Transcript
Brett McKay:
Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness Podcast. As compared to mothers, fathers are sometimes thought of as a secondary, almost superfluous parent, but my guest says that fathers actually saved the human race and continue to do so today. Anna Machin is an evolutionary anthropologist, a pioneer of fatherhood science and the author of Life of Dad. Today on the show, we talk about the role of fathers in human history and how their main role continues to be teaching kids the skills they need to take risk, become independent, and navigate the world beyond their family. We also talk about the physiological changes that happen when a man becomes a father and how dads are just as biologically primed as mothers to parent. In the second half of our conversation, we talk about the experience of being a dad. Anna shares how long it typically takes a man to bond with a baby and transition to the role of fatherhood, how roughhousing is key in building that bond as well as developing your child’s resilience and how your personality and background will affect your parenting.
We inter conversation with the difference in how the relationship between mom and dad affects how they parent and the implications of that for building a strong family. After the show’s over, check out our show notes at aom.is/lifeofdad.
All right, Anna Machin, welcome to the show.
Anna Machin:
Hello, thanks for having me.
Brett McKay:
So you are an evolutionary anthropologist and you’ve done a lot of your research on fatherhood. What led you down that path?
Anna Machin:
It was actually a really personal experience that led me to it. I had my first child about 17 years ago, and at the time when I gave birth to my first child, it wasn’t a particularly pleasant experience. I was very ill, my baby was very ill, it was very traumatic. And afterwards I was offered lots of opportunities to talk about it, for counseling, that kind of thing. And my husband, who to be honest, had witnessed much more than me because I passed out. I wasn’t really aware of what was going on. My husband who witnessed everything wasn’t offered anything at all. And even two years after our child was born, he still couldn’t speak about the birth without getting very, very upset. And so this made me, to be honest, quite angry because we’d gone into the whole process of having children as a team.
You decide to have children together, you do the test together, you go to the antenatal appointments together. And at that point in that birthing room, we weren’t a team. He was kind of excluded and shoved into the corner while they dealt with me and dealt with my baby. So I was quite cross about the way he’d been dealt with. And when I went back to work at Oxford, where my job was to research close human relationships, I though, okay, I’m just going to have a quick look about what’s out there about fatherhood in the literature. And I found lots and lots of stuff to do with absent fathers and the impact that they have on children, which is real and is something we need to acknowledge, but there was nothing on actually the vast majority of men who actually do stick around, divorced or not, and input into their children’s lives and support their children and help them grow.
And as an anthropologist, I think that’s an enormous absence in the literature. We’re supposed to understand human society and we hadn’t bothered to look at this very major figure in our society. So that’s really where I started now 17 years ago, asking very, very basic questions because none had been asked. So asking what happens to a man when he becomes a father psychologically, practically, neurochemically? How does he build his relationship with his children? What’s his role in their lives?That sort of thing. Just very, very basic questions, very searching questions to try and get some basic idea about who this person was.
Brett McKay:
Why do you think fatherhood had been overlooked by scientists until recently?
Anna Machin:
I think because particularly in the West, we have a major focus on the mother as the parent. I’m a mom and I’m very grateful for that, but it’s a little bit like a cult of the mother to a certain extent. And so we only really see them as the true parent because in our culture, they tend to be the primary caretaker, for example. Obviously they’re going through this amazing, very obvious physiological change when they have a child. And so I think we focused on them because we also have this cultural idea that fathers are kind of very much a secondary parent. Even at times in our history, we’ve seen them very much as dispensable as really not terribly important. I mean, certainly when I started, it was felt that the love between a child and mother was much more powerful than that between a father and a child and that they had no role in development, for example.
So I think we built all these myths up about them from our cultural ideas and we just felt that there was really nothing to say about them, to be honest.
Brett McKay:
So you wrote a book called The Life of Dad, where you just bring in all the research that’s been done, psychological research, anthropological research, biological research on fatherhood and put it in a very reader-friendly format. And you start off the book with this line, “It is a little known fact, but fathers saved the human race.” So how did dad save the human race?
Anna Machin:
They really did. So we have two anatomical quirks as an ape. We have very, very large brains. They’re six times bigger than they should be for a mammal of our size. And we walk bipedally on two legs. So we have a very narrowed birth canal. And this has meant that we have to birth our babies much earlier than they should be. They should be gestating for much, much longer in the womb. And because of this, our babies are born what we call secondarily altritia, which basically means they’re born helpless. And because of this, unlike our fellow ape cousins who, if you see a chimpanzee baby, they’re rampaging through the trees pretty soon after birth, our children need everything giving to them and everything done for them when they’re newborns. And initially this started happening, this kind of issue started happening about 1.8 million years ago.
