gonna drive my team insane.

• 50:38Alie Ward?

  Yeah, maybe a future.

• 50:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, I wanna, it's a dream study.

• 50:42Alie Ward?

  I mean, speaking of smell, Anover wanted to know, do dads who change diapers stay engaged for the life of the child? And I feel like in previous generations, I've heard that, like, dads are like, haven't changed a single diaper. Is that changing?

• 50:57Speaker 01

  Yes. Yeah, so that is really changing.

• 51:00Alie Ward?

  Oh, that's good.

• 51:01Speaker 01

  So I wanna say, like, the number of boomer men who said they'd never changed a diaper was, like, pretty considerable.

• 51:07Alie Ward?

  How considerable? I needed numbers. So according to the 2012 paper, "Dads Who Do Diapers: Factors Affecting Care of Young Children by Fathers" in the Journal of Family Issues, one 1982 US survey found that 43, 43% of dads had never changed a diaper. And that 43% these days is estimated just to be 3%. Still 3% of dads never change a diaper? You're on my actual shit list. But several studies have also shown that, in general, fathers and mothers tend to rate their own contributions higher than their spouses do, which may be because fathers often compare themselves to men of past generations.

• 51:51Alie Ward?

  So they're like, so much better than my dad. Or they take no notice of the invisible work that mothers do. So, you got a kid? Cool. Kids under a year old make about seven dirty diapers a day. So are you changing, like, one? Okay, well, at least triple that. Just step on up.

• 52:10Speaker 01

  But it was like a surprisingly big chunk. And that number is now really small. If you ask Gen Z men.

• 52:16Alie Ward?

  Mm hmm.

• 52:17Speaker 01

  So they're doing way more diaper changes. And yeah, like, I do think that's a good omen for how the dad is gonna stay involved. Because we think of it as this gross thing, but there's also some intimacy there. Like, you have the baby, you know, kind of as a captive audience and you're keeping it entertained while you do your stuff. And like, that can be a real moment of connection.

• 52:40Alie Ward?

  Side note, did you know that a lot of men's restrooms didn't even have diaper changing stations until like a decade ago? Apparently in 2016, then-President Obama signed a bill mandating changing tables for the dudes also. And the act was called the bathrooms accessible in every situation, which spelled out babies, which is called a backronym, where a word is cobbled together kind of desperately to spell something memorable. But babies as a backronym, it's pretty cute. It's much cuter than the post-9/11, "uniting and strengthening America by providing appropriate tools required to intercept and obstruct terrorism", AKA the USA Patriot Act, in case you never caught that.

• 53:24Alie Ward?

  Oh, oh, speaking of, Patron Richard said, "It seems like after my son was born, I could sense he was about to do something dangerous and catch him most times, like falling out of his high chair or pull down a lamp from a table, yanking on its cord." He continues, Richard says, "Do other fathers develop ninja-like reflexes when it comes to their babies?" Matt Thompson wanted to know, from a physiological standpoint, is there truly a dad reflex when catching kids?

• 53:52Speaker 01

  Oh, yes, the moro reflex, right? I'm not sure if he's thinking about this, but there's a thing where if you drop the baby, the baby's arms naturally extend.

• 54:00Alie Ward?

  Uh huh.

• 54:00Speaker 01

  Because it's like, it shows our primate heritage, because it's extending to grasp the fur.

• 54:07Speaker 01

  So actually, when my mom, who's like a real science nerd, met my first baby for the very first time, she dropped her to test the Moro reflex.

• 54:15Alie Ward?

  Oh, my God.

• 54:16Speaker 01

  And I was like, holy shit.

• 54:17Alie Ward?

  Oh, my God.

• 54:18Speaker 01

  It's working great.

• 54:20Alie Ward?

  Oh, my God.

• 54:22Speaker 01

  I mean, she picked her, you know.

• 54:23Alie Ward?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. But still, that's so great.

• 54:26Speaker 01

  But the idea of dads tossing babies around, too, is like, I think, again, like, you see it across different species.

