Latest / Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families / Millenial Dads (When Mum Goes Away)

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Millenial Dads (When Mum Goes Away) · Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families

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  Speaker 1: Every Friday on the Happy Families podcast, it's I'll do
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  Speaker 1: better tomorrow. We reflect on the week that was. We
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  Speaker 1: talk about what's coming up. We try to give you
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  Speaker 1: some inspo to make your family happier. Or we talk
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  Speaker 1: about your well-being and our well-being and how we can
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  Speaker 1: make life better. Today on the pod, we're going to
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  Speaker 1: be talking about Father's Day because this Sunday we get
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  Speaker 1: to celebrate dads. We're also talking about some research, which
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  Speaker 1: is a little bit of a step away from what
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  Speaker 1: we normally do on Fridays because there's a brand new
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  Speaker 1: book out all about dads. and how being a dad
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  Speaker 1: is really good for your brain and not so much
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  Speaker 1: for your body, but definitely for your brain. And a
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  Speaker 1: bit of news, I'm going away. You've had a big celebration, Kylie,
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  Speaker 1: going away with our girls to America for a week
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  Speaker 1: and a half, two weeks.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, and you gave me a hard time because I
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  Speaker 2: wasn't taking you, but I took three children. You, on
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  Speaker 2: the other hand, are going solo.
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  Speaker 1: It's Father's Day. It's Father's Day. What am I supposed
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  Speaker 1: to do? I can't take the kids away.
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  Speaker 2: Seriously.
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  Speaker 1: More on that next. It's the Happy Families podcast, real
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  Speaker 1: parenting solutions every single day. Australia's most downloaded parenting podcast.
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  Speaker 1: All right, Kylie, we've got a bunch of stuff to
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  Speaker 1: talk about. Let's start with Father's Day. Sunday, I get
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  Speaker 1: to be the, I get to feel special. Tell me.
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  Speaker 2: You get to be the center of attention.
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  Speaker 1: How special am I going to feel?
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  Speaker 2: I think you're the center of attention.
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  Speaker 1: All the time. What have you got planned for me?
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  Speaker 2: I'm not telling you anything. Needless to say.
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  Speaker 1: Have you got anything planned?
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  Speaker 2: No, I don't. You're going on a holiday.
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  Speaker 1: No.
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  Speaker 2: You've like blown our budget.
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  Speaker 1: It's the world's cheapest holiday. It's such a cheap trip. Anyway,
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  Speaker 1: we'll talk about that in a sec. So no plans.
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  Speaker 1: It's just going to be a day where I get
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  Speaker 1: to feel special and have all of my family around
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  Speaker 1: me and hugging me and telling me that I'm great.
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  Speaker 2: Now that we have two children who have left the
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  Speaker 2: house and we have two children about to leave the house,
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  Speaker 2: the exciting thing is that they'll all be home.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. And based on yesterday's conversation about AIs and sycophancy,
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  Speaker 1: I'm expecting everybody to be completely sycophantic for Father's Day
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  Speaker 1: for me. Everybody's just got to suck up. Tell me
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  Speaker 1: how awesome I am.
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  Speaker 2: Oh, be sure to let AI print.
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  Speaker 1: No, no, no. You don't have to talk to AI
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  Speaker 1: about it. Just be nice to me. That'll be fine.
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  Speaker 1: That'll be fine.
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  Speaker 2: All right.
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  Speaker 1: There's a brand new book out by Darby Saxby. Professor
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  Speaker 1: Darby Saxby from the University of Southern California has written
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  Speaker 1: a book about dad brain. And I do want to
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  Speaker 1: have just a three-minute chat about that because, well, it's
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  Speaker 1: Father's Day and sometimes– we forget that being a dad
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  Speaker 1: is not just good for kids. It's actually good for dads.
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  Speaker 2: So I find this curious because there isn't a mom
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  Speaker 2: brain out there and they're not telling us that it's
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  Speaker 2: great for us. So why is it so good for dads? Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: So what the research seems to point to is that
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  Speaker 1: dad's cognition and their social lives are better when they
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  Speaker 1: become fathers compared to non-fathers. So there's a whole lot
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  Speaker 1: of research that shows that When you've got an engaged father,
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  Speaker 1: like for your children, if they've got an engaged father
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  Speaker 1: in their life, which is what we're supposed to be
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  Speaker 1: celebrating on Sunday, that the kids are going to do
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  Speaker 1: better in terms of self-regulation, in terms of social skills,
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  Speaker 1: in terms of educational attainment. There's some data that shows
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  Speaker 1: that dads use more novel and bigger words around kids
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  Speaker 1: than little kids, and so kids get a more expansive vocabulary. Incidentally,
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  Speaker 1: I got raked over the coals on– on the internet
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  Speaker 1: because somebody's read my book and I put that into
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  Speaker 1: the book about the importance of fathers in kids' lives.
