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Dr. Anna Machin

lines on the record: 189
first: 2025-07-03
most recent: 2025-07-03
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Yes, it does. The reason, I mean, all attachments are a spectrum. The reason why we categorize them is typical scientists. We like a category because when we've got a category, we can do data analysis and we can decide the sorts of behaviors, for example, that these four quarters perform, or we can put somebody in one and help them change to another, for example.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And the way they deal with it, like I did, was to cling, to maintain, because if I keep an eye on you, it's going to be okay. Then we have the two avoidant attachment styles. So first of all, we have people who are very anxious about being abandoned, but don't maintain proximity. They find intimacy very uncomfortable. And the reason for that, they're known as fearful avoidant people. And the reason they do that is the way they cope with the stress of possibly being left is they just don't have relationships because then I can't be hurt. if you do that. And finally, we have dismissing avoidance. Dismissing avoidant people are the smallest part of the population generally. And they aren't worried about abandonment, but they also don't like proximity. To be honest, they're the islands. They're not that bothered about being in a relationship. And one of the drivers for that might be that they're not very comfortable with intimacy. But some people literally just not bothered.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Two different factors. The first is how anxious you are about abandonment. That's the first one. We ask you lots of questions to work out how anxious you are about that. The second one is how much you want to maintain proximity. So again, we'll ask you questions about how close you like to be to the person, whether you maintain closeness because you're anxious or whether you maintain closeness because you love intimacy or whether you run away from intimacy at a rate of knots. And depending on how you answer, we put you in one of four categories. So if you are not anxious in relationships about abandonment, but you are very comfortable with proximity, emotional, physical intimacy, then you're secure. And it's what it sounds like. You are very comfortable in your individuality. You gain huge benefits from being in that relationship, but you don't need that relationship to exist to define you. The next one is people who are highly anxious about abandonment. And that was me preoccupied. So they are very anxious about being left.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Parents, carers, whoever's bringing you up, babies will attach to literally anybody who's meeting their needs, to be honest. And that will fundamentally alter your brain in either in a good way or unfortunately in a less good way, depending on how you're brought up. When you have a romantic relationship, what they can do is they can alter your psychology, particularly how anxious you are about being abandoned in that relationship and how comfortable you are with emotional and physical intimacy. Because I will tell you a story. When I met my husband, I was very worried about him leaving me abandoning me. And I dealt with that by being monumentally clingy. And over time, we've been married for nearly 25 years. I became secure because he disapproved my fear that he was going to leave. And I am now secure. So he fundamentally changed my psychology. So they can do that. And in romantic relationships, there are four types of attachment relationship. And we place you in one of those sectors based upon two.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think the first thing you need to understand is what is an attachment relationship. Attachment relationships are very rare in your life. You will have had them with whoever brought you up, whoever cared for you, particularly in the first two years of life. That's particularly significant. You will have them with romantic partners, though not all romantic partners. And you might have one with a best friend. They're very emotionally intense. We recognize them for several criteria. First of all, they're developmentally significant. So attachment relationships have the ability to change your psychology. Now, as a child, they actually have the ability to change your actual brain architecture as well, particularly in those first two years, because babies are born without their brains fully developed. That's why they're so helpless. And in the first two years, your brain is growing very rapidly. And the environment to which you are raised is going to fundamentally underpin the architecture of your brain. So that's developmentally very significant, that first attachment relationship you have.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Whatever. We have to have that conversation now. Because getting it wrong has profound impacts on our futures and on our health.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Okay, it's about a guy who wants to wipe his brain in terms of a really bad relationship. And that's kind of what suggested this could do. SSRIs can't do that. You cannot wipe a memory, but they could maybe take away some of the salience, some of the negative salience. The issue again with that is that there are 72 countries in the world where homosexuality is still illegal. And we know there are certain, this was a brilliant book called Love Drugs, talked about a very extreme religious community, which was giving young men who had shown homosexual tendencies, SSRIs, to reduce their homosexual tendencies. And that in itself is, I believe, ethically unacceptable. And therefore, again, we've got to be aware that if we produce drugs, what could they possibly be used for, which is actually unacceptable? And how are we going to deal with that as a population? So I think anything which comes into our intimate relationships like love drugs or AI.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They reduce your emotional abilities, they reduce your libido, they reduce sensations of love. And so it has been suggested, again, that SSRIs are engineered in some way to help people with love trauma. So people who have experienced very bad relationships, and not that you can forget it. Do you remember the film The Eternal Sunshine?”