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I’m at the age in which many of my friends are beginning to start families. Part of this process includes name options, baby shower planning, and an evolving sense of how life will change following the stork’s delivery. “But don’t worry,” is the disclaimer given by many expectant mothers, “being a mom isn’t going to change who I am.”
A new study published in Nature Neuroscience, however, suggests a woman’s body isn’t the only thing to change following a pregnancy.
Researchers at Autonomous University in Barcelona studied brain images of 25 new mothers and found significant changes in gray matter compared to scans taken prior to giving birth and those of men and women who were not trying to become pregnant in addition to first time fathers.
Researchers found reduction in gray matter in areas of the brain responsible for social cognition and theory of mind, which contributes to a sense of how a person assesses what is going on in another person’s mind. This is a valuable adaption for mothers in order for a woman to determine the needs of an infant. These regions were also found to exhibit the most activity when a new mother viewed images of her child — her brain is literally in “mom mode.” The study’s authors were able to use these brain images to predict how women would score on an attachment scale using a computer algorithm based on patterns of gray matter reduction. Additionally, it’s interesting to note new fathers did not undergo losses of gray matter, which the researchers believe to be attributed to women’s brains becoming specialized for motherhood.
Oftentimes hormonal changes are highlighted in terms of a woman’s changing body during pregnancy. The only other period in a person’s life in which such dramatic increases in progesterone and estrogen occur is during puberty, which has been found to spark structural changes in the teenage brain by reducing gray matter. This suggests that pregnancy is as much a psychoneurological transition as it is a physical one.
This research is imperative in terms of how our culture understands motherhood. Women should celebrate their new roles as mothers rather than attempt to assure others that having a child won’t change who she is. It does, and we should accept the evolving roles of women as mothers as much as we do our professional and creative pursuits. Science now backs the belief that reform is needed to provide support beyond maternity leave because we’re kidding ourselves if we expect a woman to come back to work post-baby unchanged.
By understanding how a woman’s mind and body are remodeled during and after pregnancy, maybe now we can begin reshaping the level of support they’re given. If it takes a village to raise a child, villagers should also be willing to extend continued support to mothers.
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