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  Speaker 1: And they're like, what do you mean? I'm like, well,
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  Speaker 1: there's research that's referenced in the back, but somebody's going
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  Speaker 1: for it online about that in one of the book
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  Speaker 1: reviews that I came across. I digress. And we also
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  Speaker 1: know that having a really good hands-on engaged dad is
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  Speaker 1: great for mums. It's good for their life satisfaction, their
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  Speaker 1: relationship satisfaction, can reduce postpartum depression. So being a dad
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  Speaker 1: is really good for the people around dad, But more
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  Speaker 1: recent research seems to indicate that meaning goes up, purpose
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  Speaker 1: goes up, connection goes up, and brain health improves and
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  Speaker 1: mental fitness improves. In other words, if you're a dad
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  Speaker 1: and you're engaged and actively spending time with your children,
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  Speaker 1: you seem to get a whole range of benefits. It's
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  Speaker 1: just really, really healthy for you.
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  Speaker 2: So I'm assuming that's because they don't deal with the
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  Speaker 2: hormonal fluctuations that mums are dealing with. And so they
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  Speaker 2: don't get any of that brain fog. They don't get
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  Speaker 2: any interrupted sleep. They're not having to deal with the
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  Speaker 2: day-to-day stresses of managing children and household chores.
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  Speaker 1: I would say historically you were right, but the data
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  Speaker 1: seems to indicate... So I came across one really interesting
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  Speaker 1: factoid in Darby Saxby's book. She says that Millennial dads
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  Speaker 1: are now spending as much time with their kids as
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  Speaker 1: boomer mums spent with their kids. So boomer mums probably
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  Speaker 1: often said, go outside and play.
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  Speaker 2: I was about to say.
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  Speaker 1: But we know from data that's several decades old now
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  Speaker 1: that boomer mums were very, very much doing the lion's
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  Speaker 1: share of any parent-child interaction, including all the hard stuff
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  Speaker 1: that you've talked about. And there's the phrase Disneyland dad
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  Speaker 1: for a reason, right? Dad just gets to have the fun.
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  Speaker 1: But when you consider that today's dads, millennial dads, are
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  Speaker 1: spending as much time with their kids as boomer mums
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  Speaker 1: once spent, that's been an upward trend for fathers spending
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  Speaker 1: time with their kids for a long time now. I'd
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  Speaker 1: love to.
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  Speaker 2: See the data between boomer mums and mums now.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think I remember reading something about that a
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  Speaker 1: while back. It hasn't changed a heap.
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  Speaker 2: Really?
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  Speaker 1: Yeah. Mums today are definitely spending more time, but it
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  Speaker 1: hasn't increased the way it has for dads.
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  Speaker 2: Interesting.
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  Speaker 1: I can't remember the exact numbers, but definitely the gap
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  Speaker 1: isn't as big for mums.
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  Speaker 2: So the findings are that dads are better off just
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  Speaker 2: about all round. Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: In terms of emotional and social life.
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  Speaker 2: Compared to their non-dad counterparts.
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  Speaker 1: Yep.
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  Speaker 2: What are they putting it down to?
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  Speaker 1: There's one... hypothesis that like, Darby Saxby talks about how
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  Speaker 1: parenthood is better than Botox for preserving your youth because
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  Speaker 1: you have to.
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  Speaker 2: Which is crazy because we feel older having lived half
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  Speaker 2: a century with six children in tow.
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  Speaker 1: Yes.
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  Speaker 2: I sometimes feel a lot older than my 50 years.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: Basically, kids inspire us to exercise our social brain. We
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  Speaker 1: have to create more connections with others. We tend to
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  Speaker 1: pursue healthier lifestyles. We don't get to optimize and maximize
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  Speaker 1: the way we would if we had no kids, but
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  Speaker 1: it seems that we just do better. There's a neuroscientist
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  Speaker 1: by the name of Anne-Marie Delang, and she and her
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  Speaker 1: researchers from the UK, there's something in the UK called Biobank.
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  Speaker 1: It's like this repository of brain scans of thousands of
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  Speaker 1: participants across Britain. they tested whether parents showed different trajectories
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  Speaker 1: of brain age in middle age and beyond. And what
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  Speaker 1: they found was that the brains of participants with children
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  Speaker 1: looked like younger brains versus the brains of participants without children.
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  Speaker 1: So it showed up for both mothers and fathers, but
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  Speaker 1: men specifically benefited from it. There was another study that
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  Speaker 1: came out of the University of Southern California. Men with
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  Speaker 1: two children had an estimated brain age difference that was
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  Speaker 1: younger than childless peers. And if you had three or
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  Speaker 1: more children, it was an even bigger advantage. And I've
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  Speaker 1: got six kids, which is why my brain is still
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  Speaker 1: the equivalent of what it was when I was 22.
