Darby Saxbe

Do you feel like you're part of a community?

And we know that that is so important for human health.

Right.

We don't really let men have a lot of variability in how they express themselves.

We have very strong opinions culturally about what makes a man masculine.

And dressing up like a princess and doing a tea party usually is not part of that.

But I think a lot of men enjoy playing with different sides of themselves.

And that's totally healthy and fun.

Right, like we're tough on our sons in a way that we're not.

I hate watching that.

Boys need a lot of love and care and nurturing.

Yeah, totally.

And the idea for that op-ed came actually from research for the Dad Brain book.

Which was that I was interviewing this guy, Barry Hewlett, who is the anthropologist that studies the hunter-gatherer fathers.

And he was just telling me about childhood in this society.

The model of parenting is just different because it's about learning less through direct instruction like you're in a classroom and more about modeling.

Like you're following adults around and you're emulating what they do.

And I think we've got it totally backwards in contemporary society where we parents follow our kids around and create our lives that are molded around their interests.

We're taking our kids to tons of activities.

We're putting our kids in special classes.