• 54:33Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 54:34Speaker 01

  So it's not just a human adaptation.

• 54:36Alie Ward?

  So, yes, parents' attentions can rewire to anticipate danger and then monitor little ones almost subconsciously all the time. And also, tossing kids in the air helps parents, a lot of times dads, get really familiar with handling a baby in time and space. So dads, you're doing great. Everyone loves you. Keep it up. That's amazing. Adam Foot says, "I'm not even a father yet, and I have a strong desire to embarrass any child I might have." Why? Bjorn Fredberg said this, "I'm a father, and I have the impulse with all kids I encounter, not just my own child." And this might also intersect with dad jokes. I think by embarrassing, they mean like corny, slightly out of touch, performatively.

• 55:21Speaker 01

  Totally. Like, the dad joke is like a thing.

• 55:24Alie Ward?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 55:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know I'm very cringy to my kids. And so is my husband.

• 55:29Alie Ward?

  Uh huh.

• 55:30Speaker 01

  And I think it's just, it's a funny way to get a rise out of kids, like, especially teens, because they start kind of caring about what's cool and they have their own lingo.

• 55:42Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 55:43Speaker 01

  And like, you can be so out of touch as an adult that I think it's actually just a source of entertainment for parents.

• 55:51Alie Ward?

  Okay, so, and maybe there is some bonding, too, with like, hey, I know your lingo, I'm invested and I care, and it's like, ugh, just don't.

• 56:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:03Alie Ward?

  Like, I know that if I say six, seven to my nephew, he runs and wants to just hide under the couch. Like, he's like, please, like, that's so over.

• 56:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:12Alie Ward?

  Like, how dare you?

• 56:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm still saying skibidi to my kids.

• 56:16Alie Ward?

  What is a dad joke exactly? I wasn't positive, but I figured I should know. So it's something punny. It's usually a play on words or like an anti-joke. It's simple, usually embarrassing for the person it's inflicted upon. And the term might be older than you. I looked into it. The first known instance of the words dad joke in print was in a 1987 newspaper op-ed titled, "Don't Ban the Dad Jokes, Preserve and Revere Them." And it was written by one Jim Calba, who fathered the term. I wanted to know more about him and read some of his history. He long wanted to be a newspaper man and he achieved like his journalism dreams. He was a writer and an editor, but his domestic accomplishments may have even been greater.

• 57:01Alie Ward?

  I found his 2019 obituary. It was written after a decades-long battle with Parkinson's. And it turns out that Jim Calba was a girl dad. He had three daughters. His family wrote that he had always maintained a close, humorous, loving relationship with his daughters and four grandchildren. And the picture that accompanied his obituary showed like a round-cheeked smile, side part of silver hair and a tight clutch around his bride of many decades. And my dad, you called him Grandpa, was also a writer in the news business. He was a girl dad of three, four grandkids, and we had the same kind of rapport with him.

• 57:44Alie Ward?

  So for the dads who've passed, keep the cringe coming with the dad jokes. It's your legacy. And if you need help on dad jokes, even the federal government has your back. On the site fatherhood.gov, I found a page titled, "The Celebration of the Delightfully Terrible Dad Joke." They have a joke generator that you can refresh on a government webpage. I couldn't resist. And it offered up, "Do you know what the loudest pet is? A trumpet." I hit the button again. "What is brown and sticky?"

• 58:20Alie Ward?

  A stick.

• 58:22Alie Ward?

  I'm so glad I found that webpage because despite the burn of welling tears, it was a sight for sore eyes. Taylor and Regina Muth wanted to know, what do we know about genetically the father's genes, what they control versus the mother's genes? And I've seen reports that, you know, incidence of miscarriage and how difficult a pregnancy can be from a father's genetics. But a lot of times it's presumed it's just the mother's biology. What's up with that?