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  Speaker 2: I can't believe you said that.
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  Speaker 1: I have knocked it around a little bit, haven't I?
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  Speaker 2: When we were prepping for this podcast, you shared a
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  Speaker 2: couple of things that really jumped out at me. One
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  Speaker 2: of those was that education, the more educated parents were,
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  Speaker 2: and specifically dads, the more satisfaction levels they had. experience
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  Speaker 2: and the greater impact they had on their children. Why
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  Speaker 2: is that the case? In some ways, it sounds like
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  Speaker 2: a really silly question, but we've heard this time and
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  Speaker 2: time again in so much of the research that education
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  Speaker 2: plays such a profound impact in the lives of children
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  Speaker 2: and specifically families.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, highly educated dads just spend more time, put more
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  Speaker 1: energy into parenthood. People who haven't been through university do
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  Speaker 1: spend a little bit less time with kids.
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  Speaker 2: I find that curious, though, because the most educated people
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  Speaker 2: are often the ones that are working the longest hours, right?
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe. I don't know about how that breaks down.
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  Speaker 1: What the research seems to say is that when it
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  Speaker 1: comes to interactive activities like reading to kids and playing
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  Speaker 1: and talking, the widening gap in paternal engagement with kids
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  Speaker 1: is it really exists and it's getting bigger. It seems
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  Speaker 1: that regardless of the time and the capacity, that educated
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  Speaker 1: dads seem to come home and have the capacity or
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  Speaker 1: the willingness to engage with their kids in positive, productive
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  Speaker 1: ways in a way that less educated dads don't. Of course,
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  Speaker 1: we're speaking about averages here. There's plenty of dads that
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  Speaker 1: haven't been to university that spend really great quality time
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  Speaker 1: with their kids. We've We've got neighbors who have been
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  Speaker 1: exactly like that. So it's certainly not worth not throwing
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  Speaker 1: a blanket over the whole population. But yeah, that's what
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  Speaker 1: the data shows. So anyway, we'll wrap that up. If
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  Speaker 1: you're interested, we'll link to Darby Saxby's book in the
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  Speaker 1: show notes. It's a really fascinating read. After the break,
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  Speaker 1: why Mrs. Happy Families is not as excited about my
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  Speaker 1: Father's Day getaway as I am. We're back. It's the
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  Speaker 1: Happy Families podcast. So, Mrs. Happy Families, you're not as
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  Speaker 1: enthusiastic about me going away the day after Father's Day
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  Speaker 1: as I am. Why is that?
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  Speaker 2: In the last three years. Yes. You've had a surfing accident.
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  Speaker 1: Where I broke my neck and my back.
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  Speaker 2: A bike riding accident.
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  Speaker 1: Where I was found unconscious on the side of the
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  Speaker 1: road after coming off my bike, apparently, because I don't
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  Speaker 1: remember it.
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  Speaker 2: And suffered amnesia.
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  Speaker 1: Concussed for a week and suffered amnesia. But the bike
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  Speaker 1: computer says I was going 70 k's an hour when
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  Speaker 1: I came off the bike.
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  Speaker 2: And now you've decided that you're going to go try
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  Speaker 2: freediving again.
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  Speaker 1: Yes.
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  Speaker 2: And for those of you who don't know what freediving is,
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  Speaker 2: it's an opportunity for some idiot to see how long
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  Speaker 2: they can hold their breath under the water for.
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  Speaker 1: You don't seem impressed. I'm not. No. What is it
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  Speaker 1: about me and risky activities? Did you know I've never
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  Speaker 1: been in a fight? Like, I don't go out and
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  Speaker 1: chase stuff that can be dangerous.
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  Speaker 2: Well, you're not that crazy.
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  Speaker 1: I don't want to do things that are dangerous. Like,
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  Speaker 1: I think MMA is bonkers.
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  Speaker 2: I don't.
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  Speaker 1: I do things that have risk, but there's a difference
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  Speaker 1: between risk and danger. I talk about this all the time, right?
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  Speaker 1: Like we want our kids to be doing risky things,
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  Speaker 1: but not dangerous things. So risk is where you can
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  Speaker 1: assess the danger and determine whether or not you should
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  Speaker 1: take the next step. Danger is just, you've got no
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  Speaker 1: sense of how risky it is. So therefore it's just
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  Speaker 1: plain dangerous. Like a toddler playing near the road, that's dangerous.
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  Speaker 1: Teenager playing near the road, they can assess that there's
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  Speaker 1: some risk and they can work out how they're going
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  Speaker 1: to play so they can stay away from the road.
