Fatherhood

Matt Darroch
The first dad joke I can remember hearing happened on a family road trip. I'd been sitting in the car for what felt like an eternity when my belly started grumbling. So I did what any kid with an empty stomach would do. I told my parents I'm hungry. My dad locked eyes with me through the rear view mirror, and for a second it seemed like he'd say something helpful, something that would make me feel heard, but I got this instead.

George Tzamaras
Hi, hungry, I'm Dad.

Matt Darroch
This is George Tzamaras. He's the author of the new book, It's Dad Joke Friday.

George Tzamaras
I am a connoisseur of fine dad jokes, or self-appointed connoisseur.

Matt Darroch
George knows a good dad joke when he sees one,

George Tzamaras
it's usually one or two lines, question and an answer, and the joke is typically met with an eye roll, a groan, or a chuckle, not necessarily that hearty belly laugh that you'd like to get.

Matt Darroch
He's posted dad jokes on his social media every Friday for the past decade.

George Tzamaras
What do you call a dog that doesn't bark? And the response is a hush puppy.

And two sketch artists had an art contest. It ended in a draw.

Matt Darroch
Okay, you can't see me, but I am rolling my eyes right now. That one got a eye roll.

George Tzamaras
Alright. Well, this one sure will too. Because what do you call people who take care of chickens? Chicken tenders.

Matt Darroch
I don't know if my heart can handle anymore.

George Tzamaras
One more, one more.

George Tzamaras
What do professors and scholars like to eat when they need a snack?
Academia nuts.

Matt Darroch
Arrgghhh! That's the groan. There's a groan.

George Tzamaras
There it is.

Matt Darroch
You got a groan.

George Tzamaras
Yeah

Matt Darroch
He says dad jokes are more than just a silly pastime. They teach life lessons,

George Tzamaras
You know. For me, it creates moments of shared laughter or cringe, as it were, with my kids, and by telling your kids dad jokes repeatedly, jokes that don't land, and, and being okay with it, it lets kids know that you know it's okay to be imperfect. It's fine to laugh at yourself, you know. It teaches them embarrassment is not a fatal thing, you know. Dad can embarrass himself, laugh at himself, yet he has the confidence to keep doing it.

Matt Darroch
In a couple months, I'm going to be a father for the first time. We're having a baby girl named Maeve, so I figured I should probably start practicing my own dad joke material. I ran a few by George to get his expert opinion.

All right, here we go. I asked my wife how many apples to get at the store. She said four max. I said, Who's max? My name's Matt.

George Tzamaras
Yes, I like that.

Matt Darroch
Alright, you got to rate it on the scale of one to 10. I want the expert opinion from the connoisseur of dad jokes.

George Tzamaras
I'd give that one probably a seven. I mean, my eyes did roll a little bit.

Matt Darroch
Okay, okay, okay, all right. Here's another one. This one is With Good Reason themed.

George Tzamaras
Okay.

Matt Darroch
So a With Good Reason spin-off show that only airs during the fall, we can call it With Good Season.

George Tzamaras
I like that.

Matt Darroch
All right, I think you're gonna rate that one a little less than the other one, but give me a rating.

George Tzamaras
I'd give that one a seven also.

Matt Darroch
Well, at least I got some chuckles out of you. Were they real, or were they?

George Tzamaras
No, they were. They were real chuckles. Were you embarrassed telling those jokes

Matt Darroch
A little bit. Yeah, there's a.. there's a part of me that was a little embarrassed.

George Tzamaras
And yet you went on and told a second one.

Matt Darroch
Yeah, exactly. I persevered.

From Virginia Humanities. This is With Good Reason. I'm Matt Darroch. Today on the show, the journey of fatherhood.

Being a dad is a huge responsibility. It's basically a 24/7 job without any breaks, and as my wife and I get closer to our due date, I'm really starting to feel the nerves kicking in. Santo Coleman studies the impacts of fatherhood on the health outcomes and emotional wellness of children. I sat down with him to talk about the power of fatherhood and share my own anxieties about being a first-time dad. At the time of this recording, Santo was a health sciences professor at James Madison University. He's now an Africana studies professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

Santo, your parents divorced when you were young, and you know you were sent to live with your dad. How did that experience shape your perception of fatherhood?

Santo Coleman
Number one, my father always told me that a phone call and an apology will only cost you a quarter, right? It never costs you anything to apologize, to say I was wrong, to say I made a mistake. So that was one of the major things. The second thing was that never to give up. This is really interesting, as somebody who's now a college professor, but can be completely honest, I actually was. Failing out of school, I had just got into high school, and I wasn't ready for the hormones, and my teachers definitely weren't as well. And so I remember going to the guidance counselor, and the guidance counselor told me that I was going to repeat a grade, and we got in the car, and my father asked me. He said, "So, you heard what the guidance counselor said? And I said, "Yes. And he said, "So, what do you want to do? Do you want to be held back? And I said, no, I don't want to fail. And he said, then you know what you have to do. And so at that point I started doubling down on my education, you know, I had a house with less stress in it, you know, and those things helped contribute to my success. So to this day, me and my father celebrate the anniversary of when I moved down, which is January the first. So to this day, I still call him, and I say, 'Happy anniversary, Daddy. And so he wishes me a happy anniversary as well.