And at that point, female kin came together to help raise these very dependent offspring because obviously you can’t go forage, you can’t go and find food, you can’t find sources of water if you’re trying to deal with this very dependent baby. So babysitting happens, that kind of thing. But about half a million years ago, our brains took another really, really dramatic jump in size. And at that point, women could no longer help each other with their babies. They had to input so much into their own child to keep it alive that they couldn’t help each other. And so what happened next is the next genetically related person stepped in and that was dad. And at that point, human fatherhood evolved, which is a really, really rare thing in the mammalian line. There’s only 5% of mammals have investing fathers and we’re the only ape that has it.
So it’s a very rare thing to happen. But at that point, dad stepped in and ensured that moms could go on, carry on reproducing and ensured that these very, very dependent babies would grow to adulthood with the right support. So fathers took on this very, very important role at this point in terms of, in a way, taking the toddlers off their partner’s hand, taking the adolescents off the partner’s hands, taking up a role in teaching and supporting these sort of young children and young adults so that mom could focus on either being pregnant or nursing a newborn. And absolutely, if that had not happened, then our species would not have been able to replace the population and we would’ve died out.
Brett McKay:
Okay. So dad stepped in when our brains got really big and saved the human race. And you talk about, if you look across the anthropological research, across time and cultures, you found that there are two key characteristics of fatherhood. What are those two key characteristics?
Anna Machin:
What’s really interesting about fatherhood when you look at it around the world is it’s so different. And that stands out as compared to mothers because mothers are quite biologically tied, whereas fathers, because we’re not tied to pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding, fathers can be a little bit more flexible. So first of all, they always have this very flexible role. They’re called facultative, and that means they are the parent that reacts to changes in the environment that might, for example, risk the child’s survival. So they are the ones to switch roles very, very quickly to make sure that child survives. So that’s kind of the first one that they are very, very flexible. The second one is they have this role in, we kind of call it scaffolding the child’s entry into the world beyond the family. And that is very much based on two things. It’s based on being the parent who inputs into the developmental side that helps a child do that.
So when you step away from your family and you go into the broader social world, which for humans is incredibly complicated, there are lots of sets of skills you need to learn in terms of social interaction, pro-social behaviors, inhibition of inappropriate behaviors and emotions, these sorts of things. So fathers are the ones that input into that development, but they also teach. They are the teaching parent. They are the ones that teach the skills that are going to help that child survive in that environment. And because all those environments are different, what they teach is very different. And so you will see this real variability around the world, but what brings them all together is this focus on risk and this focus on helping the child survive in the world beyond the family by teaching them and by underpinning those behaviors, those traits that are going to help that child thrive in that environment.
Brett McKay:
Okay. So flexibility and teaching.
Anna Machin:
Yeah.
Brett McKay:
Yeah. And I guess the flexibility part goes to dads will adapt to help the child survive, to protect and provide and all that stuff. They’ll do what they have to do and that’s going to be different in cultures. And then beyond just mere survival, the dads will then teach the kids what they need to do to thrive outside of the family.
Anna Machin:
Absolutely. Yeah. So what we say, and there’s a very good model which was developed by an anthropologist called Robert Devine, which kind of explains why we see this variability in fathering around the world. And it is based on risk. So what a father does is he assesses the risk in his environment and he will then tailor his role to deal with that particular risk. So if you are in a very, very dangerous environment, maybe there’s a high diseases load or it’s a very violent society, the father’s role there is very much based upon the actual physical survival of that child. So it might be that he has to spend a lot of time defending the child. It might be that he has to spend a lot of time inputting into the child to make them strong enough to deal with the disease load, for example.
If your survival is okay, but economic hardship is the issue, is the risk in that environment, then a father spends a lot of time making sure the child knows how to make money, how to survive. And so in those societies you see a lot of teaching around how you can economically survive. So for example, if you’re a pastoralist, you spend a lot of time with your child in the fields showing them how to grow the crops or deal with the animals that are going to be the economic future for that child. And then if you look in the West, we’re okay in terms of our physical survival, we’re okay in terms of our economic survival, certainly compared to the third world. And therefore there, it’s actually your cultural and social survival that matters. And that’s why we have this kind of joke of the Western dad of making sure that the kid gets good work experience or tapping all their friends for entries into good universities, whatever it might be.
And that’s what a dad will focus on in the West. And it’s a really helpful model because I quite often get asked, what’s a good father? And my answer is a good father is very dependent on the environment because we see in the West, a good father is somebody who gets involved in that child’s life, nurtures them, does all the things that a mom can do, but also supports them, scaffolds them in their education, all that kind of thing. Well, that’s great in our environment, but if you’re in an environment where you’re going to get killed by a lion, that’s not going to be very helpful. We don’t need you to do all that. We actually just need you to be really strong and be able to run. So when people say to me, “What’s a good dad?” It’s very, very environment dependent.
Brett McKay:
I want to dig more into this key characteristic of dads that they teach their kids. I want to talk more, what sorts of things do you see across cultures that dads are teaching their children?