• 58:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's super interesting. Dads are contributing, obviously, like a lot of genetic material to a pregnancy. And dads' genes are actually shaping the construction of the placenta, which is like the organ that nurtures the baby. And so, like, yeah, there's a lot that can go wrong on that end. But also, like, I think when we talk about pregnancy health or anything that can go wrong, it's like, it's always mom's fault, right? If something does. But there's some evidence that even preconception health behaviors, like men's substance use, smoking, exercise, diet, will affect his sperm quality and therefore affect the baby's outcomes. We never bug men about like, you should eat right for the baby.

• 59:37Alie Ward?

  Yeah, seriously.

• 59:38Speaker 01

  But that's a thing that we should care about for dads as well.

• 59:42Alie Ward?

  If you encounter someone who does not believe this, you can point them toward the 2022 Frontiers in Genetics paper titled Paternal Epigenetic Influences on Placental Health and Their Impacts on Offspring Development and Disease, which declared that alterations in placental growth, histological organization, and glycogen content broadly serve as reliable markers of altered paternal development programming, predicting the emergence of structural and metabolic defects in the offspring. And the paper continues, finally, we suggest the existence of an unrecognized developmental axis between the male germ line and the extra embryonic lineage. You're like, oh, what? I know, you want a translation. That was a lot.

• 1:00:25Alie Ward?

  There's a 2023 Central European Journal of Urology study called Recurrent Miscarriage. Carriage and male factor in fertility, a narrative review. And it explained simply that the male factor is a possible cause of recurrent pregnancy loss. So, yep, some studies put the miscarriage rate up to 70% of fertilized eggs. So if you want to be a parent and birth a kiddo, celebrate those 30% odds if they work out in your favor. No matter what color the inside of the cake surprises. How do you feel about gender reveals?

• 1:01:00Speaker 01

  Oh, the gender reveal party.

• 1:01:02Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:02Speaker 01

  Such a funny fad to me. I actually read that the woman who came up with them, like created the trend, has a non-binary kid.

• 1:01:11Alie Ward?

  Oh.

• 1:01:12Speaker 01

  So it's like, it sort of just goes to show, right? Like how it all works out.

• 1:01:16Alie Ward?

  I love that, by the way.

• 1:01:17Speaker 01

  Isn't that funny?

• 1:01:18Alie Ward?

  Yes, I love that. This is true, and it's news to me. And real quick, in 2008, a blogger by the name of Jenna Carvendish needed to make a post and figured like, hmm, you know, I'm pregnant, maybe a surprise gender cake would be fun. Took some pictures, blogged about it, whatever. Never did she expect this ritual to become a cultural phenomenon, leading to extravagant balloon releases and biplanes with banners and explosive devices, accidental death and dismemberments from shrapnel, forest fires, and husbands trashing desserts over the indication that they would have a female child. Now, in 2020, 12 years after she started this, Carvendish wrote a piece in The Guardian

• 1:02:02Alie Ward?

  titled, "I Started the Gender Reveal Party Trend, and I Regret It." And she writes that her firstborn, who sparked the whole blog post, is gender non-conforming, preferring suits to dresses and short hair to long braids. And Carvendish, who seems like a gem, writes, "There's such an obsession with gender that it becomes limiting in many ways and exploitative in others. You don't want what's in between your legs to guide your path in life." And she writes, "I want my kids to grow up in a world where gender doesn't matter." And she also gives her own backstory in this article, I thought was really interesting. She writes, "My parents threw me out when I was..." I was 17 years old. I wasn't about gender or sexuality, but I know how it feels to be a teenager who's not loved or accepted.

• 1:02:46Alie Ward?

  I absolutely would not tolerate it, but my child is welcomed for all of her personality. So gender, it's an expression and it's distinct from biological sex. Biological sex, you can peep through a sonogram. But gender isn't really anything that can be revealed as an infant or by anyone but you, unless you're in deep denial and you have a queer bestie who's like, bitch, you're gay. And even then, that's just your orientation. It's also a bit of an overreach, but if you're gonna have a cake that's pink or blue inside, at least call it a fetus genital celebration party. And if you wouldn't put that on an invitation, then just, you know, have a regular or having a baby party.

• 1:03:30Alie Ward?