Matt Darroch
Yeah, and your upbringing with your dad, if I have this right, in some ways put you on a path to specialize in fatherhood studies. Tell me a little bit about that.

Santo Coleman
So, after I returned from the Peace Corps, I decided to get a master's in public health, and I remember sitting in all of these classes, and they kept saying how absentee fathers, absentee fathers, absent dads, and I was just like, that wasn't my lived experience, like my father was there, he helped me, he took me to school, you know, he supported me in all the ways that I can. This was contrary to what they were teaching in the university about all of these absent fathers and them having negative impacts. So, what I said at that time is, why isn't anybody studying the positive impacts on fathers? And that's when I decided to look at and examine the impact that fathers have on physical, emotional, and psychological mental health of people.

Matt Darroch
Well, why do you think that is? Like, why? Why focus primarily on the impacts of fathers who aren't there, or the negative impacts of fathers who aren't there?

Santo Coleman
Well, I think that there at one time the major idea was we blame parents in general, and for a long period of time, a lot of that blame fell on mothers and their mothering and parenting style. Around the late 90s, early 2000s there was a push back on that, and people who would do our motherhood study said it's not just mothers, we have the impact of fathers, and so the blame then shifted to, well, what are the negative things that fathers are doing to mess up the kids' lives, right? Because everybody was trying to figure out why our kids are messed up, so we really had this pathological examination of parenthood, and it started to settle on on fathers.

Matt Darroch
You also looked at how fathers contribute to the emotional wellness of their children, but you know, when I think of emotions, I definitely don't think about my father.

Santo Coleman
Yeah, this, and this is common, so men of a particular generation, I would say boomers and older people will say, well, my father was very stoic, right? He didn't show a lot of emotions, and so they begin to believe that their father had no impact on their emotions, right? Like, they're like, you know, I don't remember my father hugging me, I don't remember my father telling me that he loved me, and things of that nature, but that's again looking at it from a negative lens, so what I always tell people is that many times what children observe is how their fathers became stoic in order to overcome emotional barriers, right? So challenges, and so that helped with children's emotional regulation, right? So if your father was stoic and he came across a challenge and you observed him, you know, being very logical in how he handled that situation. Then you too grow up with this stronger emotional regulation, right? So it allows you to be able to successfully address issues, whether they're physical, financial, social, emotional issues, in a better way than having a quick breakdown in which some people have.

Matt Darroch
Yeah, I mean, when I envision myself as a father, I feel like I will dole out the hugs and kisses way more than my father did, and but I've never thought of a negative consequence from being more of a loving father. Is there anything negative that could come from that.

Santo Coleman
I don't think there's anything negative that can come from being a loving father, that being a loving parent will always help your children in their mental, emotional, and physical well-being and fitness.

Matt Darroch
I see, so, so there's no need to hold back on the hugs or affections.

Santo Coleman
No not at all, not at all. But one of the things that we are noticing in the younger generation is the lack of emotional regulation, right, and so it is really important that somebody, a parent, demonstrate how we address these issues, but I want to emphasize there is nothing wrong with telling your children, encouraging your children, telling your children you love them Being affectionate with them, those actually help children and develop it.

Matt Darroch
You know. I was raised pretty strictly, had to say yes sir, no sir to my dad, stuff like that. And now I see him with his grandchildren, and he's a completely different person, he's softened up, you know, quite a bit. What's going on? I have to imagine this happens to other people's dads as well.

Santo Coleman
Yes, well, what we're seeing in Western culture is kind of this cycle of masculinity, in which there is a peak, right, where a person, men reflect upon their lives, and they say, well, I've achieved, I provided, right, I fulfilled money with my roles, and at that point, gender roles allow men the ability to kind of throw off right the expectation of what men should be as they get older, and so now once we see fathers reaching what they ascribe to as being their goals related to fatherhood and gender, now they're free to be who they, who they want to be. So, what I would say is, is that men of a certain generation wait until later in life to show their full selves.

Matt Darroch
Are you saying that that is possibly going to happen to me as well?

Santo Coleman
Yes, I definitely. I think it happens to all of us. I, you know, I, what I have observed is that sometimes when we're interacting with little kids, we're more trying to help them understand cultural cues, and then as we get older, we start playing more with them, we start enjoying life more with them. Our responsibilities of being providers and guardians start to decrease, and then we have more, more space to show affection and emotion.

