It’s well known that pregnancy and childbirth affect women’s brains and hormones: some of us have years of “baby brain”. Research has understandably focused less on men, who don’t undergo the same physical changes.
But Darby Saxbe — a professor of psychology at the University of Southern California — fills an important gap in our understanding with Dad Brain, a refreshing new take on fatherhood through the lens of neurology and hormones. The book describes how fatherhood shapes men and what fathers bring to children that is distinctive.
Saxbe combines academic data with stories about the men in her own life: her husband, her stepfather and her birth father, whose struggles with solo parenting she came to admire. “Compared to my mother, a loving but frequently distracted workaholic, my dad was the more patient parent,” she concludes.