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They will probably come because they will be hugely commercially successful if they get a commercial license. When I do talks and I get to this bit, before I've even mentioned what I ask people to raise their hand and say, if a drug could do this, would you take it 50% of the audience raise their hand and say, yes, I would. So then you tell them what all the problems are and you tell them what the ethics might be. And at the end, I say, again, would you take at least style, 20% of the audience would? Now, because love and dating is such a multi-billion dollar industry, if we get to the point where this can be commercially produced, someone is going to make a lot of money. And that's why I think it's probably on the horizon. Unless the rules are so strict that it's only in clinical settings, and even then people get around rules. So that's the issue with love drugs. The other one is the SSRIs, which are depressive for depression. People who are on SSRIs realize that they...”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Now he has uplifted upheaval of her whole life. Now he didn't do that on purpose. He did not know that that was what the impact would be. But if that's the impact of a love jug, we have a problem. What do you do in relationships with power imbalances? What if you're in an abusive relationship and someone gives it you without you knowing and keeps you in that relationship because of it? So there are lots of ethical questions. I think the issue with love drugs is”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And again, if you haven't told the person, you're kind of, if it does go away, mucking around with their life without them actually realizing that that relationship was based upon an artificial stimulant, essentially. We have anecdotal, we don't actually know whether it would stop because we haven't done long-term enough studies. Anecdotally from the recreational community, there have been stories about people who have started relationships whilst clubbing, taking ecstasy, particularly one guy who used to go back to his hometown every weekend, take ecstasy, go clubbing, met a girl, but used to go away to work during the week. So every time he saw his girlfriend in the first few months, it was at the weekend, he was like to see she wasn't. And he fell in love with her. And this was wonderful. And they carried on and eventually they decided that actually, no, we need to stop this long distance thing. She needs to move and come with me. We think this has got a future. She does that. Trouble is during the week he's not on ecstasy. And quite quickly, he realizes he doesn't love her.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The issue with MGMA isn't that it has different outcomes for people. To be honest, some people it works on, some people it just doesn't. So you could take it for that reason and it just wouldn't do what it's supposed to do. Fine. The issue with MGMA is more around ethics. MGMA is a powerful drug, and we don't know yet what its long-term consequences would be if, for example, if you did take it for many, many years. The second thing we don't really know is what happens if you stop. So let's say you started a relationship taking MDMA. First ethical question should you tell the person you're in the relationship with? Secondly, what happens if you stop? You get to the point where, for whatever reason you decide to stop, is that love going to go away?”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To something. So it seems to be possibly something a bit like Beethoven Dolphin. It underpins long term love. Great. So they're engineering MDMA at the moment to try and find out what the dosage should be and how we could give it to people. And it's being used in marriage therapy in the US at the moment as a trial to see if it can assist in marriage therapy because a lot of people who go to marriage therapy are very entrenched in their position. They've lost empathy, they've lost the ability to see the other point of view. And so if you microdose ecstasy, which I don't suggest anybody does without clinical support, you go into this session, it opens up your empathy and you make progress because of it. And there's been reasonably good results from marriage therapy in a clinical setting.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But if they perceive you to be in their outgroup, they become more racist. So it makes you identify more with what you perceive to be your in-group. Now, until you can iron that out, that is not a drug you can release onto the market because that is not something you want to happen. Investigations seem to have shown that it's something to do with genetics, that some people's oxytocin receptor gene is slightly different, and it's those people who will get the ethnocentrism result rather than the socially confident result. So that's the problem. And you can't go any further with oxytocin until you are now that particular problem. The second one, which is more encouraging from a scientific point of view, is MDMA, ecstasy. And for many years, people have anecdotally reported who use ecstasy recreationally that it makes you feel overwhelming sensations of love. It makes you feel very bonded to everybody you're with. We know from lab studies that people who take ecstasy on a regular basis actually become more empathetic over time. It actually seems to permanently”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Amazon and eBay called Oxy Love. It's a little thing like a pet, like an eyedrop thing. What it would do if you squirted up your nose is hopefully it would do what oxytocin does in the normal biological context. It would quieten your amygdala, it would make you more confident, it would make you feel more open to starting relationships. You'd be better at chatting to people. So it's kind of like, you know, a couple of glasses of wine before you go out. It makes you feel a little bit more comfortable. It would be a little bit like that. And that's one of the things they're looking into. The issue with it is that you cannot guarantee the outcome of using it. So what has been found is in the vast majority of people, it does what it should. But there is a significant minority of people where it does exactly the opposite. And it actually increases basically what we call ethnocentrism, racism, bigotry. Because what happens is they become more tightly bonded to people they think are in their in-group.