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GUEST REVIEW
Perseus Books Group
The Mommy Brain: How Motherhood Makes You Smarter Book Review
Not long after I started reading Katherine Ellison’s The Mommy Brain: How Motherhood Makes You Smarter, I had to call my sister—MBA and mother of four—in another state and tell her it’s a must-read. You see, being a freelance writer and the mother of three children ranging in age from 12 to 19, I was thrilled to read so much that validated my experiences of multitasking, organizing, coordinating, researching, evaluating, and so on. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, foreign correspondent, and mother of two boys, Ellison found her experience of motherhood different than the stereotypes had led her to believe it would be. The long-held stereotype that women lose mental capacities after giving birth is false. The latest scientific evidence shows that the combination of brain chemicals and experiences of taking care of a baby radically change a woman’s brain in positive ways—make her smarter. Since the World Trade Center tragedy, psychological and neurobiological researchers throughout the world have increasingly conducted studies of positive emotions and their effects on the body and behavior of both women and men. Bonding with an infant is one such positive event, even if the care giving can be frustrating at times. Ellison read widely in this mass of research and presents her findings about mothers’ increased perceptiveness, efficiency, resilience, motivation, and sociability. Ellison provides plenty of examples from the scientific literature, the media, and her own and others’ experiences. She also injects humor into her account at regular intervals, making for an easy read. For example, “Where our ancient ancestress had but to turn their noses to the wind or listen for the sound of roars,” Ellison writes, “we read newspapers, scan e-mails, analyze the latest color-coded security alert, and network like mad to protect our offspring competently. All the while, à la Serenity Prayer, we need to summon the wisdom to tell the difference between what we can and can’t change.” (185) While employers view fathers as being the most stable of employees due to the need to provide for children, mothers are seen as a liability because of a “mixed allegiance.” Yet what women value at home makes them smart, read “efficient,” workers on the job. After all, they don’t want to take work home with them when they have other responsibilities once off-site. Unfortunately the value of a mother’s intelligence has not often been rewarded adequately in the workplace. Child-less women earn 90% of a man’s salary for doing a comparable job, but working women with children earn only 70%, or less if they are single mothers or African American. Some of this disparity can be accounted for by the number of hours worked by mothers, yet prejudice against mothers continues in the workplace. With the increase in information and service jobs and the decrease in manufacturing jobs in the United States, the ability to interact well with people (emotional intelligence), multitask, and lead under pressure become more important than ever. It’s time to erase the negative stereotype and replace it with the truth: having babies can make a woman smarter. After you read Ellison’s book, share it with a friend.
Wife, mother, daughter, sister, writer, teacher, housekeeper, cook, dog walker, and finder-of-lost-things, Jeanne Lesinski lives in Bay City, Michigan. She is the author of four children's books, including Bill Gates (Lerner), and numerous articles for magazines and reference books. Her poems have been published or are forthcoming in Pennsylvania English, The Binnacle, Cardinal Sins, and Goose River Press Anthology, 2006. She can be reached at jmlesins@svsu.edu.
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