Anna Machin:
Again, it’s really there’s these two areas. It’s kind of like the social skills. So what you tend to see in all societies is fathers kind of, particularly with adolescents, will start taking the adolescents out with them. It might be that you’re a hunter gatherer, in which case you’re going to teach them the skills of the hunt. And you’re also going to teach them the social network relationships they need because hunting is a cooperative behavior so that they can build their own hunting groups so they can go and hunt and be successful. So it depends on what you need in that environment. And whether that be in a business environment in societies where economic risk is high, you take them to the market with you, take them to the meetings where prices for things are negotiated or business relationships are made or if you’re in the West, you take them to the golf course to meet your business buddies or whoever it might be.
We see this thing where particularly with adolescents, fathers have this real focus on preparing that child to be an adult. It’s that kind of focus of, right, okay, one day you’re going to be independent. I’m going to give you all those skills. And so we find that and what’s really interesting is humans are the only species on the planet that has childhood and adolescence. It’s called a life history stage. Well, all animals have three life history stages, which is infant, juvenile, adult. That’s it. Because we have such big brains, our offspring need lots and lots of time for that brain to grow and to learn everything. So we’ve added a couple which are childhood and adolescents. And particularly in adolescence is when fathers really come to the fore in terms of taking their children and teaching them what they’re going to need to deal with life going forward practically and also socially.
Brett McKay:
Yeah. If I look at my own fathering, I was an involved dad when my kids were babies, fed them, changed diapers and things like that. But it’s been interesting to see as they’ve gotten older, I feel like I’m doing more. I’m teaching them about. The other day, a few weeks ago, I took them to the bank to open up a checking account and taught them like, okay, here’s how a checking account works. And I made them talk to the bank person, give them their information. I was like, they need to know this stuff so once they turn 18, they’re out of the house. So I’m always thinking, what do I got to teach them about insurance? What do I got to teach them about car maintenance, things like that.
Anna Machin:
And you’re doing what a father does in our environment, these are all skills that your children need to know. They need to know so they can cope with life. And the fact that you told them they had to speak to the teller at the bank. Again, you’re scaffolding those social relationships that they’re going to have to build and be able to do to survive in our society. So it’s all about preparing them to be able to go out and be alone.
Brett McKay:
It’s been really interesting to see my shift. I’m thinking with my son, I’ve got maybe five more years with him in the house and I’m really thinking I need to spend more time with him. I’m willing to take my foot off the gas at work so that I can spend more time to teach him all the stuff that I think he needs to know before he goes out there on his own. It’s been interesting to observe in myself.
Anna Machin:
Yeah, absolutely. And I think that pattern is repeated over and over, that’s a really, really key time of fathers taking on this role. And we know also, I mean, what you’re doing is perfect for your son’s mental health, for example. We know that dads, particularly in adolescence, fathers are the biggest input into their child’s mental health. There’s something about being with your dad in adolescence that builds your self-esteem and reduces feelings of loneliness or reduces feelings of depression or anxiety. And there’s now a building body of work now of very good data showing this, that it’s actually dad. And it doesn’t have to be anything amazing. You don’t have to spend lots of money and do something amazing with your child. Just for example, the fact that you took them to a bank and did that with them, they will have felt, okay, my dad thinks I’m important to him.
He’s doing something with me to help me in my future. And that will have built his self-esteem.
Brett McKay:
I think it’s interesting you said that dads play a big role in social development of their kids because I think typically the stereotype is, well, women are better at social skills and things like that. What’s going on there? What are dads doing differently from moms when it comes to social development?
Anna Machin:
I think probably the difference is we have this kind of thing that women are good at, but what women are good at is kind of the emotional empathetic side of social skills, of that kind of building those really beautiful, empathetic relationships, kind of remembering all the sort of lovely autobiographical details about people’s lives and talking about them. When we say that fathers are involved in social development, what we’re talking about is kind of the skills that allow you to rub along in life, even if it’s just with strangers. And so if we look at preschool children, so preschool is like the first time you leave the comfort of your family who are probably a little bit more tolerant than most people and go out into the world as an independent being, your mom and dad are going to leave you at preschool, suddenly you’re on your own and you have to rub along with all these people who you’ve never met before.
And we know that dads have a bigger role, for example, in how well their children transition into preschool, how comfortable that is. We know that they have the bigger role in things like teaching them what we call pro-social skills. So pro-social skills are things like sharing, caring, and helping. So these tricks that allow you to get along with people. We know that in terms of social language development, fathers are more involved in social language development. And they’re also the ones that influence whether or not a child has what we would call antisocial behavior. So anti-social behavior is obviously behavior which might be inappropriate in terms of emotional level, inappropriate in terms of inhibiting unhelpful behaviors, possibly violence, that kind of thing. If you have a strong bond with your father and a strong attachment as a preschooler, you are much less likely to show those behaviors.
So fathers, it’s more about the rules of society. From me, you will get the rules of society and you will know how to behave in this world. Whereas I think moms, it’s much more about empathy and emotional connection maybe that they are more adept to that.
