Mother Brain
How Neuroscience Is Rewriting the Story of Parenthood
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3.0 • 1 Rating
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Health and science journalist Chelsea Conaboy explodes the concept of “maternal instinct” and tells a new story about what it means to become a parent.
Conaboy expected things to change with the birth of her child. What she didn’t expect was how different she would feel. But she would soon discover what was behind this: her changing brain. Though Conaboy was prepared for the endless dirty diapers, the sleepless nights, and the joy of holding her newborn, she did not anticipate this shift in self, as deep as it was disorienting. Mother Brain is a groundbreaking exploration of the parental brain that untangles insidious myths from complicated realities.
New parents undergo major structural and functional brain changes, driven by hormones and the deluge of stimuli a baby provides. These neurobiological changes help all parents—birthing or otherwise—adapt in those intense first days and prepare for a long period of learning how to meet their child’s needs. Pregnancy produces such significant changes in brain anatomy that researchers can easily sort those who have had one from those who haven't. And all highly involved parents, no matter their path to parenthood, develop similar caregiving circuitry. Yet this emerging science, which provides key insights into the wide-ranging experience of parenthood, from its larger role in shaping human nature to the intensity of our individual emotions, is mostly absent from the public conversation about parenthood.
The story that exists in the science today is far more meaningful than the idea that mothers spring into being by instinct. Weaving the latest neuroscience and social psychology together with new reporting, Conaboy reveals unexpected upsides, generations of scientific neglect, and a powerful new narrative of parenthood.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Journalist Conaboy debuts with an illuminating examination of the changes the brain goes through during parenthood. Digging into neurological and cognitive research on becoming a parent, Conaboy contends that caregiving isn't as instinctual as often assumed. She debunks the "maternal instinct," citing research that found parents who don't carry their children undergo similar neural changes to those who do, regardless of gender, which suggests that " ‘maternal behavior' is... a basic human characteristic." These changes take time to develop, Conaboy writes, reporting on research that found "circuitry involved in social cognition" strengthens in new parents as they learn to decipher their child's nonverbal cues. She looks at the evolutionary benefits of the universal human capacity to bond with and care for a child regardless of one's biological relationship with them, noting that some scientists believe this ability might have been the "fundamental characteristic that set humans apart." As for the policy implications of her research, she asserts the need for universal paid family leave based on studies that found it lowers rates of postpartum depression, preterm births, and infant mortality. Conaboy's detailed research and eye-opening myth-busting add up to a cogent argument that "all human adults... are fundamentally changed by the act of parenting." Surprising and enlightening, this should be required reading for all caregivers.