Matt Darroch
You know, we've been talking a lot about the power of fatherhood. I'm about to be a father, and I know I'll probably be a good one, but thinking of all the ways fatherhood impacts children, it's a, it's a huge responsibility, and you know, if I'm, if I'm being honest, you know, kind of scary.

Santo Coleman
Yes, it is. And I mean, the roles and responsibilities of I said, and expectations of fathers have changed, and so now a lot of men have expectations of roles that they've actually never observed before, right? So, if you were the youngest one in your family, and you never observe your father changing a diaper, then, but the expectation of you is to change a diaper. Now you have an expectation of you that you've never seen met before. So this does put a little pressure on new fathers, right? And so that's why it's so important to have community, right, to be in contact and conversation with other fathers to learn from them to share what you have, have learned, and to build this community of fatherhood, but I would tell you, is that no matter how many books that are written, there is no manual for parenthood, right? Every child is completely different, and parents have to adjust their parenting style to each child, so as long as you are, you know, being the best provider that you can be. Remember, it's not about the money, right? It's not about whether you make six figures of a million dollars or more. It is, is what you make sufficient for your family, right? Can you provide, and your family understand that you're doing the best that you can, that causes you to have a positive relationship with your children.

Matt Darroch
Yeah, I mean, I think the thing that scares me most is that it's like a 24/7 job, you know. I have to imagine there's going to be days where I don't live up to that responsibility of fatherhood. I guess I just, you know, have to be able to give myself the grace to just kind of accept that reality, right?

Santo Coleman
Yes, so with any role in life, you're going to always make mistakes. I love this conversation because it goes back to what my father said, which is you're going to make mistakes, right? It costs nothing to apologize to make amends for it, so you know, hey, you have this new kid you're raising, maybe you came home from work one day and you were upset, and you weren't as kind as you would, or you should have been to your child. It is okay as a father to show and to role model the behavior of, hey son, hey daughter. What I just said earlier was unkind. I, you know, I was taking something from work or I was taking something from outside the house, and I brought that in that was wrong with me. You know, Daddy is sorry, and I hope that you will forgive me. And to model the behavior of asking for forgiveness and receiving it, and that will be one of the greatest lessons that you can teach your child as they go out in life, and they may make mistakes, they may not meet all social expectations, but the ability to say I made a mistake, I admit to it, and I'm trying to move forward in an accountable way.

Matt Darroch
I love that. As I get closer and closer to our October due date, I've been asking men around me for their best advice as I kind of start my journey into fatherhood. So, you know, it's it's only fitting that I asked the fatherhood expert to share some wisdom. So, what do you got?

Santo Coleman
So, you know, the first thing I would say is, you may not remember what your father did, or how he taught you how to read, or write, or even count, but you still remember, was he kind when he taught you how to do those things, right? Did he have patience with you when you, when you were doing those things? So, patience is going to be a virtue, it's going to be a gift that you can share. There are three things I always tell people that makes the person wise, and it definitely applies to fathers. Just because you make a mistake doesn't make you unwise. Learning from that mistake makes you wise. You don't have to make every mistake to be wise. You can observe other people's mistakes and learn from them. And then the last thing is, once you learn from your own mistakes, you learn from other people's mistakes, teaching others how to avoid mistakes without having to make them or observe themselves is how you become a wise parent. So, if you do those three things, you'll definitely be a great parent in my eyes.

Matt Darroch
That's so well put. Well, Santo, thanks for sharing your insight on With Good Reason.

Santo Coleman
Thank you so much. I enjoyed being here.

Matt Darroch
Santo Coleman is a former health sciences professor at James Madison University. He's now an Africana studies professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

Back in the day, the stereotypical dad would come home from work and plop themselves on the couch while the mom toiled with dinner and the kids, but now fathers are more involved in the family than ever before. Scott Grether is a sociology professor at Longwood University. He studies the household division of labor in hetero couples. Spoiler alert, us guys still have a long way to go.

Scott, you study what men have to say about housework and childcare. You know it's not something us guys typically talk about. Why do you think that is?

Scott Grether
Yeah, I think it's really not something that men think about, because, well, for starters, we aren't really socialized to think that housework and child care are our responsibilities as men, and typically, you know, when we do think about housework and childcare, it's when we're told to do it. Oftentimes, when we're young, chances are maybe it's by our mothers or by the women in our lives who are responsible for the cooking, the cleaning, the care work that happens in the home, and we aren't told about, you know, housework until we are told to do something, pick up your room, you know, take out the trash, something like that.

Matt Darroch
And so did the men you interviewed feel mostly like they were, you know, contributing their fair share?