Brett McKay:
So something you do is you take readers through the research that shows that not only has evolution shaped moms to be moms, it’s also shaped dads to be dads. And it’s not just psychologically, there’s physiological changes that happen even before a baby is born, that happened in men. So let’s start with biology. How does a man’s biology change to prepare him for fatherhood even before the baby is born?
Anna Machin:
It’s really interesting. Yeah. So two things happen. The first is he goes through a hormonal change. And what happens is when a man becomes a father for the first time, his testosterone level drops and it never returns to pre-birth levels unless he loses complete contact with his child. So even in divorced fathers or separated fathers who still maintain contact, that testosterone level will stay low. And the reason for that is really, really important is because testosterone is the hormone of mating. So it’s really good at making you competitive to find a mate, and it’s very good at making you more attractive to the opposite sex. But when you have a child, we need your attention as a man to shift from mating to parenting. And therefore, the testosterone’s got to go because it’s not helpful at that point. And it does. And in fact, we shouldn’t really have been surprised by that finding because actually if we look at any species that have investing fathers, male in reptilian, bird life, they all have this testosterone drop to allow this behavior to shift to parenting.
But in humans, it’s important because what we found is men who have lower testosterone, fathers or not, are much more motivated to care for children and they’re much more empathetic to those children’s needs and much more receptive to dealing with what that child needs. So that testosterone drop is important to prime that man to be motivated to care. But also testosterone at high levels blocks some of the bonding hormones that are going to be important in you building a bond with your baby, particularly dopamine and oxytocin. And so that drop in testosterone also kind of releases the power of those two bonding hormones, which makes it easier for you to build a bond with your child. So it’s a really, really important hormonal change. And I think quite often when I speak to the dads who I study, they will say they can kind of feel it because certainly once they’ve had a kid, they find that they are much more emotional and they’re much more influenced by stories about children or things you see on the news which are difficult to emotionally upsetting, they find themselves much more vulnerable to those sorts of things.
So the fathers I follow certainly say you can feed that. The other thing is your brain changes. And this is actually identical to moms. The same brain changes occur. So we see changes in the very core of your brain, which is where your unconscious brain sits, all your emotions. So we see changes linked to nurturing and attachment behaviors and we see changes in your amygdala, your amygdala, which is where you have risk detection and that increases in size because obviously a big job of being a parent is that you detect risk at the environment for your child. And then if we look in the cortical areas of the brain, which is that walnuty bit on the outside, which is where your conscious brain sits, you see increases in gray and white matter in sort of areas of the brain such related to planning and attention and problem solving, which are all key to being a parent, but also in areas linked to empathizing because obviously you need to understand your child’s emotional state and their emotional needs to be able to meet those needs essentially.
So what I always say is actually men are as primed biologically to parent as women are. Just because you don’t see this massive physical change in men, there’s no big belly or anything like that, it doesn’t mean nothing’s happening. Something is very, very definitely happening.
Brett McKay:
And this is all happening before birth?
Anna Machin:
Not necessarily, no. We still don’t quite know when the testosterone drop happens. There’s a longitudinal study actually happening in the States at the moment trying to identify that because we have mixed messages coming from previous studies as to whether it occurs in pregnancy or whether it occurs just after birth. We’re not sure. So we need to work that out. In terms of the brain changes, those happen after birth, but they happen after birth in women as well.
Brett McKay:
Interesting.
Anna Machin:
And that’s to do with interaction with the baby. The interaction with the baby prompts your brain to kind of rewire itself and increase neuronal connections.
Brett McKay:
Yeah. The testosterone drop, I’m curious about what they’ll find on that because I read that, your testosterone drops as a man whenever you have a kid. I always figure as well, because you’re not sleeping and you’re stressed out and that causes your testosterone to drop. But I’m curious if they can do some sort of study where they make sure men get appropriate amounts of sleep for, I don’t know how they do this. And would there still be that testosterone drop?
Anna Machin:
Oh, it definitely will still occur. It definitely was and it’s very significant. It’s not the kind of drop that you would get from being a bit stressed or having a lack of sleep. I mean, it’s about a third of your testosterone goes.
Brett McKay:
Oh wow.
Anna Machin:
So it’s not a small drop. It’s a significant drop.
Brett McKay:
Didn’t they do a study where they looked at dads who they’d fathered a child, but they didn’t associate with the child? And I guess there wasn’t that same sort of testosterone drop because they weren’t around the baby.
Anna Machin:
No, so you have to interact with your baby. If you haven’t interacted, you won’t get it. And certainly even if you did, and let’s say you then separated from your partner and you lost contact with your child, your testosterone will go back up because you are then back in that mating field, not in that parenting field. So the testosterone will go back up to aid you in finding another mate.
Brett McKay:
Okay. So when a baby’s born, a man’s testosterone’s going to drop, that’s going to make them more nurturing, less competitive with less of that desire to go out there and make because they’re going to focus on this child. It allows those neurotransmitters that allow bonding like oxytocin to have more of effect and then your brain’s going to change to be more geared towards relationships. Let’s talk about this one. You talk about the research that’s been done on a man’s identity developing into that of a father. The research shows this happens during pregnancy. Walk us through that research.
