As a mother of two children both under the age of three years old (the second child three weeks old) and a full-time working woman, I was interested in last Sunday's New York Times article "This is Your Brain on Motherhood" written by Katherine Ellison.
Pertinent excerpts are found below. See the end of this post for more information on Katherine Ellison and her new book:
"... a mother's brain, as commonly envisioned, is impaired by a supposed full-scale assault on sanity and smarts.
So strong is this ... stereotype that when a satirical Web site posted a 'study' saying that parents lose an average of 20 IQ points on the birth of their first child, MSNBC broadcast it as if it were true.
What if raising children is actually mentally enriching for mothers - and fathers?
This is, in fact, what some leading brain scientists, like Michael Merzenich at the University of California, San Francisco, now believe. Becoming a parent, they say, can power up the mind with uniquely motivated learning. Having a baby is 'a revolution for the brain,' Dr. Merzenich says.
The human brain, we now know, creates cells throughout life, cells more likely to survive if they're used. Emotional, challenging and novel experiences provide particularly helpful use of these new neurons, and what adjectives better describe raising a child?
... there are other ways that being a dedicated parent strengthens our minds. Research shows that learning and memory skills can be improved by bearing and nurturing offspring. A team of neuroscientists in Virginia found that mother lab rats, just like working mothers (BWPrice note: They had to compare us to lab rats????), demonstrably excel at time-management and efficiency, racing around mazes to find rewards and get back to the pups in record time. Other research is showing how hormones elevated in parenting can help buffer mothers from anxiety and stress - a timely gift from a sometimes compassionate Mother Nature.
Rethinking the mental state of motherhood is reasonable after recent years of evolution of our notion of just what it means to be smart. With our economy newly weighted with people-to-people jobs, and with many professions, including the sciences, becoming more multidisciplinary and collaborative, the people skills we've come to think of as 'emotional intelligence' are increasingly prized by many wise employers.
... it's worth considering that the torrent of negativity about motherhood comes as part of an era in which intimacy of all sorts is on the decline in this country.
But children insist on face time. They fail to thrive unless we anticipate their needs, work our empathy muscles, adjust our schedules and endure their relentless testing. In the process, if we're lucky, we may realize that just this kind of grueling work ... is precisely what makes us grow, acquire wisdom and become more fully human. Perhaps then we can start to re-imagine a mother's brain as less a handicap than a keen asset in the lifelong task of getting smart."
As a mother committed to her family and as a working woman commit ed to her career, I say "AMEN."
Note: Katherine Ellison is a Pulitzer-prize winning reporter and mother of two and the author of "The Mommy Brain: How Motherhood Makes Us Smarter."