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Would help that long-term relationship. And we're kind of at that stage now with the neuroscience where that would potentially be possible. And there are certainly research groups who are looking into what chemicals are already out there, which kind of mimic that neurochemistry. Now, there are two big ones that we already have. The first is oxytocin, of course. Oxytocin is synthesized. We use it in childbirth. It induces childbirth. And in studies where we wanted to work out the impact of oxytocin on social behavior in humans, in labs, we squirt it up people's noses. You can squirt it up people's noses and see what oxytocin and what it does if you want to know in most people is it makes them more empathetic it makes them more open to chatting to people it makes them more sociable it makes them more positive about the people around them from a social context so brilliant so one of the possibilities is you produce synthetic oxytocin and you sell it to people and in fact a few years ago and i think they've taken it down now there was a drug on”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, so we kind of probably know just about enough about the neuroscience of love now, particularly neurochemicals which underpin it, that should we wish to, we could finally produce the elixir of love. So since we've written things down, we have been fascinated with finding the elixir of love. There's loads of ancient texts about potions that will make you fall in love. It's something that as humans, we've always wanted. And it's partly because love is unpredictable and uncontrollable and humans really can't deal with that. We like to know what is going to happen and we like to be able to control it as far as we can. So wouldn't it be great if you could pop a pill or drink something, which meant that when you went out on a Friday night, you were really good at either being like the bell of the ball and attracting people or you could somehow get to be more attractive to people or if you could make someone fall in love with you or if you're in a long-term relationship with a struggling there was some pill.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Breastfeeding. So she's getting lots of physiologically based hormones. And she will also get hormones from interaction. Obviously she will, but she's ahead of you.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, because you will get your hormones from your interaction, where she has got her hormones mostly at the start from being pregnant and giving birth.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They're not feeling how they thought they would feel. They're looking at their partner who's had a head start and thinking, well, she's the gold standard of bonding. She's amazing at it. I'm failing. My baby doesn't like me. I'm rubbish at this. And that's not good for their mental health. And what they tend to do is withdraw from the baby, which is the worst thing you can do. But then when I speak to them at six months with the baby, they all say, I love my baby deeply. And it's categorically different to how.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And that's just, you know, that's you can forgive them anything when they do that. And then they'll start really reacting when you come in, being pleased to see you. Then they'll start giggling. And then about six months, if you are a rough and tumble dad, you can start doing very gentle, rough and tumble play with them. And you can just take it from there. The interaction grows more and more and more. One of the things we have to prepare men for, which I do a lot when I work with men during pregnancy, is the delay in bonding. So we have this idea that baby's going to come out and we're going to feel a flood of love and it's going to be, it's going to be like, you know, shining, amazing, wonderful. That doesn't happen for women a lot of the time, but men find it very difficult because they grow their bond through interaction. When the baby comes out, they tend to have a recognition of connection. It's like, yes, that's my baby. That's my genetic baby. It's genetically related to me. I am a father. I will look after it. But it's very conscious. When I talk to my dads, quite often when I visit them at two weeks, a lot of them are worrying about the bond.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And it all blissed out. I mean, there's some brilliant videos on YouTube. Or if you want to learn, you don't have to go to a class, watch these wonderful videos of baby massage and whole classes of men massaging babies. I mean, it's brilliant. So you also want to be there because you need to build that bond. And the only way you're going to do that is interaction. And so, and as your baby develops, that interaction becomes easier because the baby will stop babbling. They'll start smiling about six to eight weeks. They'll start smiling and they'll start smiling at you.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Attached to you. We also know baby massage is one of the only really good interventions that prevents postnatal depression in men.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Supportive reasons in those early weeks And the quicker you're going to build your bond. Because, as I said earlier, you build your bond through interaction. Your partner's going to have a head start. She just is because of pregnancy and child. And if she's breastfeeding as well, breastfeeding is really good for releasing oxytocin. You have to do it through interaction. And in those early weeks with the baby, they're very dependent, and particularly if your partner is breastfeeding, they're very mom focused because she is the source of food. And newborn babies feed for ages. So a lot of men say to me, I want to build a relationship, but I literally cannot find an in. So what we say is make something special. Make something that's yours. It could be bath time. It could be reading your baby a book. It's never too early to begin reading your baby a book or a really good one is baby massage. Baby massage is great because touch is the biggest release of bonding hormones there are. If you massage your baby, your baby's getting all those lovely hormones. And so are you. So you're building that bond between you. You're close enough so your baby's getting sensory input, particularly sense of smell. So baby's vision is not great when they're born, but their sense of smell is brilliant because they're little mammals. So they're starting to really get your smell. And that's going to help.