Anna Machin:
Some of it happens during pregnancy. The full transition actually takes until about 18 months after birth in fathers, what we call the period of transition. But certainly in many fathers, it starts in pregnancy, particularly if you’re the sort of father who imagines being an involved father. So we find fathers who feel that they want to take on that role tend to have more of an identity shift during pregnancy because they tend to spend a lot of time kind of daydreaming about their baby, about what they’re going to do with their baby. People who are going to be involved, fathers tend to, for example, talk to the bump more. They tend to be more involved in things like antenatal appointments, that kind of thing. So those fathers who envisage that being their role, we see quite a shift in identity during pregnancy. And also what’s lovely is if you are that kind of father, and particularly if you do spend a lot of time daydreaming and having positive thoughts and interacting with the bump, you actually start to bond with the baby before it’s born, which is really important because we hear a lot from fathers that they feel sometimes quite distant from the baby during pregnancy because obviously they don’t have that physical connection that the mother has.
But what we are now trying to encourage fathers to do is start to build a relationship during pregnancy as much as they can because we also know that if you do that, you will find it much easier after birth to deal with maybe the difficult times that come with having a baby. As you mentioned, no sleep, crying constantly, whatever it might be. It helps you after birth to actually maintain and grow on that foundation you’ve already made during pregnancy. So
Brett McKay:
What are some things that dads to be can do to develop that relationship with their child even before he or she was born?
Anna Machin:
I know dads find this really uncomfortable, but absolutely. Seriously, interact with the bump as much as you can, and particularly in terms of talking to it or singing to it so that your baby can hear you and it’s really important. So just let it hear your voice. You don’t even have to talk to it and read a book to it. Read, I don’t know, read the sports pages. It doesn’t really matter what you read, but let it hear your voice. It can’t tell that you’re touching the bump, for example, but that could help you if you put your hand on the bump and you can feel the baby moving. That’s much more of a physical connection for you and it will also release oxytocin. So those are two things you could do and don’t underestimate the power of daydreaming. So take some time to imagine who your baby’s going to be and what are you looking forward to doing with your baby, that kind of thing.
Because we have a very suggestive imagination, a very suggestive brain, and you can start to build bonds within your imagination. So it’s very important to just take that time to maybe have a think about what you’re looking forward to as a father and what you’re going to introduce your child to, for example.
Brett McKay:
And I imagine doing those typical nesting things, putting together the crib, going with your –
Anna Machin:
That does help, but we actually find that those are very practical things and they’re great, but we really do find those things which engage the emotional brain more tend to be more powerful than something practical.
Brett McKay:
That’s interesting. So you mentioned that it takes about 18 months after birth for a father to really fully form that identity as a dad. And this is related, I want to talk about the father-child bond after birth. So does that happen right away for a lot of men or does it usually take a lot of time, that 18 months?
Anna Machin:
It usually takes time and there’s a reason for that. And I do think it’s something we need to prepare new fathers for because we all have this mythology that your baby will come out and you’ll feel this instant, incredibly strong emotional bond to this baby. And some people do, but actually it’s quite rare, particularly in fathers. And that’s because fathers don’t have the head start of childbirth in particular. So childbirth is like a tidal wave of bonding hormones as a byproduct of giving birth. So a mother is getting oxytocin and dopamine and beta endorphin coursing through her brain when she’s giving birth. So she has a head start. Fathers have to build their bond through interaction. That’s the only way you can do it. And when a baby is born, they’re actually pretty useless and you certainly don’t get anything back from them in terms of two-way interaction tell at the very earliest six weeks when you might get a smile.
So for fathers, that can be really hard because you’re not actually getting the interaction you need to do that. So we have this thing where a delay in bonding, and really the bond only starts to broaden and deepen when you can start having that reciprocal interactive relationship. And that starts at about really six months when you can start playing with your baby, when you start to get a real comeback from them of giggling and babbling and them being pleased to see you and you starting to do very gentle, what we call rough and tumble play, which is quite a physical play. I don’t know, airplaneing around the room or bouncing them on your knee or tickling them or anything like that, that’s rough and tumble play. And only when you can start to do that, which is a really good release of bonding hormones for baby and father, do we start to see a deepening and broadening of the bond.
So if I talk to my dads, I always talk to them just after birth and we do quite a big interview at the age of six months when the baby’s six months, they will say that they did feel something when the baby was born, but it was very much a, “You are genetically related to me, therefore I care for you.” But it wasn’t a deep emotional love, but if you ask them at six months, they go, “Oh my God, it’s categorical. Different now how I feel about this baby. And so generally, most fathers from about six months to 18 months, that’s the time when you start to really feel the deep bond. And what we say is by 18 months, most fathers have fully transitioned into the role of being a father and feel very much that that’s an important part of their identity.
