The myth of the ‘baby brain’ with Chelsea Conaboy

Doing It Right with Pandora Sykes

Did you find yourself scrambling for words, losing your keys, forgetting basically everything, when you had a baby? Perhaps you witnessed it in your best friend, your sibling, your partner. The jokes about how women are lobotomised by motherhood are damaging and misogynistic - the term ‘baby brain’ used to keep women in their place - but how was i to reconcile that knowledge with a brain that felt like it had turned to cheese?

Which is why I was so excited to speak to science writer, Chelsea Conaboy. With her new book, Mother Brain - and a searing recent New york times op-ed “Why maternal instinct was a myth created by men” - Chelsea uses science to myth bust so many idea we have around biology, birth and the brain.

We discuss why the idea of “maternal instinct” is unhelpful to new mothers AND fathers, why “the golden hour” is not the only chance you have to bond with your baby, why oxytocin aka “the love hormone” is not just released by birth and breast-feeding and - this is a big one - why the fact that a birthing parent’s brain shrinks after birth is not a negative thing, but a sharpening of the synapses -- AND it happens in male primary carers, too. Chelsea doesn’t deny that the brain changes through giving birth. But the physiological changes are not relegated to the biological parent, she argues: they exist in every primary carer.

I found Chelsea’s research as fascinating as I did reassuring - and I really hope this episode helps any new parents, or anyone supporting new parents - and may help guide us towards a more equitable vision of what parenthood looks like.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/26/opinion/sunday/maternal-instinct-myth.html
Buy Chelsea’s new book, Mother Brain, here: https://www.hive.co.uk/Product/Chelsea-Conaboy/Mother-Brain--Separating-Myth-from-Biology---the-Science-/26445858