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's underpinned by the biology, by the brain changes and hormone changes you're going to undergo, but it's a psychological state. So it's about configuring your identity and absorbing that particular new aspect of your identity into your sense of being and also feeling comfortable with that. We know men who struggle with that transition are much more likely to suffer from postnatal depression, for example. And postnatal depression has a fundamental impact not only on your partner but also on your child. We want to be protective against that.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, from an ideal point of view, then, you will at that point try and be with your baby as much as you can and do that and do as many of the tasks with your baby as you can. Because actually from your point of view as a man, men, the psychological changes that a man goes through when he becomes a father, it's not just the transition to parenthood. In most men who work, it takes two years. And one of the reasons it takes two years, whereas in a mother it takes about nine months, is because one of the factors in how quickly you transition to adopting that identity and how comfortable you feel with that identity is down to competency. How competent do you feel as a parent? Now, many Western dads, they don't get the opportunity to reach competency very quickly because they have to go to work. So they don't get to care for their baby. And that's one of the things. We know that men who get that chance transition to parenthood much quicker because they reach competency quicker. They absorb the identity of being a dad quicker. And that is better for them.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then from there you have to take it the way it works for you in terms of your career because whoever looks after that baby, it doesn't have to be mom or dad. It can be a mixture of both.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Is going to need to take some time unless she is in a position where she really thinks that she is going to be capable of physically and psychologically going back to work. I've met women who do it, but it's really hard. Now, particularly in those first early weeks, actually she's going to need you or she's going to need someone to help her. My husband is self-employed. My husband actually only managed to have two days of paternity leave before he had to go back to work. So my wonderful mum stepped in, but she's going to need somebody there in an ideal world. as long as you were happy to do that that would be you because your baby would really benefit from that”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You're in a situation where you can work a little bit flexibly? So is there a point where you can say, okay, you go and do some work and I'll take the baby for a bit. And you switch that way. Now, obviously, if the mom is breastfeeding, it's harder because she is tied more to the baby. You can express milk as much as you like, but it's quite difficult as a breastfeeding mother to go off on a work trip for a week.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The dad can have two weeks, not if you're self employed, but if you're employed, if you're self employed, you're kind of on your own. We're trying to push the government to take it to six weeks, which isn't our ideal, but it's how far we think we might be able to push them. Somebody asked me the other day, what would be the ideal for a dad? I'm afraid I started at six months, please. That would be lovely. In places like Sweden, the dad gets a year because babies develop with different inputs from different people. I don't know you're in a heterosexual couple. So your baby will need your dad's input and mum's input. And they will need those in whatever configuration works for you. So it might be that at some period, particularly after childbirth and stuff your partner is going to have to have time off. She is not going to, you know, it's very hard to race back to work after you've had a baby. Some women manage it. I think they're astonishing. I certainly couldn't have done it. So that's fine. You go do that. But she's going to need a period of time. But then...”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Something it's really hard because what I always say to parents because parents are really good at beating themselves up is happy parents make happy babies. So first of all, you have to do what works for you and everybody's circumstances are different. And there are needs that everybody's going to have. So yes, your baby has needs in terms of nurturance, in terms of support, in terms of building attachments, but your baby also needs a roof over the head and they need food on the table and they need all that and they need whoever's caring for them to be healthy. So it really depends upon what works for you. In an ideal world, somebody asked me the other day because at the moment in the UK we're having a lot of campaigns about paternity leave. In the UK at the moment you can have two weeks which is frankly laughable.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Calm and as reciprocal and as safe as you can do for that child. And that means, for example, before you have a baby learning good conflict management style, you're going to have an argument. Okay, it's not about having an argument. It's about the reconciliation of that argument. It's about the resolution of that argument. So it's about that. It's about understanding difference. You're going to parent in different ways. That can be really challenging to some couples. They find it very difficult. So you prepare them for that. The environment is not just the primary caretaker. And that's what's fascinating about humans is human babies. It's a naf saying, it's a true saying are raised by a village. So the environmental development isn't just a primary caretaking parent. It's everybody who's around that child as well. And in our world, that might be family, that might be friends. We live at greater distances from our families. So sometimes that's more professionals that have an input into that child's life.