“What’s really going on,” she translates, is that “a pregnant and early postpartum woman’s brain is tied up in a major, hormone-powered transition.” In other words, our bodies have just served us a powerful hormonal cocktail designed to prepare our brains for unprecedented growth and reorganization. So why have women almost universally embraced the idea that pregnancy and childbirth turn their brains to jelly? Sleep deprivation certainly plays a role, but Ellison again marshals a long list of neuroscientists whose findings add other crucial pieces to the puzzle. In fact, indications are that the positive changes brought about in the brain by pregnancy hormones, and subsequent stimulation from our babies and children, last for the rest of our lives-long past the time our grandchildren are born. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) reveals increases in a long list of areas, including (but not limited to) emotional intelligence, sensory powers, mental perception, motivation, attention, problem solving, prioritizing, memory and learning. The abundant variety of intense new experiences forced on us mothers by daily interaction with our children strengthens much more than our flexibility and our multitasking skills. This amazing brain plasticity is encouraged by repeated new actions, especially of the “positive, emotionally charged, and challenging” variety, referred to by scientists as “enrichment.” As it turns out, the process of child rearing, beginning even in pregnancy, is enrichment’s mother lode. In fact, she found, study after study shows that having babies contributes to increased brain cells, and along with these little darlings (the new brain cells as well as the babies) come increased skills of all kinds.Īt the center of this good news is that now-familiar phenomenon, neurogenesis: the brain’s process of growing and changing through the development of new neurons. Katherine Ellison, author of The Mommy Brain: How Motherhood Makes Us Smarter “I feel confident in proposing that a Mommy Brain should be thought of less as a cerebral handicap and more as an advantage in the lifelong task of becoming smart.” This notion finally became so entrenched, she informed Vision recently, that dozens of scientists set out to discover whether it is actually true.
It’s true, she acknowledges: we mothers have long perpetuated the notion that having babies zaps our brain cells. In this vein Katherine Ellison, author of The Mommy Brain: How Motherhood Makes Us Smarter (2005), brought welcome news to mothers everywhere. The running joke is that the sacrifices of motherhood run so deep, they even affect the brain: “Insanity is hereditary,” goes one adage “you inherit it from your children.” More than one mother has, at one time or another, ruefully (perhaps even proudly) pointed to her children as being responsible for what she considers a decline in her mental capacities.įortunately, however, research may have uncovered just the right information to distract us from obsessing about our sacrifices long enough to consider some of the things we might actually be gaining from motherhood.
Every stage of a child’s life requires a different set of sacrifices, most of which are made willingly but pass unnoticed by their primary objects. Of course, it doesn’t stop with pregnancy.
From the first manifestations of “morning” sickness, sacrificial acts consume mothers, body and soul. Motherhood has long been considered the embodiment of self-sacrifice, and for good reason. Theodore Roosevelt acknowledged as much in 1905 when he told the National Congress of Mothers, “Your duty is hard, your responsibility great but greatest of all is your reward.” While his statement rings true on many fronts, there may yet be one more to explore.
Being a mother entails countless personal sacrifices.
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