Fatherhood Is Not a Side Quest: Dr. Anna Machin on Raising Boys & Saving Society

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1:00Elliott:Hello and welcome to To Be A Boy with me, Jo Librealy. And me, Elliot Ray. Today's guest is Dr. Anna Machen, an evolutionary anthropologist and one of the world's leading experts on the psychology and biology of fatherhood. Anna's research explores how becoming a father changes men's brains, hormones, behaviour and relationships and why fathers matter so profoundly, not just for children but for parents and society as a whole. She's the author of The Life of Dad and has spent years translating academic research into practical insights that challenge deeply embedded stereotypes about men and care.

1:41Elliott:Through her work, Anna has become a powerful voice for rethinking fatherhood, not just as a peripheral role, but as a central and transformative human experience. Dr. Anna Machen, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much. That was such a lovely introduction. Thank you. I am so excited about speaking to you. I wrote about your work in my book, which was published in 2020. So I have been admiring you from afar all that time. Now I get to ask you questions. So it's a very exciting moment for me. So my first question, which is what I really researched about you when doing my book, was about the cultural narrative that casts men as these sort of hapless sidekick parents who can't use a washing machine and, you know, fumble around and just have to be told what to do.

2:34Elliott:And your research shows that both men and women are biologically primed to parent and to care for children. Can you explain to us what the science actually tells us? Absolutely, yes. So contrary to popular belief, fatherhood's not a social construct. It's not like a role we've all decided we were going to have in a society. It's an evolved role like motherhood. And it evolved because it was critical to the survival of children. And to enable men to be as good as possible at this, evolution selected for a series of brain and hormone changes, which, yeah, prime them to be good parents. So the brain changes they go through are actually very similar to those that women undergo when they first have a child.

3:15And like women, they occur after pregnancy and they're a result of interacting with the baby. And they are there really to promote the areas of the brain which you need for parenting. So we see increases in gray and white matter in the core of the brain, the really ancient bit of the brain, which is where sort of nurturing and attachment and risk detection are. And then in the outer areas of the brain, we see increases in gray and white matter related to empathy, which is obviously critical if you're going to be a parent and understand your child's needs and be able to meet them. But also we see it in those really key skills like planning and problem solving and attending and all the things you need to sort of just on a daily basis, deal with the endless hurdles that are thrown in your way as a parent and the fact that you need to plan for at least two hours to get out the front door and all those sorts of things.

4:00It's there to prime the man to be able to do that as well as the woman. And hormonally, it's a really fascinating mix. actually. The biggest change is men experience a drop in testosterone when they become a father for the first time. And that could be up to a third of their testosterone, which I know for some men is a bit challenging, but it really does have to occur. And it occurs in actually a lot of reptiles and mammals and birds that have investing fathers because testosterone is really good if you want to find a mate. It makes you competitive, it makes you attractive, but it's not great if we need you to focus in and invest in your family.

4:35And so it disappears for that reason. And the other benefit of that, and this is what I say to men who panic a little bit, is that really high testosterone blocks the efficacy of dopamine and oxytocin. So people with very high testosterone, their dopamine and oxytocin doesn't really have as much of an impact on them, particularly in bonding. And obviously bonding's key. And so by dropping that testosterone, we're really releasing the potential of the oxytocin and dopamine, meaning that the man can form a really tight bond with his new baby. So that change is absolutely critical. We also see increases in oxytocin, which everybody knows of as sort of a bonding hormone.

5:09We see increases in dopamine, which is attached to motivation. So the motivation to care. We see increases in a hormone known as prolactin. And prolactin is seen in women. It's a parenting hormone. It sort of motivates you to care, underpins your caring behaviors. But we also see an increase in fathers promoting those areas as well. You know, we see a whole gamut of hormonal changes and they are all there to prime that man to be a good parent just alongside a mum. And one of the one of the cultural tropes we hear is that mothers are instinctive parents and fathers have to learn. It couldn't be further from the truth.

5:44Both parents are equally primed to be good at this in an instinctive way. But as anyone who's ever become a parent knows, there's also for both mum and dad a huge amount to learn as well.