Brett McKay:
So I think that’s some good advice for dads to be, if they’re worried about, am I going to feel attached to my kid? You might not.
Anna Machin:
Yeah, you really don’t. And don’t think it makes you a bad father. The other thing they do is they look at their partner and because she’s had this head start, sometimes she will appear to have a much deeper bond than you. And you start comparing yourself. Don’t do that because she has had a head start and it will come. It absolutely will come. And it doesn’t mean your baby doesn’t like you and it doesn’t mean that you’re doing a bad job. It’s just basically biology. That’s what’s hindering the formation of the bond. And if you give it time, it will come.
Brett McKay:
Let’s talk more about this rough and tumble play because this is interesting because you see this not just in humans, but this happens in other species, other mammals as well. The dad, if the dad’s around, will engage in roughhousing with their kids. What role does roughhousing and play serve in forming the father-child bond? Why do we do it?
Anna Machin:
There’s two reasons we do it actually, and you’re absolutely right. A lot of mammals play and it’s developmentally really, really important. But there’s two reasons why humans do it. The first is to build a bond. And particularly in the time poor West where we still have a model of fathers being the primary wage earners and quite often away from the house, they have to try and form this bond quite quickly in a quite time efficient way. And rough and tumble play is brilliant to that because it’s very fast and because it’s very physical. It’s a real driver for a release of a lot of the bonding hormones very, very quickly. So it works well from that point of view. The other reason why it’s important is it’s developmentally very important because we live in a very social world, which is all about give and take.
And rough and tumble play is like an extreme form of give and take. You have to play with that person. It’s quite a challenging way of playing. It’s quite a risky way of playing, but you have to be very good at reading the other person to make sure it’s still fun, that it hasn’t gone over into being actually a little bit too rough, for example. So it’s actually very important developmentally because it teaches the child about reciprocity. It teaches them about empathy and reading the other person’s emotional state, and it teaches them about confronting challenge and risk. Because one of the key jobs of a dad in relation to this role of scaffolding the child into the world beyond the family is building mental and physical resilience. Dads are the parent for resilience building. Moms do it, but not to the same extent that dads do it.
And so this is the first example of, this is going to be challenging, this is going to be a little bit risky this way of playing. And I’m going to help you to learn how to deal with challenge and not give up as soon as life gets difficult, for example. So it’s a really incredibly important and actually quite underestimated behavior. And when dads come to me, when I give talks and say, “What’s the one thing I can do?” I say, “Play, play with your child because if you can rough and tumble play, not every dad’s comfortable with it. Most are, but not all, but play with your child because it’s unbelievably important.”
Brett McKay:
Okay. So the roughhousing, that’s going to help you build a bond with your child, all those endorphins.
Anna Machin:
Really really effective because it releases — so touch is the major releaser of bonding hormones. There’s a lot of touch involved. Exercise and physicality releases beta endorphin, which is the hormone of long-term love. Laughter releases beta endorphin. So all of these things all come out in rough and tumble play. So you’re getting this triple whammy of bonding hormones. So it’s a very powerful way of doing it.
Brett McKay:
And that idea that roughhousing can help develop social development. I’ve seen that in my own kids when I roughhoused with them when they were younger. Yeah, you’re teaching them how to read and how to know when they’ve taken things too far. When maybe they do something that’s a little too serious, you have to be a little straight, Hey, no, that’s a little too much. And that’s a skill you take over into life when you’re adult social interaction.
Anna Machin:
Absolutely. You’re teaching them how to read other people and how to know about that social give and take, about how to do it in a way that doesn’t take things too far and doesn’t upset other people.
Brett McKay:
Okay. So when a child’s born, there’s some biological changes that are going to happen in a man that’s going to affect their psychology as well. But you also talk about how a father’s own upbringing influences how they’ll parent. What does that research say?
Anna Machin:
Yeah, it really does. And we know this from men who, for example, haven’t had fathers in their life going back. So fathering is actually less hereditary than mothering is in terms of genetic heritability. So fathers are very influenced by what they see around them in terms of what they grew up with. And certainly I’ve had fathers on my studies who, if they haven’t had an example of fathering, do really, really struggle. They don’t quite know what to do. So we know very much that the parenting crosses generations and certainly you get a lot of ideas about how you’re going to be as a father from your father. Sometimes in opposition to your father, quite often I will say to dads, “What kind of father do you think you want to be or that you are?” And they will say, “I want to be exactly the opposite to my father,” for example.
So they will father in opposition to the example they were given or others will say, “My dad was amazing. I want to be like my dad.” So it is a major influence because there’s much less genetic heritability of fathering behavior than there is of mothering.
Brett McKay:
So it sounds like if you’re a dad and maybe you had a bad relationship with your own father, you’re not destined to repeat that.
