Kids change you. Not just in stereotypical ways like going to
bed early or having a house filled with colorful toys or listening to weird baby-friendly music
those are choices that parents are making no none of those are the way that kids physiologically
change you literally they release chemicals that change our brains it's so cool let's kick into it
hey everyone welcome to episode 3 of 4 on dad parents so far we've covered the benefits to
kids the equalness of same-sex parentage and now like the baker's in a showstopper fakers
we are halfway through on be halfway you know the phenomenon where baby's heads smell good
is incredible because they really do smell good we had a plumber come to the house and
his wife was like smell the baby when you're there because it's just they smell so good
humans want to smell babies heads and it's weird don't go around smelling other people's
heads but scientists aren't sure why the baby head smells nice they know that they release
chemicals though their heads are manipulating you their heads release a chemical called hex
or hexadecanal hexadecanol is a human volatile chemical volatile means airborne it's odorless
but we still sense it the chemical is manipulating parents and affects sexes differently we inhale it
and it changes us they scanned the brains of the participants in this study and they found that the
affected parts of our brains were associated with fear social cues contexts and aggression
male aggression is actually lessened by the hex chemical whereas female aggression is heightened
and the science literally came out like two weeks ago so i haven't really gotten to dig into it too
much but it's amazing and this is just one of the ways that kids manipulate their parents
parents are literally different humans after they have children and since i
just had a kid that means that my brain is different now than it ever has been before
when a kid falls asleep on your chest or when you hold hands with your partner when you're holding
or playing with your pets the little pituitary gland inside of our brains releases lots of
hormones and one of these is oxytocin it literally changes your brain for the better i mean literally
everything you do changes your brain like all the time your brain is plastic and constantly
updating itself but you know whatever oxytocin is sort of erroneously called the love hormone
it doesn't actually have anything to do with love as much as bonding and it does a lot of other
things like any hormone it is a kind of a key ring more than just one key and it changes all sorts of
stuff around your body and one of those is that it actually causes an increase in empathy and a
change in your emotional alignment these changes literally motivate men to care for their children
it also reduces testosterone levels whoa whoa men hey it's nope it's fine it isn't good or bad
both men and women have testosterone all the time testosterone isn't like scrooge's vault you don't
want to just have it be chock full so you can dive into a pool of it and less testosterone science
think may reduce risk-taking behaviors which would make sense if you're going to have a child and so
the kid encourages oxytocin in you and you encourage oxytocin back skin to skin contact
is required for much of this interaction except for that human volatile chemical stuff which seems
to just kind of come off the baby messing with your brain but the important thing here is all
of this involves parents to be present engaged and involved and again this works for literally
every type of parent and dad biological adoptive heterosexual or queer oxytocin was consistent
across both men and women when studied but caused different behaviors in each one amazing
it's an evolutionary benefit in a case study where grandparents spat into a vile and measured levels
of the bonding hormone oxytocin gramas would spike right away as soon as they saw the baby
oh my god oxytocin everywhere grandpa's though would actually have a delay and spike later that
doesn't mean that it didn't spike both males and females respond to this hormone and have a spike
and the amount it spiked was the same it was just the timing that was different dads and moms
are forever changed by their infant in these ways and this is especially true with your own infant
men y'all are not less of a parent you're the same of a parent but there are literally almost
9 billion results on mom baby bonding the birther birthy relationship has been
so studied so last century and before but decades after discovering the link between mom and baby
some scientists pointed that brain flashlight dad's way and surprise surprise baby interactions
change dads too what who would have ever thought that come on everyone thought that we're all 100
natural human okay come on everybody's brain is is a human brain how oxytee changes dad
brains is really important our brains are slightly different and thus brain chemistry and reactions
to stimuli and so on are different too but we're all human which means we all react to things
men can even get postpartum depression this chart shows brain changes in mom and dad brains both
brains change no brain is left the same after this experience and this is especially true if you are
present engaged and involved the thing is if you have a birthing parent and a non-birthing parent