Scott Grether
So the interview project I did for my dissertation research, I interviewed 37 men, and for the most part, yeah, the majority of them did say they felt like they were doing their fair share, although there were a couple of men who said, you know, what, now that I've had this interview and I've been talking for a while, right, gosh, maybe I should be doing a little bit more, you know, because when I was asking them specific questions about, you know, who's responsible for planning what meals to eat, how do you know how much stuff to buy from the grocery store, you know, when you do the laundry, like where do you put the clothes away, they would say I don't know, or my wife usually handles that, and then it was upon reflecting and being asked, you know, called into account to answer these questions, they're like, you know, after this interview, I think I'm going to talk with my wife, and you know, see if there's something more that I should be doing.

Matt Darroch
Now, when it comes to housework and childcare, you make a distinction between physical labor and mental labor. What's the difference?

Scott Grether
Yeah, so the way that I sort of conceptualize this, if you could think about like concentric circles, so on one sort of circle we have physical work, and that's the kind of work that we can see, you know, we see dust collecting on the blinds, we know it needs to be dusted, we can see dishes piling up in the sink, we know that those need to be washed, so we can measure and sort of assess our involvement with physical work that needs to be done. So, mental work refers to all of the thinking, the planning, the evaluating, the strategizing of how to get seemingly any kind of housework task or any kind of childcare task completed. You know, there's always this mental work that you can constantly engage in, and you know what, my research showed is that men just are completely outsourcing this work to their wife. Surprisingly, a lot of men talked about how they really liked cooking, but when it came to planning meals, they're like. No, I'm good, right? Like, not for me. So, it's interesting. They're willing to cook meals, at least the men I spoke with, but when it came time to actually plan meals out, you know, breakfast, lunch, and dinner, over the course of the week, they deferred to their wives to do that work or outsource it to their, to their wives to do the work for them.

Matt Darroch
That's so interesting. Yeah, like, why, why has that become, you know, kind of the traditional gender roles with a man doing more of the physical labor and women doing more of the mental labor?

Scott Grether
I think, quite frankly, it's just a lot of men's insecurity. A lot of men are, I think, just afraid of being perceived as anything less than masculine, and there's still this association of anything being approximated to femininity as being less than, and so if men are engaging in a perceived feminine task or activity somehow, that's a knock against them, right? You're not a real man if you're a guy that, like, is sitting at home on a couch, folding a pile of laundry, and then putting the laundry away, like, like, bro, why don't you get your wife to do that, you know? So it's just like, I think, you know, I mean, of course, I - this is painting with a broad brush, but it seems like to me a lot of men are reluctant to engage in feminine tasks or activities for fear of being labeled as less than.

Matt Darroch
Yeah, I mean, you know, sometimes when my wife asks me to do more of the mental work that you're talking about, you know. I admit that, you know, I'll say something like, but, but you do it so much better than me, or, you know, I don't know how to do it right. She affectionately calls it weaponized incompetence. You know, first of all, is that a real phrase, and second of all, why does it perfectly encapsulate my behavior?

Scott Grether
Well, it's a real phrase in the sense I think if there were a group of women and they were talking about the weaponized incompetence of their husbands, I think they would know exactly what they were talking about. I can tell you an anecdote from my dissertation data. I interview a guy I call in the chapter Lester, and I was asking him, you know, what happens, like walk me through the day, and in the mornings he would say that basically he takes care of himself and his wife prepares, you know, the day for her, you know, showering her morning routine, but she also gets the kids dressed, she makes sure the kids' backpacks have everything they need. She makes sure the kids' lunches are packed and everything. When I was probing Lester, do you think this is fair? Like, you know, would you change anything about this? He said, well, you know, I could learn to do this if I wanted to, but basically he said, why would I, because I don't have to do this. I come into work much fresher. If I learn how to do it, I might get to be too good at it, and then she'll ask me to do more of it. So the assumption is it's his wife's job to begin with, and not his. If men are assuming that mental work is women's responsibility, that's making a lot of assumptions that has the potential for reproducing gender inequality within your own family.

Matt Darroch
Yeah, there's a, there's a pretty hilarious segment from the from the Jimmy Kimmel show that I think perfectly reflects what you're talking about with with men's lack of involvement in mental labor. Let's listen to a quick clip.

Clip
Are you and your son pretty close?

Yeah, I think so. Yeah, yeah.

And you consider yourself a pretty involved parent?

Yeah,yeah, yeah,

So I'm just gonna ask you some questions about your son. Just answer them to the best you're built. I will do no problem. Yeah, what is your son's birthday?

No, that's a good, that's a really good one, because I don't know,

Do you consider you guys pretty close?

Yeah.

What is your daughter's favorite subject in school? Social study. Is that true?

No.

What grade is your daughter going into?

Ninth grade.

What's the name of your daughter's school?