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Really tricky to say because, yes, primary caregivers are really important in terms of being most of the environment of development in those early days, particularly if this is what we call, I don't really like calling secondary, but the other parent is out and about and therefore not present The environment in which a baby grows isn't just about who's caretaking them and who's giving them a hug. One of the things I really always talk to parents to be about is your relationship builds that environment as well. So parents, babies are also actually taking on board the dynamics between their parents. And one of the things that I always try to get into antinatal courses is preparing the parenting relationship. Because actually, you need to build an environment.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, because they do different things Do different things. Mothers tend to be more involved partly because of the fact that from a biological point of view, women give birth. If you're breastfeeding, they're the only ones who can do that. So we are tied in terms of having to do that. The other thing I would say is also giving birth is a really, really tricky thing to do. And it's physically and emotionally utterly draining. So you need a period of recovery. And therefore, you are the one who's basically at home in the Western context. In non-Western contexts, a baby from the moment it's born generally in some cultures will be cared for by both my mum and dad. It's only because we have this capitalist system where someone's got to go and earn some money that dads don't. So I wouldn't necessarily argue moms are more important. They are in a position from a biological point of view that they're going to be there. They are just going to be that. And in our system, that means somebody else, it doesn't have to be there. And that's dad and he'll go and earn the money to support the family. But they need the...”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You need to start teaching that child by inputting into their child, by giving that sensory input in particular. Human babies need a lot of touch, they need a lot of smell, they need a lot of all that kind of thing. You need to be doing that as early as possible because this is growing from the moment it comes out.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They can't clean themselves, they can't do anything. And that's because they're born far too early. They should be in months longer, essentially. So we have this period of rapid brain growth after we're born. And because the main bit of the brain that's growing at this point is this massive prefrontal cortex, which is the social bit, the environment in which you grow up is critical. And who is really important in the social bit? The dad. So from the moment your baby is born and this is growing, dad needs to be having an input because this is where it's growing. Mum is also obviously vital, but we have to have both parents involved or you have to have that input at that point. So these dads who believe or people who believe that dad's only important after two years, I'm sorry, you have a fundamental misunderstanding of how the brain develops and of child development.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Two legs. If you look at something that walks on four legs, like an ape, a chimp, who's our close, their legs are quite wide apart, so their birth canal is really broad. Ours is really narrow because we've had to come in like this to maintain being able to stand upright. So if we try to birth our babies when their brains were nearly fully grown, like happens in other apes, mum would die, baby would die, and our species would have died out a very long time ago. So about 1.8 million years ago, we reached a threshold where the brain had to do some growing after we were born. And the way that we dealt with that was we burst our babies early. We selected to birth our babies early. And that's why they're so completely helpless. Because if you look at a chimp baby, a chimp baby's pretty mobile just off it's born. It's got pretty good motor function. It can hold on to stuff. It can do various things. Can't feed itself, but it can. Whereas human babies, they can't do anything for themselves. They literally can't. They can't focus. They can't hold their head up. They can't move. They can't coordinate their limbs.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because the baby's brain is growing babies are so human babies are born months before they should be. And the reason for that is because two anatomical anomalies, we are bipedal and we have an enormous brain. At full size, our brain is six times bigger than it should be for a mammal of our body weight. It's highly encephalized, so encephalization is all this. It's folded and folded and folded. So it's folded like this because we've got to ram it into our skull. If you look at the brain of a mouse, it's smooth. So when we became bipedal about fully bipedal about sort of 1.8 million years ago.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The second point. Yeah. That is critical from the moment that child is born. And I get quite upset when I get farthest. I met a father the other day at an event. I think his baby was six months old. And he was a dad worker, this guy. He worked with dads. He was a community worker who worked with dads with older kids. He said, oh, I've had my eyes. I was like, congratulations. He went, yeah, but, you know, I know I'm not particularly important until, you know, until the baby's like, you know, at least 18 months to year. So I'm just changing nappies, but I know that I'm not really doing much. And I was just like, oh my God, I literally cannot believe this man is saying this, bearing in mind what he does for a living. I was like, you are absolutely critical from the moment that baby is born. You are critical. Right.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, what we're finding is daughters who grow up with a secure attachment to their father, they have increased abilities or increased success in terms of academics, in terms of education. They have increased career success. They tend to have much better mental health. They tend to be much better at relationships. They tend to have less risky, particularly sexual relationships. And they have just better well-being scores. And they are much more likely to, as I said, to have stable, good relationships in their older life, in their adult life.