Dr. Darby Saxbe

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745 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 27 Jul

Dr. Darby Saxbe’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Modern Wisdom · The Painful Psychological Cost Of Becoming A Dad - Darby Saxbe - #1129 · 27 Jul 2026 podcast

So if you think about, you sort of have a caregiving dial that can be turned up or down.

Moms are turned all the way up by the time the baby arrives.

So the example I gave you of a village where dads don't pick up their babies in the first year, it'd be very hard to find a village like that made up of moms who had similar prohibitions, right?

Moms in many ways are biologically primed to care.

With dads, it's like the dial is set more in the middle and it can be turned up or down depending on culture and local contextual demands.

So I think what's really cool about dads is that they come equipped with the biology that makes them ready to adapt to become sensitive caregivers.

But whether or not they turn the dial is up to them.

It's up to, is mom incapacitated?

Is...

Am I in a culture where dads are really hands-on?

So in the book, I talk about this concept of facultative adaptation, which is to say an adaptation that comes online when needed that can be very useful.

So you think about primates who run on four legs, but if they need to grab something, they can stand up and walk on two legs.

So you can grab more stuff if you have that ability.

If you can turn up the dial for fatherhood, you can enrich kids' lives and you can benefit them and provide them with better outcomes and better odds of survival.

Exactly.

And one of the really unique things about humans is we conceal our ovulation.

So human males don't know for sure whether or not they've caused a pregnancy.

So it actually incentivizes human males to invest in courtship because you can't just helicopter in, have sex once and know that you've made a baby.

You have to show up repeatedly if you wanna be sure you have very good odds of success.

And so you're gonna show up with gifts and you're gonna get to know that person.

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