Rash Creek Elementary School

No

Scott Grether
I mean, to not remember your kids' birthdays is pretty bad, but all this other information that's really essential, right? Like, your doctors, where they go to school, the name of the school, I mean, right? I think, yeah, this absolutely reflects exactly what I'm talking about, this idea here of mental work, and that men aren't doing it.

Matt Darroch
Did the men you interviewed feel like they were, I don't know, stepping up to the plate more, more than their dads did?

Scott Grether
Yeah, and I think this helps to, for a lot of the men that I interviewed, helped to contextualize their involvement. Is you know, when I was talking to them, and the questions of fairness came up. Well, do you feel like you should be doing more, less, or the same? Do you think this is fair? They would say, well, yeah. When, when I think about my dad, my dad didn't do anything

I might only be devoting three hours a week to childcare, but that's three hours more a week than I got as a kid, you know. Overall, in the sample, men estimated, I think, they were spending about, by their own admission, two or three hours less per week in child care than their wives, and three hours less per week in housework than their wives. So, by comparison to their wives, no, they aren't doing as much, but the way that they're sort of justifying this inequality is saying, well, it's fair when you think about what my dad did.

Matt Darroch
It’s the defense mechanism.

Scott Grether
Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean, so I think weaponized incompetence could be a defense mechanism, and the comparison case could be a defense mechanism. Well, if I'm comparing what I did to my dad, yeah, it's fair, but if I'm comparing it to what you're doing, sweetie, no, it's not fair.

Matt Darroch
So, so I'm going to be a dad for the first time in a few months. Do you have any advice to give based on the findings of your research?

Scott Grether
Well, congratulations again. This is very.. I'm sure it's a very exciting time. Advice.. well, I think you know, having this conversation.. I don't know.. has this made you think about, like, your own parenting? It's.

Matt Darroch
It's opened my eyes, and if you're listening to the Shea, who is my wife, I'm going to be stepping up a lot more.

Scott Grether
Yeah, I think you know I'm not a parent, so I don't know what that experience is like, but I think when it comes to thinking about preparing for the arrival of a new family member or even your own, like, if you're trying to reassess your own housework, is just don't make assumptions about who's going to do what, because at the end of the day, with how turbulent everything is in our society right now, the one thing a lot of us really appreciate is that home can be a haven, but if we aren't aware of the kind of inequalities that are happening within our own home, then the home is no longer a haven, it's hell. So, I think as long as you aren't making assumptions about who's going to do what and vice versa, hopefully your wife won't make assumptions that you're going to be doing things because of your gender identity, I think that is a good first step.

Matt Darroch
Well, this has been wonderful, Scott. Thanks for sharing your insight on With Good Reason.

Scott Grether
Thank you so much, appreciate it.

Matt Darroch
Scott Grether is a sociology professor at Longwood University. This is With Good Reason.

We'll be right back.

Welcome back to With Good Reason from Virginia Humanities.

We've known for a long time that moms have an increased risk of depression during and after pregnancy, but what about Dads? James Paulson is a psychology professor at Old Dominion University. He breaks down the understudied field of paternal depression and shares a fact that'll probably blow your mind. New or soon to be fathers experience similar rates of depression as mothers.

James, you study prenatal and postpartum depression in fathers. I didn’t even know that was a thing. Is it different from prenatal and postpartum depression in mothers?

James Paulson
So, Matt this is a thing that's not been studied very much until really the past 20 years. Going back before 2000 there were a handful of studies looking at depression in fathers, but it's not something that's been examined very much until the past 25 years or so. In contrast, we've known that depression is a problem that concerns expecting moms and new moms. Going back to ancient Greece, Hippocrates documented it. You know, one of the things that prompted interest among me and other folks who do research in this area is the simple observation that when one parent has some sort of mental health problem, when they struggle to bring all the resources needed to bring to bear to the difficult task of making it through a pregnancy and raising an infant, and as that child grows up caring for them, they suffer, and those resources that are needed to be expended for that effort are reduced by the depression and other mental health concerns, but depression has been a major focus of this research, and in many ways it parallels how we've looked at mothers for all these years.

Matt Darroch
Well, do we know the rate of prenatal and postpartum depression in fathers, and how does that rate compare to mothers?

James Paulson
Yeah, so we've, so since we've studied prenatal and postpartum depression in mothers for so long, we know that the rate is anywhere from 10 to 15% in the general population in the United States. At least, there's some variation from country to country across the world, but generally it's around that level, and that's about twice what we expect in the general non-childbearing parent population of adult women. What we've seen in fathers who just to kind of put this in context, men in general experience depression somewhat less than women, so maybe as half, half as much as women, maybe 75% as much as women, but the rates of depression are lower in men. So, what we see is basically a proportional increase in the rate of depression in expecting a new father that's similar to mothers. So, we see an increase from anywhere from three or 4% in the general non-father adult male population to upwards of 10% and some studies have documented rates that are even higher. So we see kind of very similar changes in the rates of depression around pregnancy and postpartum with expecting in new dads as we do with moms, even though the rates are still higher in women.

