In 2013, my family moved from Chicago to Los Angeles so I could work on a PhD. My wife returned to the (paid) workforce, and I took on the daytime caregiving role for our children, who were two and four. I learned the slow and sometimes frantic rhythms of wrangling preschoolers, fitting my graduate work between slicing strawberries and trips to the park. I joined a community preschool cohort, where I was the only dad. There I learned that I did not have as much patience for other people’s children as I did for my own.
My caregiving intensive, which ended when my children started kindergarten, shaped me in unmistakable ways. Like most dads, I’m still not always sure if I’m “doing it right.” But that season of unpaid care work deepened my sense of purpose, sharpened my attention, and built a bond with my children for which I am grateful to this day.
As a father of now-teenage children, I read Darby Saxbe’s new book Dad Brain with great interest. Saxbe, a researcher and professor at the University of Southern California, specializes in what she calls the “new science of fatherhood.” Fatherhood, it turns out, is an underdeveloped field, at least when compared to research on motherhood (which exceeds it by more than a ten-to-one ratio).
Dad Brain builds a cumulative argument over 17 chapters, showing how “fatherhood is transformative for men—not just for their brains and biology but for their sense of identity, meaning, and connection.” Even as pop culture tends to portray dads as dimwits (think Homer Simpson), Saxbe presents research as a “love letter to dads everywhere” to champion fathers and “to debunk outdated stereotypes.”
In the first half of the book, Saxbe, who holds a PhD in clinical psychology, presents modest yet meaningful conclusions about what fathering does to men on a physiological level.
To the degree that men embrace their role as fathers, their brains adapt, becoming more focused and efficient in a way that is strikingly similar to the changes that happen when women become mothers. She writes this is surprising since, biologically speaking, human fatherhood is “facultative” rather than “obligatory” since it is mothers who carry, birth, and nurse their young. “The fact that human men participate in childcare … makes us odd among mammals,” Saxbe notes, but it is also “one secret to humanity’s success.”
And yet, because caregiving has been and still is optional for men, the extent of their direct involvement with children varies widely by culture and changes over time. Saxbe compares the practices among the Aka people of Central Africa, where men spend most their time with young children, to the Kipsigis tribe in East Africa, where fathers avoid seeing newborns for the first few weeks so as not to damage them with the “strength” of their gaze.
Similarly, the dominant prototype of fatherhood in 20th century positioned the father as the breadwinner, working away from the home. But by the early 2020s, this model was only characteristic of half of marriages. It is increasingly common for women to out-earn their male partners. In a post-COVID world, the boundaries between work and home have also become increasingly porous, and fathers are spending more time with children than ever before.
Greater diversity in shared caregiving has led to new tensions, as parents navigate questions about “who does what” with the kids. There’s a bit by comedian Nate Bargatze, in which he recounts a time when his daughter’s school called him to get information about the bus she rides. Bargatze is incredulous: “You had both of our phone numbers, and you thought you would call the dad?” he asks incredulously. “I don’t even know the name of her school.” The audience laughs uproariously.
The joke illustrates research cited by Saxbe that even when both parents earn equal pay, it is still the mother who tends to bear more of the “mental load”: keeping track of schedules, teacher names, and bus numbers. Is this division of labor reflective of innate gender difference, cultural formation, or both? Are women simply more competent at certain things, or are we simply falling into familiar scripts? Saxbe attempts to answer these questions in the second half of her book, discussing fatherhood as shaped by its cultural and sociological context: gender expectations, work-life balance, and public policy.
There are, of course, observable differences in how men and women tend to care for children. One of the earliest studies of fatherhood showed that babies interacted differently with fathers than mothers. When fathers played around with infants, it tended to be “more exciting and dynamic” while mother-infant play was “soothing and gradual.” The book notes the flip side of attachment—a child’s sense of feeling seen and supported—is activation, or a sense of exploration and healthy risk. Although both parents can build strong attachment and strong activation, dads tend to excel at the latter.
While reading the book, I was reminded of how Paul describes his work among the Thessalonians with both a motherly and a fatherly component. “Just as a nursing mother cares for her children, so we cared for you,” he writes, but also “we dealt with each of you as a father deals with his own children, encouraging, comforting, and urging you” (1 Thess. 2:7–8, 11–12).
This does not mean we should overly narrow either parental role according to stereotypes. But due to both biological wiring and cultural formation, some forms of nurturing may come more naturally than others, even though the latter can be learned. Indeed, as Saxbe points out, the way that nurturing most often manifests in men is in the form of coaching.
Yet the diversity of parenting practices also reveals the limits of what the “new science of fatherhood” can do. Researchers may make observations about behavior and the brain, noting unique qualities of fathers, but to prescribe action—what ought to be—requires a larger moral vision as well as some understanding of our purpose and what’s best for us.
As it stands, Saxbe’s view of fatherhood sits in the tension between a desire to acknowledge “the reality of biological sex and the influence of gonadal hormones on brain and behavior” while also accommodating cultural shifts that push against both realities.
The book could benefit from a concrete moral vision, which would also provide clarity about fathering and masculinity. Saxbe points to two ideas of masculinity in our current society, both of which are returns to older versions of the concept. The first, characteristic of the “manosphere,” casts men as “secular monks” a term used by philosopher Andrew Taggart to refer to men who are “strong, obsessed with personal optimization, and proudly alone.” The second approach emphasizes quantity over quality: having as many children with as many women as possible. (See Elon Musk, who has 14 children with four different women.)
Saxbe writes that both approaches may lead to negative outcomes, especially since “the best predictor of men’s long-term happiness is the quality of his relationships with others.” Yet something stronger is needed to inspire men to embrace the unseen sacrifices that caregiving requires, and here the gospel has much to offer us (Eph 5:1–2).
Saxbe concludes by arguing for “fatherhood as a public good.” She writes of the need to transform societal attitudes toward caregiving through public policy. In this area, she notes that some women’s groups have opposed measures that could help in the transformation. The groups, she writes, have pushed back on efforts advocating for perinatal mental health (rather than maternal mental health), paid parental leave (rather than maternal leave), and efforts guiding men into caregiving professions like nursing, education, and social work (matching efforts to get women into STEM).
The worry among advocates is that women will lose the important ground that they have gained in the workplace. But Saxbe points out that opposing these measures reinforces the stereotype that caregiving is the exclusive province of women, and that the best way to improve the fortunes of caregiving work (paid or otherwise) is to raise its value for both genders.
In any case, Saxbe’s research makes it clear that fathering matters. Children with more involved fathers show “better mental health, social skills, and school performance.” The church knows not every Christian is called to be a parent. But all Christians, as part of the household of faith, are called to protect and nurture life in the world.
This means doing everything we can to support young families, both in policy and partnership. And where there is a father deficit, it means stepping in to offer care, mentorship, coaching, and a larger community in which sacrifice and servanthood are part and parcel of our life together before, as Ephesians 3:14–15 describes, “the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name.”
Justin Ariel Bailey is a professor of theology at Dordt University. He is the author of Interpreting Your World: Five Lenses for Engaging Theology and Culture.
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