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  Speaker 2: Well, just so you know, I do plan on ringing
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  Speaker 2: your friend and making sure that he's very aware of
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  Speaker 2: the rules.
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  Speaker 1: Hey, let's talk about my friend for a minute. We've
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  Speaker 1: just talked about Darby Saxby's book, but it's Father's Day
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  Speaker 1: on Sunday. If you're looking for a last-minute Father's Day
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  Speaker 1: gift idea, I had him on the podcast a couple
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  Speaker 1: of weeks back. Aunt Williams is my friend. He's just
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  Speaker 1: released his memoir. Ant is a two-time world record holder
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: doing free diving under the ice. If you know what
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  Speaker 1: free diving is, by the way, and Kylie hasn't explained
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  Speaker 1: it enough, it's where you take a really big deep
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  Speaker 1: breath and then you go under the water. Ant has
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  Speaker 1: gone under the ice in the Arctic Circle in a
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  Speaker 1: lake up there to, I think it was 73 metres.
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  Speaker 1: 73 metres. That means he did 146 metres. 73 down,
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  Speaker 1: 73 back up. Under the ice. Under the ice. And
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  Speaker 1: he also did a dive that was.
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  Speaker 1: I think it was 184 meters from point A to
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  Speaker 1: point B under the ice in one of those lakes.
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  Speaker 1: Just amazing. So he's outstanding. I did feel pretty good though.
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  Speaker 1: I got a message from him the other day. I
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  Speaker 1: sent him what I was up to with my breath
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  Speaker 1: holds because I've been sitting in the living room, in
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  Speaker 1: the lounge chair, doing a whole lot of what they
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  Speaker 1: call oxygen tables, which is where you take a big
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  Speaker 1: deep breath and then you hold your breath for a
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  Speaker 1: while and then you recover and then you do it again,
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  Speaker 1: but for a little bit longer. And I set a
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  Speaker 1: new record the other day and I messaged to him.
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  Speaker 1: and said, guess what? I just did this. And I'm
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  Speaker 1: 15 seconds in front of him. But that's because he
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  Speaker 1: hasn't been training. He's only just getting into the training.
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  Speaker 1: I think that he'll be triple what I can do
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  Speaker 1: by the time we get to our destination. Well, I
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  Speaker 1: don't like it. I don't like it at all.
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  Speaker 2: But I also have a lot of respect for Ant
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  Speaker 2: and for his skill and for his capacity. And I
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  Speaker 2: am trusting him.
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  Speaker 1: And I need this. I need to decompress. And I
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  Speaker 1: can't think of a better way to do it than.
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  Speaker 2: To hold my breath. Do you know that?
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  Speaker 1: When you're stressed out, your brain goes crazy, right? You
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  Speaker 1: think about all the stuff that's going wrong in your life.
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  Speaker 1: You think about the kids or you think about the
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: business or you think about, I don't know, the tax
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: office or you think about your clients. You think about
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  Speaker 1: all the stuff that's heavy. But when you're under the
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: water and you're down 15 or 20 metres and you've
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: got nothing to think about at all except the oxygen
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: in your lungs and.
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: You should take up crocheting.
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  Speaker 1: It's really good.
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  Speaker 2: It's much safer too. I shouldn't be surprised because when
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  Speaker 2: we first got married, your mum and actually your grandparents
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  Speaker 2: both told me that as a two-year-old, you would get
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  Speaker 2: so worked up about things that you would hold your
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  Speaker 2: breath until you blacked out. I haven't passed out yet.
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  Speaker 2: And your grandfather used to throw you under the tap
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  Speaker 2: to try and make you stop.
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  Speaker 1: Holding your breath. And I've been training for this.
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  Speaker 2: You've been training for this your whole life.
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  Speaker 1: Haven't passed out while I've been training. Last time I
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: passed out, other than my bike crash, was when I
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: was a toddler. Oh, goodness.
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: Anyway, happy Father's Day, Giles.
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  Speaker 1: That's our I'll do better tomorrow. To all the dads,
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: happy Father's Day. To all the mums who are doing
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: it solo, congratulations. We really hope that you have a
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: weekend where you feel supported and loved because we know
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: that when you're doing it on your own, it can
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: be really, really, really, really hard. We will be back
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: with episodes that we have recorded ahead of time so
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: that while I'm on my week-long trip, I don't have
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: to learn how to push buttons. Holding my breath. Yeah,
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: we've got more podcast episodes for you. Heaps of good
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: stuff next week. So make sure you come and join
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: us again for that. The Happy Families podcast, sound and
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: audio engineering by Justin Roulon from Bridge Media. Mim Hammonds
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: looks after our admin and other support. And I think
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: that's about it. Happy Father's Day. Have a great weekend.
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: We'll talk to you again on Monday.