  As the third of all girls, we're sick of it mattering. There was a question about that. Magda Kawasaki asked, am I gay because my dad had no sons and he had to teach someone how to change the oil in the car? Are there any correlations at all that they find between how someone's parented with a dad? And I know that we've also had questions in here and I'll find them. Like one from Han the Bee, who said, fatherhood to me seems to be the counterpart of motherhood, both of which bring to mind very gendered ideas of the roles that fathers and mothers play. And. Michael Crosa, Max G. and Jenny Gold, Michael asks, there's an argument against same-sex parenting that the kid will miss out on the benefits

• 1:04:13Alie Ward?

  offered by a traditional mom dad pairing, but loving and supportive same-sex parents still seems preferable or at least viable compared to having a single parent or being in the foster system. But asking about the expectations of gender and I think the fading stigma that if you don't have a father figure, you're not gonna turn out right. But yeah, is there anything about a gender expression? That's influenced by a father figure?

• 1:04:41Speaker 01

  I think it can be, but it doesn't necessarily have to be in the form of a biological father who lives in the household. Like, we know that child outcomes, kids who are raised by same-sex parents turn out just as good, if not better, as kids with heterosexual parents. So there's nothing about your parents' gender identity that is necessarily gonna set you on the wrong course as a kid.

• 1:05:05Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:05Speaker 01

  I interviewed a trans dad for the book, who talked about just like stepping into the father role and what that was like for him.

• 1:05:13Alie Ward?

  Yeah. Darby writes that "to understand more about parenting while trans, I talked to Taylor Xavier Shazan about his experience of becoming a dad. Taylor and I," she writes, "lived in the same neighborhood in suburban Los Angeles," hey, "for a few years, and I used to see him out and about, a friendly guy with an open smile and a scruffy beard, wrangling his adorable toddler son in a red wagon." And she continues, "but until we joined the same Facebook parenting group, I had no idea he had been raised as a girl in Texas before transitioning to male in his late teens. Taylor told me that he had always wanted kids, but as a trans man, his road to fatherhood was complex. And when he got together with his wife, Alana, they bonded over their desire to start a family. And Taylor had told her, you know, we're from these radical queer punk communities,

• 1:05:57Alie Ward?

  and all we wanted to do was get married and move to the suburbs and have kids. But Alana struggled to get pregnant, and several rounds of fertility treatments later, they started talking about harvesting Taylor's eggs. And Taylor said, "I had been on testosterone for 15 years at that point, so I had to go off it to prep for that. And after the hormones stopped working," Taylor says, "it was very emotional. It was a hard time for him." And Darby continues to write about their story. They actually ended up adopting a child, and in her book, Darby expands on Taylor's experience working in and out of these gender expectations. And Darby notes that with over 2 million trans folks just in the United States, Taylor's is just one of a lot of unique experiences. And remember, allo parenting, it's in our genes.

• 1:06:42Alie Ward?

  We wouldn't have survived this long as a species without it. People need people.

• 1:06:47Speaker 01

  In terms of like whether or not you need a man in a boy or girl's life, like I do think it's good to have models of, you know, good men and good women. Boys can benefit from someone who shares their gender that they can look up to, and girls can also benefit from seeing, you know, there are good men out there in the world.

• 1:07:08Alie Ward?

  Right.

• 1:07:09Speaker 01

  But that can come through a teacher, through clergy member, through community member. Like, it doesn't necessarily have to come from the parents.

• 1:07:18Alie Ward?

  Well, you know, I think we also are influenced by pop culture as well, especially when our lives might be so siloed. Yana Hubbard, Empress of Smallwood, and Li Wong wanted to know. Yana asked, why are some of the most popular fathers on TV, the ones that offer corporal punishment, like Homer strangling Bart in the earlier episodes? You know, fathers threatening a boot up the ass compared to fathers who are shown, like, you know, dumpy. How are fathers, kind of, those archetypes, like the bumbling dad? How do you think those affect expectations?

