Darby Saxbe

It's like, if I say maternal and then I say paternal, how many articles am I going to 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.

Of course.

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.

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

And I'm like...

There is this really crazy rise of like the mom fluencer 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 timeout, 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.

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.