The Mommy Brain

By Amanda Bower

Every mom has a story that could support the notion that child rearing turns a woman's mind into mush: putting milk in the pantry and cereal in the fridge, losing the thread of a conversation in midsentence, misplacing the car keys for the 10th time. So widespread is the belief that babies make women brainless that when a satirical website released a fake study showing parents lost IQ points when their first child was born, MSNBC picked it up. But Katherine Ellison, a Pulitzer-prizewinning reporter and mother of two, doesn't believe in the dumbed-down mom. In her new book, The Mommy Brain: How Motherhood Makes Us Smarter (Basic Books; 279 pages), Ellison lays out the scientific evidence for a baby-boosted brain. She explained her thinking in an interview with TIME.

Q: Surely sleep deprivation and demanding toddlers are an intellectual distraction, not an asset?

A: As a mom myself, I would never deny that children challenge parents' mental resources. And of course sustained sleep deprivation can have a serious impact on your thinking, which is why you have to be smart enough from the get-go to negotiate for naps with your partner, spouse or mother-in-law. My argument is that there are many surprising and fundamental ways in which, despite all the boring time you now have to spend picking up Lego bits from the floor, the experiences of having and rearing children can stimulate and enrich your brain and make you smarter.

Q: Define what you mean by smart.

A: What I found so funny and interesting was that the very first definition [in Merriam-Webster's] is "causing a sharp stinging." What better description of children! They really tax you, push you to grow mentally. I felt smarter primarily because I could feel myself learning all kinds of new things at what seemed to me like an unprecedented rate. I was learning, and still am learning lessons every day about what we think of as "emotional intelligence"--how to understand and manage one's own and others' feelings. And I didn't get thrown so much by distractions, because there were so many, and I got used to them.

Q: Are there concrete changes to the brain during motherhood?

A: Craig Kinsley and Kelly Lambert, two Virginia neuroscientists who have done truly pioneering work, have dissected rats' brains and found that during pregnancy there was a tremendous blossoming of what are called dendritic spines--the parts of the neurons that reach out and form synapses, necessary for new learning. Dr. Kinsley compares it to a computer acquiring extra bandwidth to help it run more than one program at a time. There has also been some intriguing recent research on the impacts of two hormones important to motherhood, oxytocin and prolactin, on mental functioning--specifically, learning and memory and the reduction of fear and anxiety.

Q: If many of these effects are caused in part by hormonal changes during pregnancy, aren't they just short-term advantages?

A: Perhaps, although Kerstin Uvnaes-Moberg, an authority on oxytocin, told me that she's convinced a woman's brain becomes more receptive to the impact of oxytocin after the first heavy dose that comes with labor and breast feeding. What I've come to believe is that the hormones of pregnancy and early motherhood help us form what may be the strongest personal relationship of our lives. It's that relationship--the years of flexing our brains as we deal with the challenges presented by a growing child--that may have the most impact in training us in all sorts of useful skills.

Q: Your book identifies five attributes of a baby-boosted brain. Could you say a little about each one?

A: There are chapters on what being a mother can do for your senses--especially in pregnancy and immediately afterward--for your efficiency (including learning and memory), your motivation, your stress-coping mechanisms and your social skills or emotional intelligence. In each one, I try to guide the reader through all the scientific evidence available, including some cutting-edge research, and also have many women talking about their experiences. So in the chapter on efficiency, which is titled "How Necessity Is the Mother of Multitasking," I interview a corporate executive who found herself with triplets and had to learn quickly how to feed them all at once so she could take a nap. In the chapter on coping with stress, I talk about how new mothers tend to make extraordinary kinds of friendships, based on their deep need for other people. I found this to be true in my own life and only later read how great it is for your brain to make and keep strong social connections. It's also probably good for your children. One study on baboons in the wild found that the more social the mothers were, the better their babies' chance of survival.

Q: Do these attributes give moms an advantage in the workplace?

A: I interviewed many employees and bosses who agreed with this point of view. Joanne Hayes-White, a mother of three and the first woman to head a major city fire department [in San Francisco], told me she actually thinks mothers have an edge as fire fighters, since there is a lot of coping with uncertain and hectic schedules, distractions, changes in plans, need to multitask and care for people. She also sees a clear spillover in her strengthened ability to multitask, from home to office. I've talked to grocery clerks and software executives who say the same thing.

Q: Do nonparents appreciate these advantages, or are there biases against new mothers in the workplace?

A: There are definitely biases. One study I read tested people's response to pictures of a woman doing the same sort of work with or without a prosthesis to make it seem as if she were pregnant. The "pregnant" woman was judged less competent and worthy of a raise. Of course nonparents can also be resentful of the times parents need to be absent from work due to their children, although I was unable to find any research showing that parents take more net time than others.

Q: How do women realize the potential to become smarter with motherhood?

A: I really believe it starts with looking at the world and themselves differently. In one study, researchers found that pregnant women overwhelmingly felt they were weaker in mental strengths, such as focus and memory, whereas tests showed they weren't. The researchers speculated that this might be because of what they had internalized about others' expectations. One legacy of feminism has been this uncomfortableness about women rearing children and getting close to children. We've come to see our children taking things away from us, and we've lost the sense of how much they're adding to us, as people, as thinkers.

Q: Are fathers, adoptive parents and other caregivers shut out of the intellectual benefits of motherhood?

A: Absolutely not. Recent research has tracked important hormone fluctuations in fathers that appear to be stronger the more involved the dad is with the babies. There may even be hormonal changes in adoptive parents, though the evidence of that is much sketchier. But certainly the experience of being a dedicated caregiver to a child, wrestling with that child's problems and teaching him or her about the world, is tremendously valuable.