Anna Machin:
Absolutely not. Absolutely not. No, you really, really aren’t. And particularly if you recognize it, you’re already halfway there, to be honest. And what I always say to those men is, okay, your dad either wasn’t there or he wasn’t a good role model for you, but just think about your friends’ fathers or maybe uncles or grandfathers or even teachers or who were the men in your life growing up who you looked up to and take it from them who you want to be.
Brett McKay:
Yeah. We wrote an article several years ago about being a transitional character in your family. This came from a marriage and relationship scholar, Carl Fred Broderick. He described these transitional characters where maybe you came from a family that was just broken and there’s a lot of problems. You can intentionally change that. And they’ve done research. There’s people in any lineage where things were going this way because that’s how everyone did family, but then someone decided, I’m not going to do that anymore. I’m going to do something different.
Anna Machin:
Absolutely. And you can be that person. And as I said, if you’re conscious of it, then you’re literally halfway there already because you’ve acknowledged it and you know that that’s not what you want to be. So
Brett McKay:
Let’s talk about personality. Personality is partly genetic. A lot of it’s genetic. How does a man’s personality influence his parenting style?
Anna Machin:
It really does depend actually. So we know, for example, that people who are much more open obviously deal with being. I mean, moms and dads deal with being parents much more easily if you kind of have an open personality type because you are willing to be a little bit more relaxed about it. If you are more on the neurotic end of things, then it can be very, very difficult. And certainly our personalities affect how we perceive a situation. So if you have an open personality, then maybe you’ve got a screaming toddler in a high chair who won’t put their shoes on and is chucking their food everywhere. You might be able to perceive that as not quite so catastrophic as someone, for example, who’s from the neurotic end of personality. So personality does affect it. It’s not a really, really big effector actually, but it is something that comes into some of the ways that people perceive things.
Certainly I’ve found that particularly for example around childbirth. So I’ve had fathers who objectively have actually had very easy childbirths, but for them it was a very traumatic experience. Whereas I’ve had men who, again, have objectively had the most awful experience with childbirth and actually are just like, “Well, we were in the right place. We had the right people around us. It all turned out fine. I’m fine.” And so actually I always think with parenting in general, you have to be very open to how people perceive things because we might look in from the outside and go, “Well, that’s fine, but your personality, your life experience is going to affect actually how you deal with something.” So we should never impose our own ideas about whether something’s easy, difficult, whatever onto somebody.
Brett McKay:
Any advice or anything the research says about what if you’re a dad who goes over to that neurotic side? Can you do anything to tamper that down?
Anna Machin:
Yeah. I mean, I think it’s hard because if you have that personality type, it’s quite hard to step back from it. What I would say is, and in a way, childbirth and having children is the ultimate test if you are at the neurotic end of things because nothing is predictable. Literally nothing is predictable. You don’t know what’s going to happen with the birth. I mean, here in the UK, it’s hysterical, you’re made to write out a birth plan of what you would like to happen. So I don’t want any drugs and I’d like to be in the birthing pool and I’d like this piece of music playing. And quite often that just goes straight out the window because you can’t predict what’s happening. And I think it is hard. What I would say to people who are at that end of personality is talking is really powerful.
So if you have concerns, if you’re feeling worried about what might happen, talk to people. One of the things that’s really important, and I think this for all fathers, is babies have a tendency to be born at night. And particularly if you have struggled, particularly with the birth, for example, have someone who you can call even at two o’clock in the morning to talk to about it. So have them lined up, ready, and know that you’re not disturbing them. They will be perfectly happy to be woken up and talked to because I think that is one of the toughest times is walking out into the car park at the hospital on your own, two o’clock in the morning. This amazing thing has just happened, but you might have found it very difficult and you’ve got literally nobody to talk to about it. So I think that’s really important.
Brett McKay:
Some of the interesting research in your book was how mom and dads differ in how they view the family and the relationships that constitute the family. He walks through that research.
Anna Machin:
Yeah. It’s really interesting because moms and dads view how the family network is built in a very different way. So moms tend to look at families as a set of dyadic relationships, independent dyadic relationships. So mom and child, mom and child too, mom and father, for example. Whereas fathers look at it from a sort of top-down view. So let’s say there’s you, your partner and a baby. So they look at it in the triad and it’s a triadic view. So what tends to happen is dads are much more affected by conflict between mom and dad in terms of their relationship with their baby than moms are. If mom and dad are arguing, a mom, because she sees the family as a load of dyads, can separate that from the relationship she has with her baby. It will not affect the relationship she has with her baby.
For fathers, if dad and mom are arguing, because he sees it in this triadic way, it will affect the relationship he has with his baby. And that’s why we have to understand that different view. And we find actually generally that fathers are much more impacted by the quality of their relationship with their partner in terms of family functioning, in terms of their mental health than mothers are. So the actual relationship and the state of the relationship is actually critical to a father in terms of how well he transitions to being a father, how good his mental health is, how well he builds a bond with his child.
Brett McKay:
Yeah, you write here. And while families are made up of their constituent relationships, the ability to picture them as a whole organism as well as individuals and couples enables fathers to have the strength to confront the difficulties that will inevitably challenge them as they move through life.
