When Darby Saxbe scans a new father’s brain, she sees something that surprises most people: it looks a lot like a new mother’s.
The clinical psychologist and USC professor has spent more than two decades studying what happens to men when they become parents, and her findings — shrinking gray matter, shifting hormones, altered neural architecture — form the core of “Dad Brain: The New Science of Fatherhood and How It Shapes Men’s Lives,” her debut book. She will discuss and sign it tonight at Vroman’s Bookstore in Pasadena, four days before the book’s official publication on June 9 by Flatiron Books and just over two weeks ahead of Father’s Day.
Saxbe, who runs the Neuroendocrinology of Social Ties lab at USC, said the research challenges persistent assumptions about who is wired to care for children.
“I’ve heard people argue against paternity leave because mothers are supposedly wired to take care of kids, and therefore they’re the ones that should be home,” Saxbe said in a recent interview with UCLA Magazine. “But when you start to recognize that the research is telling a different story and challenging our assumptions, it opens up a lot more possibility for flexibility.”
The book draws on Saxbe’s own laboratory studies, including neuroimaging scans, hormone samples, and father-child interactions, as well as interviews with dozens of first-time fathers and research conducted with scientists around the world, according to the publisher’s description. Her research has shown that new fathers’ brains lose volume in the same regions as those of new mothers — a change that, rather than signaling decline, reflects a stronger bond with their child and a more intense focus on parenting, according to the UCLA article.
“Dads don’t experience pregnancy directly, but we also see all these neurobiological changes in them,” Saxbe told UCLA Magazine. “The idea that our experience and our investments can change us physically and mentally is really powerful.”
The book was inspired in part by Saxbe’s own father, who became a single parent when she was young and threw himself into caregiving.
“[Caring for my siblings and me] gave him purpose and helped him put one foot in front of the other when he wanted to give up,” Saxbe wrote of her father in the book’s closing passage, as excerpted in UCLA Magazine.
Tonight’s event pairs Saxbe with Ken Bensinger, a New York Times reporter based in Los Angeles and author of “Red Card,” who will join her in conversation. The event begins at 7:00 p.m. at Vroman’s, 695 East Colorado Boulevard. It is free with RSVP through the bookstore’s website. The hardcover book is available for preorder at $29.99. Vroman’s notes that a book purchase helps make events like this possible.
Saxbe, a Yale and UCLA graduate who has published more than 80 peer-reviewed articles and secured more than $3 million in research funding, according to the publisher, said she sees the work as carrying stakes beyond the lab.
“Helping men feel empowered and welcomed into the caregiving web is really helpful to kids, it’s really helpful to moms, and it’s really helpful to dads themselves,” Saxbe told UCLA Magazine, “because I think there’s a lot of meaning and a lot of purpose that can come from taking care of others.”
For more information or to RSVP, visit vromansbookstore.com or call (626) 449-5320