5:55Elliott:and that has to those hormones change and those brain changes happen do they after pregnancy so once the baby arrives is it about being deeply involved in caring so they have to spend quality time with the child yeah so it's very much to do with interaction and particularly the brain changes there is a really a direct relationship between how involved you are and the extent of those brain changes so the more you get involved yourself in caring and nurturing and all those behaviors the greater those brain changes will be because the brain is plastic and it's responding to that input that behavioral input and yeah the hormone change is the same all the changes that happen in men happen following birth and with interaction with the child you don't have to cohabit with the child and we need to stress that strongly because there are many cultures in fact where fathers and mothers don't cohabit but we still see these changes it's all based on interaction so there is so many positives with enabling men to spend time with their children in those early days because as you've articulated through the hormones it means that you it means marriages is surely more likely to last longer it means that children have two parents rather than one parent who's really stressed out of their minds and so it gives them access to you know more adults and more care there are so many positives that are coming off the back of this why do you think then fatherhood has been so overlooked in science and policy compared to motherhood I think because there are several reasons for a long time we did sort of and it's partly an economic and social reason you know because women were the ones who take off most of the time particularly you know decades ago or always took the time off to raise the child you know we had a situation where you know some decades ago you know once you had a baby you didn't go back to work and therefore the focus was always on what's happening to mothers how do we support mothers and we had this very strong idea from the Victorian period that fathers were there for two reasons they were there to earn the money and they were there to discipline and that's a very strong cultural reason and because of that really nobody was particularly interested in what was happening and certainly from our idea of what masculinity was it's not masculine to nurture and it's not masculine to care so we're not going to promote those ideas for men doing that and we're not going to research what happens to them when they do it's a very western-centric view there are many cultures in the world where that's never been the position.

8:14And certainly men did not evolve to breadwin. That's a cultural imposition we play. That is a social construct. So it's very much down to social ideas about fatherhood, ideas about the economics, the politics of where women should be. And it's led to this idea that fathers aren't important and that really nothing occurs to them at all when they become a father.

8:36Elliott:So we can see from that that it is harmful not giving fathers access to their children in those early days, you know, taking them away and forcing them back into this breadwinning role very early on. We have the worst paternity benefit in Europe, as you well know, two weeks percentily for£182 a week and one in four. Dads don't even take those two weeks off because they can't afford it. The damage that that policy is doing to children and to fathers must be huge. How do you feel about that policy? It absolutely is. No, I mean, it's outrageous. You know, obviously, we're currently campaigning for six weeks.

9:18Ideally, someone asked me the other day, what would you want to see? And I would like to see at least six months, if not a year, to be honest, from a child development point of view. But, you know, OK, we'll go for six weeks to start with, you know, trying to achieve what we can. But no, it's absolutely critical. It's critical for the father because, you know, It's very obvious when a woman becomes a mother. It's an unbelievably physiological and physical process. The pregnancy, the childbirth, it's very obvious something has changed for her and that she needs that time off to process that partly as well as care for her baby.

9:49With men, actually something very similar is going on, but because we don't have that amazingly obvious physiological process, it looks like it's not. So we throw men back into work when they've actually experienced what is arguably the biggest transition a man can undergo, psychologically and biologically. And we do that with no support and no recognition. So first of all, that's not good for him. We are currently living in a world where men have this constant tension between wanting to be involved fathers. They've now been told that's the ideal. And obviously, I'm partly to blame for that, probably with the evidence I've shown.

10:20But, you know, that's the ideal. But then we've got a work culture that hasn't changed. You've still got to come back to work. We might mention your baby once when you would come back. And then we're not going to mention it again. Don't you dare ask flexible working, any of that sort of thing. That shows a lack of ambition. It's not masculine. So they've got this, actually, we're at a really critical point, I think, for men's mental health after having children because they've got this horrible tension. And what happens quite often, actually, is they burn out because they're trying to achieve both things.

10:47And there literally is not the capacity to do that. So it's really important that we give them that space and time. It's important for the child, because from a developmental point of view, even though babies don't do a huge amount in those first few weeks, and particularly if mum's breastfeeding, they're very mum focused. dad is inputting into child development from the moment he holds that baby it's absolutely critical and as you said earlier you know children actually benefit from all those different inputs if you just even put them with one person they're not getting the full developmental environment so we need that other input and for mum herself you know having a baby is a massive thing you know particularly for fad and cesarean i hear such awful stories from men who feel such guilt and such trauma from leaving their wives or their partners at home after two weeks when they've had a very traumatic birth or they're ill or they've had a cesarean.

11:37You know, we need, the father needs to be there to support the mum as well. So there are so many arguments and, you know, particularly the child development argument is so powerful. We now know that fathers have an independent, unique role in child development. It's not as an add-on to mum, it's unique. And if a child doesn't get that input, we are now also finding that the outcomes of not having that input are really quite scary. So it's really important that we give men the space to be fathers, essentially.

12:06Elliott:Could you elaborate a bit further on what the output, the output being quite scary, could look like? Yeah, so there's been a couple of really, quite a few big studies recently on looking at children who have been raised without a father in their life, whether it be their biological father or another father figure. And the outcomes are, you know, increased risk of, particularly if you're a boy, unfortunately, increased risk of being involved in the criminal justice system, increased risk of antisocial behavior for both boys and girls, increased risk of poor educational attainment, increased risk of addiction, increased risk of risky sexual behavior, particularly if you're a girl.

12:42so there are lots and lots of outcomes that that are negative for children coming from this and you know those all stem from the unique role fathers have and the uni they they underpin two particular areas of child development they underpin the building of resilience and that ultimately leads to mental health and they underpin what we call they scaffold the child's entry into the world beyond the family so what that means is they are really there to underpin all those behaviors which make you a good social operator socially acceptable they also for example underpin at school appropriate learning behavior you know understanding that you know you listen respectfully you debate respectfully you you know respect other people's opinions you engage you attend all those sorts of things those are underpinned by fathers so we can see this trajectory that where children don't get that that appropriate father input we can see where those outcomes come from yeah essentially yeah and you know we're also seeing now particularly with boys particularly around the whole horrendous term toxic masculinity which i think is just the worst term ever that we're seeing that you know boys who don't grow up with that father figure do struggle with ideas of what is a positive masculinity and being you know being a boy is a really positive there are so many positive masculine attributes but there is a void there which is not being filled unfortunately by father figures it's being filled by unfortunately the manosphere and that's why they're struggling because they don't know how to be in this world that's partly told them they're toxic.

14:07So we really need those fathers to be involved in those children's lives because they do bring this very special developmental input. Yeah, I definitely relate to that. I think when I think about my own childhood and just how much I didn't understand I was learning from my dad, even in just terms of how to be a husband and how to communicate in a healthy way. And there's so much I did and do continue to take from him. why do you think that this part of the fatherhood conversation has been quite niche like I think the conversation around the importance of dads and the impact of dads on children has been a little bit sidelined and has been a niche conversation we've been scared to have the conversation why do you think that is the case I think it's partly because I think people see it kind of a little bit like a zero-sum game so if we're talking about fathers we're taking something away from mothers partly and that's not what we're doing and I think it's also we are very sensitive and I am very sensitive to those families which don't have a father involved single mother families because this is not about denigrating single mothers and saying you're not doing a good job you're failing your children that's not what it's saying what it's actually saying is and that's the work we're trying to do now moving forward is actually your child needs this input and actually why the hell as a mother should you have to do everything we need to provide these families with people who might already be in their circle who can be social fathers so a social father is someone who's not involved in conception but kind of steps up and does the job and social fathers are a real phenomenon outside the west it's just they haven't come through our door particularly and that's what we're trying to encourage is is to actually raise awareness of the fact that a father can be a social father kids just need that model in their lives or you know we don't really talk about social mothers because to be honest we don't have much of an issue with motherlessness but we do have an issue with fatherlessness but the other way around if a child hasn't got a mother in their life they need a social mother children evolve to have the input of both of those roles um and i'm not interested in whether they're married it's the nuclear family i'm not interested in your sexuality i couldn't give a you know i'm not bothered about any of that you just have to have these two roles in your children's lives but i do think it's partly because of a sensitivity around yeah not saying that the single mothers can't do it because that's not what we're saying they're trying you know absolutely working their hardest it's in a relentless role to have but in a way we're actually saying let's try and ease that a little bit because having the whole responsibility for the development of your children on your shoulders is massive and actually if we can find social fathers to help which are acceptable within that family then we should really facilitate that yeah and i think i think you've articulated it very well then and it's to say that you know you can be a single mom and still raise a healthy boy it helps to have a dad and social dad around of course that adds value and i think a lot of mums recognize that too like lads need dads obviously you know sonia yeah and she has an organization that matches young boys with father figures and she says a lot of the people that come to her are solo parents single mums who will say actually my my son really needs a male role model in their life and that will be her main customer is that is the mum absolutely absolutely absolutely and that all comes from the fact that you know I mean I was talking to someone this morning and I said you know the last part the last time someone I mean I'm an evolutionary scientist so this is obviously about evolution but the last time a human child was raised by one person alone was 1.8 million years ago you know human children are not evolved to be raised by one person partly because it's really hard to do because human children are ruddy hard work but we have to acknowledge the fact that they need all these different inputs they just do and it's not a political statement it's a biological fact and and if we can facilitate that then we need to do that

17:57Elliott:and they the idea of social fathers because I know that many single mothers listening to this will think I just don't have that many men in my life I I have sisters or you know I I was also raised by a single mom and I I know of somebody in particular I'm thinking of that has three boys she says she doesn't have any access to any men in her life they're certainly not part of her family she doesn't have many male friends how involved do these social fathers need to be can you get that from things like football clubs or sports yes you absolutely can so a social father doesn't have to be someone who's in inputting a huge number of hours and it certainly doesn't have to be a family member or even a friend and what's quite often a good idea is ask the kid yeah who are the men in your life who you look up to who you rely on who you think are trustworthy whatever it might be because actually if you ask a child you know who are the good men in your life quite often they will say something like I really like my football coach or I like my history teacher or it doesn't have to be somebody who does takes on a massive role it can be a group of men it can be you know a child gets different things from different men so it's not about having someone there for hours and hours and hours but it's just somebody who that child can trust can feel comfortable with and can take life's learnings from essentially so I actually think it's quite often sometimes important to ask the kid who those men are yeah um and this is why it's so important that we change the care system right and we change um sectors that are dominated by women like childcare like education the fact that the vast majority of teachers are women in primary I think it's one in three primary schools don't have a single male teacher yeah and uh secondary schools are predominantly women teaching as well um and so that again that reduces boys access to men to absolutely safe good men in their lives and that has obviously you know continues that negative impact.

20:06It really does. And the point is, is that, and that's why organisations like Sonia's exist and why, you know, for us at the Centre for Policy Research and to Men and Boys, one of our major campaigns going forward is to address this and try and, first of all, raise the profile of social fathers, such as football coaches, whatever it might be, but also try and put in place programmes where we can, if that's not possible, as you say, if there is a single mother who really cannot identify anybody than about trying to facilitate that as Sonia does but on a wider scale because it's absolutely critical it's not a nice to have actually it's actually critical today's podcast episode is sponsored by Kauru Kids when my kids were younger I never considered

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22:30Elliott:I've got a beef in my bonnet at the moment about youth clubs because they're just you just can't get a youth around where I live and I've talked about this previously but we have gangs around here we have kids that are my kids don't go out because of some of the kids that are outside and they need places to go these kids need somewhere to go where they can hang out they can have fun and they can access a safe adult that they can have conversations with and it just does not exist around here at all and it seems to me that for parents who are really struggling and they haven't got the time to take their kids to football clubs they haven't got the time to take them to places where they may have access to other adults that youth clubs are the vital net that catches those kids at the bottom and they're just gone no absolutely absolutely and you know all the funding's been cut there's no money out there for them but you know they are the perfect environment yeah in 2011 so children in 2011 when the London riots kicked off um for I was a doing some youth work at the time and part-time I was in the civil service but part-time I was doing music workshops with young people in northwest London and my friend actually worked in Tottenham where the riot started so he was doing it full-time and every day after school he'd see about 40 kids would come from school into his studio and he would do workshops with them and sessions with them and obviously the coalition government came in 2010 cut all the funding literally overnight it shut down and then when the riot started happening for people who were close to it we could see this this was inevitable because part of it was in response to the young man that got killed but also the angst of those young people with nothing to do because they would have been at a facilitated session and now they're just hanging around outside and when you hang around outside you know bad things happen and so all the politicians all the media was so surprised why is this happening why is this happening and i was like look you're taking away the thing that they were doing these are from lower income families they haven't got any money their parents can't afford for them to do other stuff this was a free resource a really important resource with an older guy who was like them who they could talk to who was like a big brother father figure you're taking that away you're taking away that activity the community the meeting other boys from other estates you've taken that away and look what happens so i know that's an extreme part that's an extreme obviously response.

24:57No, but what you're describing there is that whole idea of community and village. Again, you know, human children are evolved to be raised within a community, within a village. And in the way our modern world works now, it's quite hard to access that unless you have something like the youth club where you can meet, you know, elder members of the community. You can meet other, you know, your peers, et cetera, et cetera. And we've literally taken away in our modern world, in a way, the whole support system that children need. to have a good developmental outcome. And that's why they are struggling is because we've just taken it away.

25:32I mean, I think it's devastating

25:33Elliott:and it makes me quite angry. So I'm not going to talk about it too much. This is a safe space, Jared. You can get angry on this podcast. That's what we're here for. Going back to single parents. A friend of mine once said years and years ago that she felt like mothers try to change the world to fit the child and fathers try and change the child to fit the world. What do you think of that? Because when she said it, I was like, that's really interesting. It's interesting. And I suppose to a certain extent, she has got that right because it kind of underpins the two entirely different ways that mums and dads build their attachments.

26:12So mums build their attachments to their children based on nurture. And it is a very exclusive thing. It's a very protective attachment. So in a way, yeah, if the world's being nasty as a mum, you're going to change the world. You're going to protect your child and you're going to fight off the world, essentially. That's how the attachment works. Whereas if fathers, nurturing is the basis of that attachment, but they have this added bit of stimulation. And that stimulation is all about actually teaching the child to confront risk and challenge and all that. So actually fathers are much more likely to go, well, that's the world.

26:43You're going to have to deal with it and you're going to have to learn to deal with it. And that's kind of what dads bring. And that's why they are more the ones that underpin resilience in a way than mums do. I mean, mums do absolutely input into resilience, but fathers, because of the way they have this added stimulation or challenging element, in a way are saying to their kids, sorry, guys, you're going to have to fit into the world. And if that's tough, you're going to have to toughen up. So I can see actually she is right, actually, in some ways. She said that to me about 10 years ago.

27:11Elliott:I'm going to tell her that you said she's right. And there's something, tell us a bit about Roof and Tumble as well, because I find this really fascinating in your research that, I mean, I, I've got two boys and my God, they're fighting and they're like, you know, their dad will do that with them. He'll get one all fours and then they just basically punch him, which is great. But they don't do that with me. They cuddle me. And if they dare try, I'm always like, no, that's not what I do. I'm not here. There is something that happens in that process of rough and tumble, isn't there, between boys?