• 1:07:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a great question. And there was actually a culture critic, sociologist, who looked at how TV dads are categorized and found that in a majority of sitcoms, dads are depicted as humorously foolish. So it's like the classic, like Homer Simpson, like, figure of fun. I do think, like, we don't necessarily have a lot of great cultural models of really good, hands-on dads.

• 1:08:22Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:23Speaker 01

  It's like, the actual dads I see on the street are better than a lot of the dads I see on TV.

• 1:08:27Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:28Speaker 01

  Like, that's something we should be thinking about rectifying as a culture. So like, I don't know how big your TV writer audience is, but here's a pitch.

• 1:08:36Alie Ward?

  Yeah, I was gonna say, I have a lot of friends who work at TV.

• 1:08:39Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 1:08:40Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:40Speaker 01

  Right, better dads.

• 1:08:41Alie Ward?

  Better dads.

• 1:08:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:42Alie Ward?

  You know, I used to live in Los Feliz, and as I lived there, the population was getting older, who stayed in the neighborhood and, you know, also gentrifying to, because the home prices were going up, so more families and less, you know, younger, single people.

• 1:08:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:57Alie Ward?

  And my friends and I called them seahorses, because there were dads who would be just walking the baby on their own, or had a, what's it, like a bjorn with a baby on it. And I do know that people asked about other animals, and I think seahorses definitely came up. Fiona McLaughlin's dad, Oscar Shorshane, bird admirer Iris Turner.

• 1:09:18Alie Ward?

  Bird named Quill Sloan had other species on the brain. Vera wanted to know, why do some species of animals have actively engaged fathers? Some even more so than mothers and others don't. Dr. Wiggles wanted to know, what animal species is the best dad? A seahorse? Emperor penguin?

• 1:09:35Speaker 01

  I mean, the seahorse can get pregnant. The male seahorse can get pregnant. So it develops this brood pouch and it can fertilize eggs. So, I mean, it's hard to compete with that.

• 1:09:44Alie Ward?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:09:45Speaker 01

  There are species where males are primary parents. Frog dads are great. Like, a lot of frogs are either biparental or dads are doing a lot of the care. And frog dads will like locate all their babies and like bring food or tell the mother to bring them stuff to eat.

• 1:10:05Alie Ward?

  Stop.

• 1:10:05Speaker 01

  So they're like keeping track of all their babies. And bird dads are great. Like, birds are also biparental. So bird dads are doing a lot of resource providing and a lot of feeding. And male birds will teach their babies how to sing. Like, male songbirds will be the primary instructors of singing.

• 1:10:25Alie Ward?

  Oh, I didn't know that.

• 1:10:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:28Alie Ward?

  Just, I love the idea of a dad flipping pancakes and singing on a Saturday morning. Marie Kirby wanted to know, is a daddy's girl a real thing? And is there a reason why we might gravitate toward the parent of the opposite sex? Some people asked if my child says "dada" first. When I've been the one like up nursing. Why is that sometimes that a kid will have a preference? So to Tilly's mom who asked, why did my baby say "dada" before "mama"? Seems unfair. You're in good company.

• 1:11:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, my daughter went through a huge only daddy phase.

• 1:11:03Alie Ward?

  Really?

• 1:11:04Speaker 01

  A year. Yeah, it drove me crazy. We had this picture book that was like animal moms and we would read through it. I'd read it to her and she'd be like, "Those are all dads." "Those are dads' moms." Like, she didn't want me to read it as though they were moms. I was like, "Come on!" But yeah, no, it's totally a thing. And I was just talking to a friend about this. Like, why is it that men are often harder on their boys? And I think there's this sense that like, we have to toughen boys up for the hard world.

• 1:11:37Alie Ward?

  Interesting, yeah.

• 1:11:38Speaker 01

  Whereas men, I think, can be more fully affectionate and cuddly and nurturing with girls. Because it's like, they can try out that more feminine side of their personality without constraint.

• 1:11:49Alie Ward?

  Interesting.

• 1:11:50Speaker 01

  So I think it does kind of open up like a different way of relating that can be really healthy for men.

• 1:11:57Alie Ward?

