After childbirth I felt utterly changed – 'maternal instinct' is a myth 👉 Scientists now know that both parents experience huge changes to their brains
The story I found in the science was decidedly not one of a woman girded by the magic of motherly love, who responds to her baby’s every need reflexively, accepts the self-sacrifice required of her without question, and taps into a well of mother-knows-best wisdom. That narrative, it had become clear to me, was about as representative of new motherhood as the someday-your-prince-will-come Disney stories are of dating and marriage.
All the new input our brain must take in, suddenly and all at once, may feel disorienting and distressing. But it has a point. This flood of stimuli compels us to care for infants in their most vulnerable state, because a parent’s love is neither automatic nor absolute. In a sense, the brain works to keep our babies alive until the heart catches up. It transforms us intowhen so many of us lack any skill whatsoever in actual child-rearing.
, not only from their babies but perhaps also from their partners and other adults. It may change their ability to regulate their own emotions, helping them to stay calm — in a relative sense — in the face of a screaming infant , and to plan a response.during pregnancy and the postpartum period, motherhood in certain contexts also has been found to enhance executive functioning, affecting a person’s ability to strategise and her capacity to shift attention between tasks.
This science can play a role in shifting gender norms at home and at work, in building public policies that actually support parents of young children, in securing, and in reimagining the relationship between parenting and society. At the very least, it alters the stories we tell ourselves about our individual experiences of parenthood and about the world around us.