do they experience similar changes if you have two dads and neither one birth the child do they both
have the brain changes to the dad brain on this chart or not more research is needed my friends
and there are behavioral differences involved as well something else baby contact ups prolactin
production women hey prolactin it's fine it's totally fine i know it has lact in there like
lactate but you're not gonna go all meet the [ __ ] on us out there okay i promise prolactin is an
ancient hormone it existed even before mammals existed and if you know anything about mammals
you know that they're named that way because of the mammaries so breastfeeding wasn't even a thing
yet when prolactin evolved so more prolactin in non-birthing partners is associated with learning
exploration and play and play is good play is the best just like with animals play is a key way that
we learn about our world we learn how to use our body we learn motor skills and social skills when
to stop and go and play has rules complex social cues and coordination even unstructured play just
running around helps kids understand their bodies and minds also how the laws of the universe work
for them against them and around them i've been sort of dancing around this no pun intended this
entire series so far but i really want to dig into play because dads are strongly associated in the
studies with play play is extremely important to all humans and this is where the traits of being a
dad really come into play again no pun intended we need to learn to play both mentally and physically
and we are taught that that doesn't come inborn stereotypically moms during play might say be
careful while dads would say go for it and that's more of a continuum of cautious to risky and maybe
i'm stereotyping by saying moms would be careful and dads might say go for it perhaps your parents
are swapped there and that is the point not all moms are safe not all dads are rough and
tumble every family unit is different and it's not about stereotypes it's often situational personal
and dads are just more associated with risky behavior acknowledging that all parents have
their own personalities fits with the same sex parentage of episode 2 and different sex parents
and non-traditional gender roles and it also fits with how we change our children from episode one
it's always likely that two people are gonna have slightly different sets of values they may not
even know they're different until the situation comes up and you're on the sideline of your kid's
soccer game and you're looking around and all of a sudden you're kill them and another mom's like
what's up with alicia and you're like wow that was aggressive honey i don't know maybe you don't
have to kill him son just do your best hearing just one of those tears kill em that's fine but
both way better that teaches the kid that the world isn't just one thing that mom and dad aren't
exactly the same they're gonna give you options they're gonna give you a continuum to play with
and i'm sort of going off on my own tangent here but you get it this teaches the kid regulation
and this stuff is complicated and really tough to study but it's one of the reasons why play is so
important you're learning all of this stuff about the world one quick note that's sort of a sidebar
here communication from young girls to male figures also important girls learn to tell male
parents no just like boys do but i was talking to my friend dr ali matu and he pointed out
that with girls telling their parents no can help develop healthy relationships with refusal
consent and body autonomy when a young girl tells her dad no i don't want that that's a
valuable lesson for the dad to respect because we live in a society that believes boys will be boys
i wish i didn't have to say it but that is the reality and so teaching women consent can start
even when they're young just by respecting their wishes okay and sidebar there again most studies
indicate there is no causal difference between same-sex and different sex parents though some
interesting correlations that you should ruminate on and in the end dads change no matter what they
do they do end up changing they're more than just male parents they're sources of play
security safety communication emotion and empathy love and companionship just like any other parent
the benefit is that because they're non-birthing parents often they have different outlooks than
birthing parents simply because they're different human beings some dads do birth some moms don't
that's totally fine the important thing is to remember your brain is going to change when you
have a kid and they're going to change in different ways because you're a different
person the important thing is also to remember that those traits the behaviors of being a mom
or a dad they're probably going to come out of you naturally but if you know and recognize them it's
going to help you to fulfill whatever role it is in whatever moment that you're in that you want to
fulfill because you don't have to just pick one and stick to it there's nothing in the science
that says all dads have to dab all the dad time so come back next time to find out what happens if
you pick that dad role and you go full stereotype you go a little too hard in the dad role and you
end up being too macho what happens to your kid is it better or worse find out next time