  Well, we had a lot of questions in that vein about toxic masculinity. Christina Weaver wanted to know, well, let's see, Bright Hawk, Carlos Baracal, Christina Weaver, Jason Lowenthal, Ashley Noel, Michael Croce. Christina asked, are there concerns that the growing influence of the manosphere will contribute to a growing number of like abusive, neglectful, absentee, or otherwise shitty dads? Is there, I know that things are getting better, but is there like a polarization to the opposite of like reclaiming masculinity kind of a thing?

• 1:12:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, so Christina, you will like my book. I have a whole chapter on masculinity, which is kind of about this exact question of like, what is going on with masculinity and fatherhood?

• 1:12:44Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:44Speaker 01

  And I think it is this kind of Tale of Two Cities where it's like, the most educated, affluent dads are really more hands-on as parents and are kind of like, showing this different model of fatherhood that is more invested. But you also have this huge influence of the manosphere, which is telling young men.

• 1:13:04Speaker 06

  All cheating scenarios, 100% the blame is always on the female. Look after yourselves. What last time you put some makeup on? Do some burpees. You got a fucking gun. Sort yourself out.

• 1:13:14Speaker 01

  Like, treat women like disposable sex objects?

• 1:13:18Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:18Speaker 01

  And don't get trapped. Because like, women are just trying to use you for child support. So like, these really hostile messages. And so I worry, A, that there's kind of a class and education divide that is emerging that's also politically polarized. And it does, it seems somewhat antithetical to really good fatherhood. So it's just like, we're kind of in these like, diverging trend lines. Some dads are getting better at fatherhood, some men are totally disinvesting from fatherhood.

• 1:13:48Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:49Speaker 01

  And we need to be really aware, I think, of the cultural narratives that we're propagating.

• 1:13:54Alie Ward?

  Another aspect also to stress tolerance that previous generations may not have considered is neurodivergence. And ADHD, autism, even anxiety and depression, including reactions to world events, can impact how we process and respond to stimuli. And as we talked about in our three-part ADHD episode, my husband, your pod mom, Jarrett Sleeper, wasn't diagnosed with ADHD until 30. So it was like, five years or so after we met. And understanding his own brain has helped his life and relationships, like, in a way that's just night and day. So if you have a kiddo that's diagnosed with autism or ADHD, guess what, parents? You're way more likely to have it as well.

• 1:14:36Alie Ward?

  And I have a few dad friends who I can see in real time their own overstimulation. It's clear as day to me. Totally understandable. From kids literally banging on pots and pans to just not having any time or space to decompress. And without knowing your own brain and what coping strategies work, parenthood can be more overwhelming, obviously. Your parents probably got a little something. And yeah, they were probably never diagnosed, never got to watch endless TikToks explaining their brain. So try to keep their minds in mind. You know, I'm curious, as someone who is not a parent, but I'm around people who are parents, and this feels like a shitty question, but also it comes from a place of wanting to help.

• 1:15:20Alie Ward?

  But like, if you see someone being like, a shitty dad, yelling at their kids, or being really short-tempered with them, and you can see how it's affecting a kid, is there anything that you can slightly nudge, or a book? I mean, other, obviously, your book. You know, anything that we can do as a community for dads to be like, hey dude, you might be reenacting some Generational drama.

• 1:15:45Speaker 01

  It's a great question because it's so hard to intervene with other people's parenting.

• 1:15:49Alie Ward?

  Yes.

• 1:15:50Speaker 01

  I think it's one of the hardest things you can do, right? It feels so personal to people and people feel so vulnerable to being judged. But I mean, I think one of the best things you can do is just be like a positive support system for the kid.

• 1:16:02Alie Ward?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:16:03Speaker 01

  You know, find ways to spend time with the kid, be a good role model for the kid, like give the kid an outlet. I think you can also just be like, hey, are you talking to someone? Like you seem to be struggling with anger.

• 1:16:17Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:18Speaker 01

  You know, there are probably some gentle ways to give feedback that don't feel so hard to hear.