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I would always advise that that's how children to have those two inputs. So find those women in your life and ask them to step in and do that. And another anomaly that we hear a lot is that it's particularly important for boys. Actually, It is critical for boys, but arguably it's kind of touch and go as to whether it's more critical for girls. The data coming out about daughters and the impact that fathers have on daughters is pretty powerful stuff. And so it's not just that we need these father figures so boys know how to grow up to be positive masculine figures, to be men, whatever it might be. It's also really critical for girls that they have a father figure around.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I would say that, I would say that. I mean, some people, I get attacked for saying things like that, and I'm not trying to say there are gender roles or any of those sorts of things, but children have evolved. The reason why human fatherhood evolved is because children evolved to be brought up by a group of people. And part of that group of people was a father figure. Now, as we see from cultures around the world, it does not have to be the biological father, but they have a father figure or a team of father figures. It doesn't have to be one person. It could be several people.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There is a risk they won't necessarily, but the statistics are quite powerful in terms of those outcomes. There was a study done recently in the UK by the Centre for Justice called Lost Boys. And that was looking at, and one aspect of that was looking at boys and their outcomes if they don't have a father figure. And it is quite powerful in terms of the increased risk of having negative outcomes.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because the changes we spoke about happen, whether you're biologically related to that child or not, because they happen through interaction. Any man who steps in and does the job, well see the hormone changes, well see the brain changes, which we haven't spoken about, well see the psychological changes. They will see them all because they happen through interaction. So you don't, you're not as a biological father the moment you conceive that child suddenly getting this mysterious ability to be a father, you don't. It happens because you happen to be interacting and inputting into that child's life. So no, there is no hierarchy. Are you doing the job? Yes, I am. Are you doing it in a good and healthy and positive way? Yes, I am. Okay, you get to be dad.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because you don't get to become a father. Indeed, you don't get to become a mother just because you happen to conceive a child.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because divorce has become more culturally acceptable, possibly because of longer lifespans and relationships aren't lasting as long. There's lots of reasons why we are getting more children who do not have fathers in their lives. It's also a major issue in the US. I know you know Richard Reeves and I work with Richard Reeves on it. That is the issue. And that's why we have to start looking in a creative way about what a father is. Because those kids don't necessarily have their biological father in life, but they need somebody. And that might be encouraging links within the community. It might be helping single mothers identify those male figures within their environment and supporting those male figures and coming forward. It might be that we need more organizations like Lanthany Dads, which is an organization in the UK that provides male father figures, mentors to boys who don't have a father in their life”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It would seem so at the moment in terms of biological fathers, yes, unfortunately. And that's one of the things that we really need to focus on. I've recently become a trustee of a new policy unit, which is the Center for Research into Men and Boys. And my role there is to look at the role of fathers, how we support fathers, how we support boys in having male figures in their lives. Because we are seeing”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Do not have to co-reside. One of the things that drives me slightly around the bend is when people talk about absent fathers. Sometimes the father is truly absent, absolutely. But in some cases, he's not, he just doesn't live there. And that's what we've got to be very clear about. You do not have to co-reside. And there are cultures in the world where co-residence is not the norm. And so it's about being in your child's life. You do not have to live with them.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because we don't yet know, first of all, whether these adaptations in the female brain, for example, are enough, because that research hasn't been done. And secondly, there are very few children who don't have a father, actually, if you look at their social grouping. Now, it might not be a father who co-resides. It might not be a father who they see that frequently, but it could be, you know, and remember we're talking about grandfathers, uncles, teachers, coaches, whoever it might be. It might be a whole team of men who step in and out at different times. It's very rare that a child doesn't have any male input in their life. And that is what a father is. It's not your biological father.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There are very few lesbian couples who have no male involvement at all. So it's a very complex mess really in terms of what the inputs are. But I think the study that discovered this were just astonished at the amazing plasticity of the brain that a man who did not go through pregnancy and childbirth and does not have this evolutionarily ancient instinct in terms of motherhood could actually adopt this role and we would see this activation. In a way, the biggest take home from it is that it will adapt in such a powerful way to make sure that child gets what it needs.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT