A Mother’s Brain
Susana Carmona
MIT Press, $27.95
When it comes to new motherhood, the baby typically takes center stage, garnering most of people’s attention. But in a refreshing twist, neuroscientist Susana Carmona shifts the spotlight to the mom. In the opening pages of A Mother’s Brain, Carmona cheerfully tells us, “here, we’ll hardly discuss babies at all.” Mothers are her protagonists.
What follows is a captivating, passionate and well-grounded journey through the fascinating process of “matrescence.” A word coined to echo “adolescence,” another time of seismic changes, matrescence includes the intense reorganization a woman’s brain undergoes as she becomes a mom. So far, early studies have revealed a sculpting of brain circuits (and Carmona is quick to point out that less can be more), heightened social instincts and perhaps even a boost of resilience during old age.
This mom found the book to be a treasure trove of motherly delights. Scientific concepts are woven with social and cultural strands, from the poignant to the weird to the profound. Certain passages in the book allowed me the pleasure of relistening to the song “The Mother” by Brandi Carlile, in which she sings, “Welcome to the end of being alone inside your mind.” A Mother’s Brain also kindly pointed me to the viral video, “Mother Rat Saves Baby from Snake.”
As one of the foremost scientists studying matrescence, Carmona is an authoritative guide through the latest research, of which there is a dismayingly small amount. Still, the book covers scientific ground including hormones, evolution and brain networks. History, social constructs and the pressures of modern life come into the story, too.
If you prefer a light read, Carmona will occasionally warn you when a section is scientifically dense. Then she will invite you along anyway. “But if you do like hormones — well, we’re going to have fun,” Carmona writes at the beginning of a chapter. And it was fun. I was shocked to learn, for instance, just how massive the hormonal upheaval during pregnancy is. The amount of estrogen that floods a woman’s body, including her brain, during the 40 weeks of pregnancy is more than that of the amount that would otherwise accumulate over her entire fertile life, which lasts 35 years on average.
Along the way, Carmona thoughtfully addresses scientific puzzlers such as this: Mothers often report feeling less mentally sharp, yet laboratory studies show almost no neurological decline. Attributed to “mommy brain” or “momnesia,” mental slips might be due to a lack of sleep, or a shifting of attention, or even just an expectation.
This pervasive, negative stereotype of “mommy brain” can then build on itself, getting stronger as women buy into the incorrect idea that motherhood leaves them dumber. If a woman expects her memory to get worse, she’ll see signs of it in even normal mistakes. “I have watched brilliant women grow so insecure about their intelligence on becoming mothers that they abandon the projects that were once vital to them,” Carmona writes. Assumptions about their diminished brainpower can lead women to pull back from valuable parts of their lives. “It matters — a lot — how we talk to ourselves about these things.”
As a mother herself, Carmona brings her experiences into the narrative. It couldn’t be any other way. “Motherhood is lived,” she writes. “It happens in your gut, your identity, your core.”
At its heart, this book is a love letter to moms, who have been invisible to the scientific gaze for too long. It’s time to write a new tale of matrescence, Carmona argues. “A story that recognizes mothers as the essence of the human species, the carriers of knowledge about how we create bonds — and, through them, society and culture.”
By putting the intense and wild changes of motherhood into words, Carmona offers us a powerful and necessary story.
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