• 1:16:22Alie Ward?

  Yeah, being a good support for the kid too, I think is great advice. If you have one parent who maybe is a little bit harsher on you, does it help cancel it out to show that there's more support?

• 1:16:35Speaker 01

  Definitely. Yeah, like, and I think it's generally good for kids to have caregivers with different styles and just to see like the variety in how humans relate to each other, right? Like that's a learning experience for a kid. So if you're seeing a negative style, then maybe you can be a positive compensatory force.

• 1:16:54Alie Ward?

  Yeah, yeah. What things do you wish dads knew? Whether they're new dads or old dads?

• 1:17:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would say first, you matter. You can make great contributions to a kid's life. Your involvement can take stress off your partner. It's good for society. It's ultimately good for you too, for your aging, for your well-being, to be more socially connected. So, you know, prioritize fatherhood. So that's the first thing. And the second thing is just like you are transforming too. You might think it's like fully your partner's show, but your body is also in flux and you can be mindful of how that's affecting your health and your well-being.

• 1:17:36Alie Ward?

  If fatherhood changed significantly.

• 1:17:39Alie Ward?

  Would that be better for all of society?

• 1:17:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:44Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think if dads show up more, engage more, participate more in parenting, we know that kids have better educational outcomes. They have better emotion regulation. They have better peer outcomes. They're less likely to be incarcerated, right? So like dad's involvement seems to be this positive force across the board. And it's also helpful for moms to have someone who's able to provide support and scaffold their care.

• 1:18:14Alie Ward?

  Right.

• 1:18:15Speaker 01

  So, yeah, like, one reason I wrote the book is because I think this is a public health priority.

• 1:18:22Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:22Speaker 01

  That we want to empower dads to be involved and to own the parenting role.

• 1:18:30Alie Ward?

  What about Father's Day gifts? What's a good one?

• 1:18:33Speaker 01

  There's a book I would recommend. It'll be on your shelves.

• 1:18:38Speaker 01

  We timed the book release. It comes out just a couple of weeks before Father's Day. For that very reason.

• 1:18:44Alie Ward?

  Amazing.

• 1:18:45Speaker 01

  But I also think like, good Father's Day gifts are experiences too, like passes to a park or to the driving range or to a go-kart track, like, things that dads can really enjoy doing with kids. Like, I think most dads don't necessarily need like another tie or another mug.

• 1:19:01Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:02Speaker 01

  But they might want an opportunity to do something fun with their kids or to read a book.

• 1:19:07Alie Ward?

  That's great advice. I feel like passes to a garden that you can go to a lot. You know, things like that, a zoo or something like that. What is the hardest part about your job?

• 1:19:19Speaker 01

  Finding enough time to do it.

• 1:19:21Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:21Speaker 01

  I love it and I never have enough time to do all the stuff I want to do. I always have to drop a couple balls.

• 1:19:28Alie Ward?

  Well, also writing a book while you're running a lab.

• 1:19:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, what was I thinking? I don't know.

• 1:19:36Alie Ward?

  The world is Better for it, which is great.

• 1:19:39Speaker 01

  I hope so. I don't know if my students think that.

• 1:19:43Alie Ward?

  But then now they have a reference tome forever, which is great. What about the work do you love so much?

• 1:19:51Speaker 01

  I love the feeling of discovering something new. And I have a professor in grad school who said this, like, she fell in love with research when she was like, you are creating new knowledge from scratch. Like, no one has ever known this thing. When you see that these variables interact together or that this finding has emerged, it's like you've pulled knowledge out of thin air. So I love that. I feel like that keeps you kind of hooked. And I also love working with smart people.

• 1:20:17Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:17Speaker 01

  So my grad students honestly, like, do a lot of the work and the research. And they are the ones like driving the plane of the lab a lot of the time. Like, I just kind of show up and tell them to keep going. But it's really fun to get to work with people who are going to be the future of the field.

• 1:20:36Alie Ward?

  This has been a joy. Thank you so much. Your book is so good.