Matt Darroch
Yeah, I mean, I've heard that prenatal and postpartum depression in mothers, you know, is associated with changes in hormones during pregnancy. Is that true?

James Paulson
So, there's there's been quite a bit of research looking at that. What we know is that there are there are some hormone changes around pregnancy, and particularly childbirth, where we see very dramatic changes in hormones that are mildly, some folks would argue weakly associated with an increase in the risk for depression, but across those studies, those findings range from no real association to a mild or weak association, so, so there is something there for sure, in contrast, when we look outside of the body, if we look at the social context in which pregnancy and child rearing take place, we see lots of fairly strong effects. So, for example, one of the most consistent and substantial predictors of risk for depression and expecting a new mom's is financial distress, right. So that economic pressures dramatically increase the rates of depression, and with economic pressures we can kind of infer all sorts of other stresses and changes that happen in that person's life, but we know for sure that that's something that's an issue with moms, the kind of endogenous biological factors, that's the term that we would use. Things that go on inside the body that would predict some sort of outcome are, I think, for a lot of folks interesting and kind of mysterious, and I think in some ways they promise a solution that we don't have to do a particularly lot of work to get to, so for example, if it's a hormone change that causes depression, then well, we might address that with maybe hormone replacement, or maybe a medication, or maybe something else that acts inside of the body, whereas if it's financial distress that seems to be associated with depression, that's a much trickier problem to manage, and it's also a much more mundane problem, something that we're all familiar with, and I think folks get a little bit less excited about those things, even though they're very important, but that external environment plays a really strong role in women, and that's something that folks often overlook when they think about the more exciting idea of hormones and these kinds of magical things happening inside the body that create this problem.

Matt Darroch
Yeah, I mean, I'm sure there are people listening who are surprised to hear that the hormonal shifts, you know, aren't as impactful as, as these other external factors that that you've brought up.

James Paulson
Yeah, I think it's important to say that what we know is that they probably are a factor, and the degree to which that factor plays out may vary substantially from one woman to the next, but overall, yeah, not as strong of a factor as what many folks think, and in fact, you know, I've been talking with people about this for many years now, a couple decades, and one of the first questions I often get is, well, you know, what about the hormone changes, because we're talking about fathers and depression, and fathers obviously don't experience pregnancy, not at least not in kind of traditional family structures, which is kind of the context right now, they don't experience pregnancy, they don't experience progesterone and estrogen changes that happen right after delivery, but yet they still experience an increase in depression, and what we know is that fathers are exposed to many of the same environmental risk factors that mothers are, and that as an explanatory. Mechanism for understanding what's actually going on here is fairly compelling, whereas that hormonal evidence, the endogenous biological evidence that folks like to look at, is important, but not nearly as strong.

Matt Darroch
Yeah, I mean, like you said, fathers don't experience the hormonal shifts that pregnant people do, so what's causing their, their depression? What are the biggest factors contributing to paternal depression?

James Paulson
Well, so when we talk about depression in general, there are some generic risk factors that are present for anybody, men, women, folks who identify in all sorts of ways, who have a history of depression, are more likely to experience depression again. We know depression is a relapsing, remitting type of disorder. Folks who have a high degree of stress in their daily lives, or folks who have gone through lots of changes recently, are more likely to experience depression. And obviously, you can see the overlap there with pregnancy and new parenthood. That's a time of changes. It's a time almost entirely of changes for many people, so those kinds of things, those kinds of stressors in the environment and experiences that take away a person's ability to cope with day-to-day demands are important, and also I think the thing that's often overlooked here is that the relationship between the parents, so what we see is that in kind of traditional mixed gender couples, when one partner is depressed, that increases conflict and decreases support within that relationship, and that exposes the other partner to increase risk for depression, so there's something really important that's going on in that relationship between the partners that may be kind of a carrier for depressive risk, and so we know within this particular kind of family constellation where they're experiencing all these changes related to pregnancy and having a new child that it can be carried through that.

Matt Darroch
You've also looked at the impact parental depression has on children. What did you find?

James Paulson
Yeah, so we've, we've done a little bit of work looking at this, and other investigators have looked at this much more deeply, and we've known for four decades that when moms are depressed, we tend to see more behavioral disturbance, more difficulty in emotion regulation, more health problems, and ultimately more mental illness in children as they get into their kind of school age years. What we are seeing in fathers now, with some nice longitudinal research that comes out of England, is that when fathers are depressed during pregnancy and in the postpartum, we see some of the same things, we see kids have more behavioral difficulties when they're two or three, they have more difficulty controlling their emotions around that same time, and by the time they're five or six, they have significantly increased rates of behavioral disorder diagnoses, things like ADHD get diagnosed more often, so we see kind of more of a negative mental health picture. If we go out to seven or eight, we see an increased likelihood of mood and anxiety disorders in these kids. So, what we're seeing is this pattern of father's depression during pregnancy and postpartum conveying this risk to children much in the way that mothers' depression does,

Matt Darroch
It seems like we have a ton of research and data into prenatal and postpartum depression in mothers, but why not dads?

James Paulson
Well, you know, in the history of this research, in fact, in the history of how we, as a field in psychology and medicine broadly, have considered dads, dads haven't been thought of as terribly important until really the 1980s and there's not a clear turning point in the 1980s but if you look at research leading up to the 1980s much of it that addressed father's role in child development really only focused on whether fathers were destructive influences, did they have substance abuse problems, were they abusive, were they absent, and were fathers adequate breadwinners? Did they provide enough resources for the family? And the role of dads in child development up to that point wasn't seen as particularly important, or at least it hadn't been societally accepted that that was important, and the research really aligned with that. Around the 1980s things started to change, and we started to look at fathers' roles in child development more seriously, and that kind of built to where we are now, where we, we still tend to favor moms pretty heavily, but the role that dads have has become recognized as very important and very influential, and of course families have changed, fathers' roles have changed a lot from the 1970s until now, so if we go back 50 years, you'll find surveys where two or three percent of fathers ever changed a diaper in 2025 If you can find a father in the United States who hasn't changed a diaper, well, you've either found a brand new father or you found a very rare creature.

Matt Darroch
I'm about to be a father and although I haven't experienced the kind of depression you're talking about. I think the feeling I've felt most during this pregnancy is it's just like helplessness, you know, like, like my wife is going through so much, and you know all I can do really is offer support. Now, have you found that this feeling of helplessness might also contribute to depression.

James Paulson
That's an interesting question, and that's not something that we've looked at specifically. Although helplessness and hopelessness, those ideas and those feelings often go hand in hand with depression. You know, I think one thing that, more informally, that I've heard, having spoken with lots of fathers since I started doing this work, is kind of a very similar sentiment that they feel like they can only do so much, although that's also true of expecting a new mom, that they can also only do so much. You can follow the course of prenatal care, you can take your vitamins, you can try to maintain health as best as you can, but in many ways this is an experience that has a lot of uncontrollability for both parents, for all family members involved, really.

Matt Darroch
My wife has actually had to go through IVF, which is just a nightmare of syringes, painful examinations, and stress. Do we know if prenatal and postpartum depression rates are higher in fathers and mothers who go the IVF route?

James Paulson
There's some data that suggests that depression is higher in both fathers and mothers who go through IVF. IVF is a peculiar experience for families, because you know we're now manipulating hormones in moms, we're you know we're trying to do specific hormonal interventions to increase the likelihood of pregnancy and successful pregnancy, but the stakes around that and often the work that it involves for parents, sometimes parents will do IVF or do some sort of medically assisted efforts at conception for years, so when a pregnancy is finally achieved, I think for many of those families the stakes feel higher, and with that added pressure, I think there's there's an increased risk for depression. I can't say for sure if that's the mechanism, although that is what I've heard from many folks in terms of the narrative, but the data suggests that yes, absolutely, there is a higher risk for depression with IVF, and also any other kind of pregnancy that's unusual or high risk. The rates of depression are also higher for both moms and dads.

Matt Darroch
Yeah, I have to imagine one of the biggest contributing factors to depression amongst fathers and mothers who go the IVF route is just how much money it costs.

James Paulson
And going back to this pretty longstanding observation that economic pressure is one of the factors that seems to be at least influential, if not causal, in depression. Well, you've bought a big chunk of that right there with IVF.

Matt Darroch
I'm curious, do men experience depression differently than women do?

James Paulson
So, the way we diagnose depression, and actually the way we treat depression, doesn't have a particular variation based on gender, so if you start experiencing symptoms and go see a primary care physician or a psychologist and get diagnosed with depression, those providers are working with the same set of diagnostic criteria. So I think that's that's important for folks to know, and the way we diagnose prenatal and postpartum depression is the same way we diagnose depression at any other time in life. It's, it is one disorder that we're talking about. There's not a special set of criteria or a special way that we diagnose depression during that period of time, but what we see with, with men in general who experience depression, and I think what we're seeing now with fathers now that we're studying this more, is that the experience of frank sadness, tearfulness, that kind of experience is somewhat less, although I want to underline somewhat, it's not dramatically less. Men and dads who are depressed feel sad very often, but maybe a little bit less than women, or they express it, maybe a little bit less than women. The experience of a phenomenon called anhedonia, which is where it's difficult to experience pleasure or connection, or a sense of drive and motivation around things that used to be important, that may be somewhat more pronounced. Are in men or new fathers, and we see pretty consistently more irritability. Irritability is a fairly common companion with a depressive presentation, so men are more often irritable as part of that experience. But by and large, depression looks about the same in men and women, and again we treat it and diagnose it about the same in men and women.

