Martin Robb is Professor of Care Ethics and Culture at the Open University (UK). He is the author of ‘Men, Masculinities and the Care of Children: Images, Ideas and Identities’ (2020) and co-editor with Kerry Jones of ‘Men and Loss: New Perspectives on Bereavement, Grief and Masculinity’ (2025). You can follow his work on Substack at carefulthinking.substack.com.

1st September 2026

What can neuroscience tell us about the experience of becoming a father? Is it true that caregiving changes the structures of men’s brains? And, if so, what are the implications for our understanding of fathers’ role in the care of their children?

These are the kinds of questions explored in Dad Brain: The New Science of Fatherhood and How It Shapes Men’s Lives by clinical psychologist (and Fairer Disputations Featured Author) Darby Saxbe, which was published earlier this year. It’s an ambitious book, which sets out not only to communicate the current state of play in the science of fatherhood, but also to provide an overview of what we know about a wide range of different aspects of fathers’ lives.

The book is divided into two parts. The first part focuses on recent findings from neurobiological research, both the author’s research and that of other scientists with whom she has worked. These studies all explore how early fatherhood changes men’s bodies and minds, their mental and physical health, and their relationships. Subjects include the part played by testosterone and hormones, the impact of becoming a father on men’s mental health, and the implications of all of these changes for couple relationships. The second half of the book explores some of the ways in which fatherhood shapes different aspects of men’s lives. It includes discussion of stepparenting and adoption, absent and separated fathering, employment, and the role of public policy in supporting involved fatherhood.

The book is written in a popular academic style. In other words, while it draws heavily on research data, it presents that information in a very reader-friendly way. Saxbe mixes accounts from the front line of research with stories from the author’s and others’ personal experience, all communicated in a lively and humorous manner. The obvious advantage is that the book will be appealing and accessible to general readers and have an influence beyond the academy. One possible drawback is that it can be difficult to extract precise conclusions from the succession of stories. What’s more, there is only room for so many stories to illustrate each topic covered, so that the range and depth of the research evidence is not always fully represented. I felt this particularly in the sections about which I have some professional knowledge, such as fathers’ mental health, where there is more interesting recent research available than the book suggests.

Saxbe’s principal argument is that the experience of fatherhood, and particularly taking an active part in caring for children, has a recognisable biological impact on men, and particularly on their brains. She acknowledges that this is not a completely new argument—she mentions the work of earlier influential researchers, such as Sarah Blaffer Hrdy—but perhaps what is original is the sheer quantity as well as the current “straight-from-the-lab” nature of the research that she adduces in this book, including research from a variety of global contexts.

Quantitative vs. Qualitative Approaches

Towards the beginning of the book, Saxbe claims that “fathers are often overlooked in parenting research,” that “surprisingly few studies examine men as parents,” and that “research hasn’t fully caught up with the fact that fathers also matter as parents.” While that may have been true some years ago, the past quarter century has seen major studies of fatherhood emerge, on both sides of the Atlantic, such as those by Tina Miller and Esther Dermott here in the UK, and Andrea Doucet in Canada. A wealth of recent studies focus on specific aspects of fatherhood, including young fatherhood, fathering and poverty, and fatherhood in a global context, to mention just a few. However, it’s true to say that most of these studies have been sociological or sociocultural in approach, generating qualitative rather than quantitative data. Saxbe’s focus, by contrast, is on “hard” scientific research and her emphasis is on the neurological and biological impacts of fathering.

I come to this book as a researcher on fatherhood, and on men’s practices of care more generally, who identifies very much with that sociocultural tradition. My background is in social psychology, rather than clinical or neuropsychology. Those of us working in these traditions tend to be somewhat wary of neuroscience. We are concerned about its tendency to make sweeping universal statements or reinforce essentialist perspectives, particularly when it comes to gender roles and parenting, and to minimise the significance of the social, cultural, and historical factors shaping human behaviour.

