Having a child keeps parents’ brains younger (and the more children, the better)

Many mothers and fathers with young children in their care sometimes feel as though they are experiencing parenthood in a mental fog, with their brains struggling to cope with lack of sleep, loneliness, mental load, the impossible work-life balance, and the stress that comes with it all. Some even wonder whether all that lost sleep, all that burden, and all that stress might have consequences in the future — whether it might make them more vulnerable, for example, to developing certain neurodegenerative diseases.

According to the latest scientific evidence, however, the answer is that all the apparent deficits of the parenting experience related to health and quality of life do not seem to harm the brain. In fact, quite the opposite.

According to the PNAS study Protective role of parenthood on age-related brain function in mid- to late-life, published last February, mothers and fathers show patterns of brain connectivity that do not exhibit the typical age-related changes. Specifically, through the analysis of brain scans and family information from the U.K. Biobank, the researchers conclude that mothers and fathers display greater connectivity in key sensory and motor brain networks, which are typically known to show reduced connectivity as people age. Moreover, the effect appears to be cumulative — that is, the more children, the better the neural connections.

As Avram Holmes, lead author of the study and professor at the Rutgers Institute for Health, Health Care Policy and Aging Research, explains in a press release, the findings challenge the idea that having children primarily causes stress and strain: "The research suggests parenting may provide a form of environmental enrichment that could benefit brain health through increased physical activity, social interaction and cognitive stimulation."

Spanish neuroscientist Magdalena Martínez, a researcher in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at the University of California, Santa Barbara, argues that there are several hypotheses to explain the long-term cognitive and brain benefits of maternal and paternal experience.

“There are hypotheses that suggest that, perhaps in women, this effect has to do with the reproductive experience of pregnancy, with hormonal issues, but the strongest hypothesis right now is that the parenting environment itself generates these benefits,” she tells EL PAÍS. “I mean, it’s true that there’s sleep deprivation and stress, but there’s also a lot of social interaction, a lot of planning, and multitasking, and all of that, in the end, involves continuously training your cognition.”

According to Martínez, this hypothesis would also explain why the benefit to brain connectivity increases with the number of children. The equation is simple: the more children one has, the greater the need for planning, the more tasks to juggle simultaneously, and — above all — the larger the family and social support network becomes, as it expands to include the parents and relatives of each child’s friends.

“Beyond the fact that you are the parent and are solely responsible for raising your children, having a broader social network has many cognitive benefits,” argues the neuroscientist.

Among the brain areas that show increased connectivity are also the motor regions — those involved in movement. For example, according to the study, the more children parents have, the greater their hand grip strength tends to be.

“If we think about the most important and prevalent neurodegenerative diseases, we see that they affect locomotion, such as Parkinson’s, or cognition, such as Alzheimer’s. So, any task in which you are simultaneously training your cognition and locomotion — which could be, for example, motherhood, but also sports — shows significant long-term benefits in preventing these diseases,” explains Martínez.

Same changes in women and men

As Susanna Carmona, neuroscientist at the Gregorio Marañón Health Research Institute in Madrid, explained in the article Breaking with the Patriarchal Model of Fatherhood: When Biology Overrides Culture, recent research in the field of brain neuroplasticity associated with motherhood and fatherhood has shown that pregnancy and motherhood produce a profound transformation in the female brain.

Men also experience changes in their brains, but these tend to be less pronounced and are observed more in the medium and long term — provided, of course, that they are closely and consistently involved in the care of their children.

In Holmes’s study, however, the favorable changes in brain connectivity were observed equally in mothers and fathers. “We believe that the caregiving environment, rather than the pregnancy itself, is most important, as we see the effects occurring equally in both parents,” the study argues.

Martínez believes that studies like this help to gradually complete the puzzle of what happens in the brains of women and men during parenthood.

“There is no doubt that, during pregnancy, pregnant women experience unique and very pronounced changes in their brains,” says Martínez. “What we also see, however, is that some of these changes are partially reversed postpartum, and that, conversely, in the case of fathers and other non-gestational couples, the parenting environment also has a smaller but significant impact on the brain and plasticity.”

Building on that idea, the neuroscientist supports the hypothesis that, in the long term, the most lasting changes in the brain are those brought about by the parenting environment (in the case of gestational mothers, this is in addition to the lingering effects of changes experienced during pregnancy).

“The effect of pregnancy on the brain is more significant and pronounced, but also more short-term, whereas the effect of parenting is more subtle, yet cumulative, and in the long run, it may end up being more noticeable,” she explains.

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