Matt Darroch
Do you find that men are maybe more reluctant to acknowledge their depression than women?

James Paulson
Yeah, actually we have pretty good data from many decades that document men being more reluctant to admit depression, more reluctant to seek care for depression, sometimes being less able to engage with care. So, for example, psychotherapy is a well-established treatment for depression. Men have a little bit more difficulty engaging with that kind of service. So, yeah, in general, men are, in a sense, they're they are poor patients when they have depression, although in general men are poor patients with most medical care.

Matt Darroch
You know, it's a massive understatement to say that pregnant people have it much worse during pregnancy than men. Do some dads keep their depression to themselves because maybe, you know, the last thing they want to do is put more stress on an already stressful pregnancy.

James Paulson
Yeah, I've heard that from many dads. There's a reluctance to admit that they're suffering because they feel that taking that attention to themselves would be selfish, or maybe that they don't deserve to have that experience, or that by doing that, they.. I don't know, they would appear weak, or they would seem like cry babies, or I mean, and I've heard these things from fathers and other folks who have asked about this, or who've wanted to talk about it. So, I think there is a reluctance to admit that, which is ironic, because what we've learned about depression with moms for a long time, and now with dads, and we know this with some confidence, is that it has negative impacts on the partnership with mom or with the other parent, it has negative impacts on the family, it has negative impacts on work and other places. So, in a sense, acknowledging and taking care of depression is a solid proactive step at being able to do better in all of those other life roles rather than doing something that's that's weak or insufficient or problematic in some other way.

Matt Darroch
Well, how quickly should you seek help if, say, you know your partner spots depression symptoms in you.

James Paulson
Yeah, so I think if depressive symptoms persist, and what we're talking about here is persistent sadness, a lack of ability to experience joy or connection with things, and those might come along with things like sleep disturbance, trouble with concentration, low energy, and other symptoms, if you start experiencing those and they persist, I would say for more than a few days it's a good idea to talk to a healthcare provider about that. Certainly, if those persist for more than a week or two, that's a very clear case to talk to a healthcare provider, and I would say any primary care physician is a good place to start, because most folks have some connection with a primary care physician, and that's a good conversation to have, particularly if it's difficult to access a mental health provider. So, I think that is a dilemma with depression, but there are ways forward to make that less of a problem

Matt Darroch
During pregnancy the focus is almost exclusively on the mom, you know, as it, as it should be. They're going through all the pokes and prods and aches and pains. So, I totally get it, but do you think there's maybe a lack of empathy in our culture for what dads go through during, during, and after pregnancy as well?

James Paulson
Yeah, I think there is, and it is like, as you point out, it's a fine balance to strike. I mean, this, this is a substantial experience for moms, right from the first realization of pregnancy to delivery to doing everything that's required to care for the newborn, which often continues to require that person's body if they're breastfeeding or nursing, so I think it would be a problem to take the focus away from the mom. At the same time, moms need lots of resources, and we do a pretty good job of putting together teams of physicians, nurses, doulas, midwives, other care providers, pediatricians. We have lots of folks who are on that team trying to take care of mom and baby to make sure everyone is as healthy and happy as they can be, and including dad on that team is something that we often don't do a great job of, and it's so important because you know when the physicians go home, right, or when the the. The new parents go home, and the physicians are far away. Dad is one of the folks who's there, and that support and that person being present as a member of the team is really important.

Matt Darroch
Well, let's end with this. I'm about three months away from being a dad for the first time, so I'd love some fatherhood advice, you know, it can be based on your research or personal experience, whatever you got.

James Paulson
Well, you know, I think this is a combination of personal experience and research, but I think for an expecting dad and an expecting mom, I think my best advice is for you and your partner to take care of each other, talk to each other about what's going on, work really hard to be transparent and try to keep that partnership a continued source of support through this experience, that that's difficult for everybody, so working that that partnership and working that support and being supportive yourself, those are probably the ways that you can prepare for new fatherhood that have the biggest bang for the buck.

Matt Darroch
I love it. Well, James, thanks for sharing your insight on With Good Reason.

James Paulson
Thanks, Matt.

Matt Darroch
James Paulson is a psychology professor at Old Dominion University.

With Good Reason is produced by Virginia Humanities, which acknowledges the Monacan Nation, the original people of the land and waters of our home in Charlottesville, Virginia. Our production team is Sarah McConnell, Allison Quantz, and Lauren Francis. Special thanks to Jennie Taylor for booking assistance. For the podcast go to Withgoodreasonradio.org. I'm Matt Darroch. Thanks for listening.