Anna Machin:
Yeah, because they see the whole picture essentially. And that is how families operate. Families don’t operate in isolation of dyads. They operate as a very fluid but cohesive system where everybody impacts everybody else.
Brett McKay:
So how do these differences work together? So how does the system view of a family and the didactic relationship, do they work together or do they work against each other against cross currents?
Anna Machin:
It’s interesting. Obviously as long as the relationship with the mother is healthy, everything is fine. The problem comes when there’s conflict and then no, they work against because you’ve got one system with the mother where it’s not affecting her relationship with the baby. So in a way she can go into that relationship with the baby and feel protected and safe in that relationship. Whereas fathers, it’s going to affect everybody. It’s going to affect every aspect of his family life. And I think that’s quite hard sometimes. Those differences are quite hard to resolve because you’ve got people who perceive things completely differently. And that is why in my book, I write a whole chapter on the parenting relationship because actually the parenting relationship is the environment in which that child will develop. So we have to make sure that those parents and that relationship is as strong and healthy as it can be before the baby is born.
And I constantly advocate for antenatal classes to have at least one week on preparing the relationship and explaining that dads see the family in a different way to moms and the fact that actually the relationship with the mother is a major factor in how the dad will father. And I think we need to acknowledge that and actually help new families by preparing the parents before the baby is born.
Brett McKay:
So yeah, it’d be like marital counseling, giving advice on how to do conflict resolution, things like that.
Anna Machin:
Exactly. Absolutely. And then give them the tools because there’s nothing. Having a baby, having a young baby is probably the biggest pressure you will ever put on a relationship because it can be so hard. And to send couples into that with absolutely no tools at all, I think is actually pretty neglectful. I think it’s something that you really should prepare people for.
Brett McKay:
And then after birth, after the child’s born, maybe new dads, what they need to think about is keep nurturing that relationship with your wife. Take them out on dates, make sure that’s strong and healthy because that’s going to carry over to your child as well.
Anna Machin:
It completely is. I think we need to put that responsibility on both parents to say you have to nurture your relationship because as I said, that is the nest that your child grows in essentially. So you have to nurture it. You have to not see it as selfish to say, yeah, tonight we’re going to go out together or take up that offer of babysitting from whoever’s offered to babysit and do that and go out and remind each other who you are really.
Brett McKay:
I imagine that can be harder for moms because they really take on that identity and a child can just really, because children, they can suck up all your bandwidth if you let them.
Anna Machin:
And you’ve probably had this experience, you go out and you spend your whole two hours talking about your children anyway, even though they’re not there. So yeah, it is really hard. But I think if we can prepare couples during. There are very few things that you know are going to happen and you know when roughly they’re going to happen. And having a child is one of them. You have like nine months where you know this is going to happen. So take that nine months and prepare the relationship to deal with this new member basically.
Brett McKay:
I think if you already have kids, if you know someone who’s going to have a kid, offer to babysit, that can be one thing you can do to help support him. Absolutely. Yeah, exactly. But you guys go on a date.You guys need to have a night to yourself.
Anna Machin:
And even if they don’t want to go out, say, “I’ll go upstairs with the baby. You sit in your living room, in your kitchen, I don’t know, have a drink together, have a glass of wine, whatever, and take some time. I’m just upstairs. The baby is fine.” So if you’re kind of the parent who doesn’t want to quite leave the baby, that’s fine, but just take some time where you do not have a baby attached to you.
Brett McKay:
What do you hope readers walk away thinking after they finish your book?
Anna Machin:
I hope they go away kind of busting a few myths they might have had about fathers. First of all, that fathers are like a secondary parent. I really hate that idea that fathers are like the secondary parent who kind of takes over if mom’s doing something else. I would like them to place dad on the pedestal next to mum because actually human babies, human children have evolved to need both. And so that’s why dad exists. And so I would like them to see father as a true co-parent rather than a secondary carer. And I would like them to see that actually both parents are biologically primed with an instinct to do this. And so I would like it to be seen like that, that fathers are not this useless thing that we can just get rid of, that doesn’t really matter if he’s around or not, that they are a co-parent, that they are equal to mom and instinct, and that they have a powerful bond to their child, which is different to moms, but is just as powerful and just as important.
Brett McKay:
Well, Anna, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn more about the book and your work?
Anna Machin:
Well, there’s lots on my website, which is annamachin.com. I’m also on Twitter and Instagram @dramachin. So there’s lots of videos and things on there.
Brett McKay:
Fantastic. Well, Anna Machin, thanks for your time. It’s been a pleasure.
Anna Machin:
Thank you.
Brett McKay:
My guest today is Anna Machin. She’s the author of the book, Life of Dad. It’s available on amazon.com. You can find more information about our work at our website, annamachin.com. Until next time, this is Brett McKay reminding you to not only listen to the podcast, but to put what you’ve heard into action.
