Ep 200. Darby Saxbe: What Happens to Us When We Become Parents?

Work and Life with Stew Friedman

Darby Saxbe is Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Southern California’s David and Dana Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. Darby has two principle, interrelated lines of research: the impact of family environments and family transitions on parents and the impact of family environments on children. Her ongoing Hormones Across the Transition to Childrearing (HATCH) study, funded in 2016 by a five-year CAREER award from the National Science Foundation, follows first-time expectant parents from pregnancy across the first year postpartum in order to understand the factors that predict successful adjustment to parenthood. She has a bachelor’s degree in English and Psychology from Yale University, and a PhD in Clinical Psychology from UCLA.

In this episode, Stew talks with Darby about the implications of her research on what happens to men and women when they become parents, how the quality of marital relationships affect children, the importance of social support for new parents, how the pandemic has affected parents, the tendency for American mothers to assume they must shoulder rather than share burdens, and more.

Here then is an invitation, a challenge, for you, once you’ve listened to the conversation. What can you do to provide support for a new parent in your life? And how, by doing so, would you be enriching yourself? Share your reactions to this episode and ideas for future episodes with Stew by writing to him at [e-mail] or via LinkedIn.

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