• 1:20:40Speaker 01

  Thank you. This was such a blast. I'm so glad we made it happen.

• 1:20:43Alie Ward?

  I know, neighbor.

• 1:20:45Speaker 01

  Yeah. See you on the street.

• 1:20:46Alie Ward?

  I know.

• 1:20:49Alie Ward?

  So ask smart people sometimes not smart questions because experts are literally around every corner. In my neighborhood, that's very true. And thank you again so much to Dr. Darby Saxby for her long awaited Ologies interview and for the work she's doing to make the world better dad by dad. And again, this week or any week, go get her book, Dad Brain: The New Science of Fatherhood and How It Shapes Men's Lives. You can get it at your local bookstore. You can get it at bookshop.org, Amazon, ebook, wherever you get books. We've linked those in the show notes for you, including her Substack, which is Nadel Brain, as well as all of her social handles. We are at Ologies on Instagram and Blue Sky. My name is Ally Ward with just one L. And you can find merch at ologiesmerch.com. We have Smologies episodes for the young ones

• 1:21:34Alie Ward?

  or anyone who wants shorter versions of the show. Just look up S-M-O-L-O-G-I-E-S, Smologies, wherever you get podcasts. You can sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/ologies. Mike Campbell's daughter, Erin Talbert, admins the Podcast Facebook group. Aveline Malik makes our professional transcripts. Finding the time each week is scheduling producer Noel Dilworth. The one we trust to catch us midair is managing director Susan Hale. And the duo raising each episode into an edited one are Jake Chaffee and lead editor Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio. Nick Thorburn made the music, maybe while making us pancakes. And special love to anyone who did have a shitty dad. Thank you for letting me, this internet creature, step into a virtual role.

• 1:22:18Alie Ward?

  You're beautiful, you're sweet, you deserve love, and you could do it, whatever it is. Also, a lot of appreciation to listener Zach Bogart, who for funsies, made a website that has catalogued every oh hey greeting I've done from every episode and made a site that just pops them up at random. And it's ohheyit'sthe.site. And we'll link it in the show notes. Zach Bogart, thank you so much for that. I've forgotten almost all of them that I've ever done. But if you stick around to the end of the episode, you know I burden you with a secret. And this week, the secret is that Jared Sleeper also is helping edit this one because Jake is out tonight. And he, he was editing it and he was like, do you, do you know what a succubus is?

• 1:23:02Alie Ward?

  And I was like, it's something like in your sleep that steals your soul or your light. And he's like, well, it's like, kind of like a horny demon that does that. Like a horny lady demon. And I was like, oh, well, I didn't know that part. But then we debated back and forth if we tried to cut that part out or we were. But I just decided I was going to acknowledge it here. Again, please, nobody email me. But also, I kind of stand by it because language is elastic and folklore stretches and constricts to fit our needs. And also, like a baby is living up your vagina.

• 1:23:41Alie Ward?

  So that's not sexual, but it is invasive. So, but succubus, I know it sounds like sucking the life. So that was just my mistake.

• 1:23:57Alie Ward?

  Also, I love when you're chewing gum that's gotten like too hard to chew and then you take a sip of something warm like a tea and you go, "Badoing, my gum's back. It's chewy" for a couple of seconds. I think that's nice. Also dads, you're doing great. Okay? If you're listening to this and you're a dad or you're gonna be a dad, you're doing great. Just the fact that you're here is great. Most dads are awesome. We just hear about the bad ones. It's like when people are like, "I've never seen a good hair transplant." And it's like, "Exactly." Because you're only seeing the bad ones. That's what people are talking about. People who are leaving one stars on Yelp, they're gonna be the most vocal probably for the most part. I don't, I don't know where I'm going with this, but

• 1:24:39Alie Ward?

  I'm just saying you're doing great. I don't know how you do it. Parents, I don't know how you do it. Mom, you're a real one. Thanks for raising me. Dad, out there, thanks also. All right. Bye-bye.

• 1:25:14Speaker 02

  Whenever you feel alone, just remember that those kings will always be there to guide you. And so will I.