27:46Yeah, it's just the best behavior that I think a man and a child can have together. I mean, I will say not all fathers like doing it. That's absolutely fine. But we do see the vast majority of men doing it. And it's just instinctive. It's not necessarily anything they've particularly learned to do. It's just the way they like to interact with their kids. And it's absolutely critical for two reasons. First of all, it's a really good bonding behavior. So dads are on a little bit of the back foot in terms of bonding because, you know, pregnancy and childbirth are a whole tsunami of bonding hormones and so that does mean mum has a bit of a head start dads have to build their bonds with their children following birth through interaction and that is actually quite hard initially because babies don't do very much yeah so but once you can start doing the rough and tumble bit or the just even the gentle playing interacting play that's when dads can really start to build that bond properly and rough and tumble is great because it's so fast and so extreme it like ramps up the amount of bonding hormones that release because it involves touch touch is the best release of bonding hormones there is that endorphins and and oxytocin because it can be a little bit painful you know it can be a little bit painful i'm sure your husband's probably smarting a little bit that releases beta endorphin which is the which is basically the mega hormone that underpins bonding so because of its actual physical nature it's like a really fast track way of bonding with a kid but it's also developmentally really important because it starts to help them learn how social relationships work which is one of the key jobs a dad has because it's reciprocal play is not fun if it's not reciprocal if there's only one person you know punching somebody that's not play that's a fight so you know the fact it has to get back and forth so you're trying to turn about balanced reciprocity really important you're starting to learn about empathy because you need to understand that the other person is still enjoying themselves you need to understand if you've gone too far and it's no longer fun for the other person that's about empathy and reading somebody else's needs so it's really really important it helps you understand emotional regulation so that you don't become too extreme and too hysterical all of these things are really important for social interaction so it's like this double whammy activity really really fast hard bonding but also it's really starting to give that developmental input that dads give so when fathers come up to me like after talks and say you know I've just had a baby what's the one thing I can do that's really you think is really important I will say you know the one thing is really important is play and if you can rough and tumble play even better because it's just such an important activity and I think in the past until we've got this really big body of evidence now it's kind of one of the reasons why dad got the label of fun dad you know oh god you're the fun parent and mum's got to do all the caretaking because dads instinctively do it but actually from a developmental point of view it's actually a really critical behavior.

30:35Elliott:Yeah, so fascinating. And does the hormone that's released from touch, does that ever reduce or change? I ask this because last night I went to give my 12-year-old a hug. Yeah. And he was getting into bed and I went to give him a hug and he went, boundaries, mum. Do you know what that's about? That's actually, he's shifting his primary attachment. I'm so sorry. He's coming into teenagehood. And when they become teenagers, children shift their primary attachments from their parents to their peers. And I'm afraid he's starting. That is devastating. So is he going to hug his friends? He might become more tactile with his friends, but in terms of who are his secure base and who he will take most of his advice from going forward, for the next little period, it's going to be his friends, not you.

31:29but it's a really important developmental stage because they have to start to detach from you to become independent autonomous things.

31:36Elliott:Really, Anna? Yes, I'm afraid so. It has to happen so that they become fully-fledged little adult humans. What age does that normally start? And is it the same for boys and girls? I've got a 10-year-old and a 3-year-old and I feel like my 10-year-old is going in that direction very, very soon. Do you know what? It's partly individual. It depends partly a little bit on the... So it's not really along sex lines. It's more along individual sort of personality lines. Kids are different. Like, you know, I've now got an 18-year-old. I mean, she hasn't wanted a hug. Well, she only wants a hug when she's really upset, but, you know, for years and years, whereas actually my 16-year-old is still reasonably huggy.

32:12So it's partly an individual difference. Some kids are just, yeah, more huggy than others, and some will detach earlier than others.

32:20Elliott:And as they get older and they start to detach from you, is there any research or evidence that you know of that boys will listen more to men than to women as they get older? To be honest, the teenage years tend to be more underpinned by fathers than mothers anyway, regardless of whether you're a boy or a girl. There's been a really fascinating... I just read someone's PhD, which is brilliant, and she was looking at which parent helped teenage girls navigate the social complexities of secondary school with other teenage girls, which, you know, you've been a teenage girl, it's horrendous. And she did this amazing study, And it was actually, it was the nature of the attachment to the father and the input of the father that was more predictive of how well she did that than the one with the mother.

33:05And the reason again for that is because those relationships are obviously based in sociality. They're based, you have to be a pretty resilient individual to deal with some female to female teenage relationships. And it's because dad has underpinned that developmental bit. He is the one who's more likely to help her navigate that bit. so fathers do there's two key moments in a child's sort of life history where fathers are really prominent the first is when they first enter preschool and that's because that's the first real proper proper step away from your family and you're becoming a little independent being you know mum and dad aren't going to be with you at preschool you're on your own you've got to start navigating this this social world and again it's the attachment to dad that predicts more powerfully how well a child can do that.

33:49And then it's also at teenagehood when they are starting to really, really detach and become independent. It's actually dad who is going to underpin really how well they do that. So I'm afraid probably one of the reasons where kids listen slightly more to dads than mums is because that is the parent who's actually in a way, as your friend said, preparing them for the world and saying, actually, this is how you're going to navigate this.