Thankfully, Saxbe avoids these missteps. Although she is “one of the few researchers in the world to have collected longitudinal neuroimaging research on men as they become fathers,” she has also collected qualitative data, interviewing new dads in her lab and “asking them about their expectations and experiences of fatherhood.” Throughout the book, she is at pains to balance the findings from brain science with reminders about the importance of personal, social, and cultural factors. While men may be “wired” to care, Saxbe suggests that the extent to which they activate that potential depends very much on values and culture. Her argument that “before men can embrace care…they need to wrestle with their understanding of masculinity within a culture that too often treats connection and nurturing as unmanly” will be music to the ears of those working within the sociocultural strand of fatherhood research. And all of those working to promote the importance of men’s care for children, whatever our theoretical perspective, will welcome Saxbe’s stated aim to “debunk outdated stereotypes that paint dads as lazy, clueless or uncaring.”

It has long been acknowledged that the human brain undergoes major changes at certain points in an individual’s life, such as adolescence. Saxbe wants to argue that the transition to parenthood, for both women and men, is another such key moment. As she writes:

We might think the father-child bond starts when we love and recognize our baby, and the hard work of parenting comes next. But what if we have it backward? We provide care first, and then our bond, our biology, and even a sense that a child is ours will follow. Caregiving creates familiarity, which deepens our bond with our child. That act of providing effortful care can even transform our brains.

This sense that the practical experience of caregiving actually develops a person’s capacity to care is certainly one that is echoed in sociocultural and philosophical writing, though those working in those traditions might use different language to express it. For example, the care theorist Maurice Hamington draws on the work of the phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty to describe the ways in which bodies—including men’s bodies—learn habits of care through practical experience. Work in this area has emphasised the impact of caregiving on the body as a whole, rather than focusing on the brain, as Saxbe’s work does.

The Distinctive Value of Paternal Care

Having read the book, I was left feeling unsure as to whether Saxbe was making a second claim, in addition to the central claim that men’s brains change in significant ways when they become fathers. Are “dad brains” different to those of mothers? Will the way in which men care for their children inevitably be different from women’s? Saxbe argues that “males are wired to participate in care,” but are they wired differently than women are?

It’s hard to say exactly what Saxbe’s stance on this question is. In one chapter, she uses an ice-cream analogy, suggesting that fathers’ brains are “more vanilla than strawberry,” in order to illustrate the differential impact on the cortex and sub-cortex of paternal and maternal brains following the birth of a child. Elsewhere she suggests that “fathers aren’t just male mothers; they have their own distinctive styles of parenting,” though she adds, on the basis of the available evidence, “I’m reluctant to draw overly broad conclusions.”

Interestingly, last month saw the publication of Erika Bachiochi’s important new article on developing a paternal ethic of care, which makes a powerful argument for fathers’ distinctive contribution to the care and upbringing of children. In my own more modest contribution to this debate, published in Fairer Disputations a few years ago, I argued that because of embodied sexed differences, “men’s and women’s different embodiment means that their caring will inevitably be different,” but also that “the precise nature of a man’s care for a child cannot be predicted from his sex, any more than a woman’s can.” So I think on this issue Saxbe gets the balance just about right, though further neurological research on sexed differences in caregiving would be of value.

When it comes to assessing the added value of the kind of neurological research on fatherhood outlined in this book, perhaps Saxbe herself provides an answer. She points out that “the claim that parenting doesn’t come naturally to men because they lack the biology for it… can make business and policy leaders reluctant to invest in policies that support men’s involvement in childcare” and argues that “embracing fatherhood means challenging the assumption that employees, especially men, should be unencumbered by family obligations.” The implication here, I think, is that employers and policymakers are more likely to be swayed by the kind of “hard” data emerging from neuroscience than by the more ‘fuzzy’ findings of social scientists, which can be more easily dismissed as subjective.

As for those of us working in this field, but coming from different theoretical positions, the kind of research evidence shared in this book offers additional support for the findings of our qualitative studies. Namely: becoming a father is often a moment of profound personal change in a man’s life, and involvement in the care of a child can completely reorient a man’s sense of himself. Saxbe’s research certainly endorses these conclusions, though in language and with forms of data with which some of us are less familiar.

Brain science and sociocultural research can complement each other, with the former providing the “hard” evidence of what happens when men become fathers. To build on this foundation, we need other tools to understand how personal relational factors—such as men’s early experiences of being cared for, and the part played by persistent social expectations and pressures surrounding masculinity—shape this most significant experience in a man’s life.