Most women have heard the stereotypes about “mom brain”: According to conventional wisdom, mothers—especially new mothers—neurologically reorient around their children, leaving their minds foggy and forgetful. Never mind putting them on that big project at work. (They’ll be lucky if they can find the building.)
But while science has shown motherhood can alter brain structure, the stories we tell about those changes are often incomplete—and, if we’re being honest, sexist. They ignore the truth that all brains struggle when our cognitive load gets too high, and even worse, they focus on short-term deficits that come from carrying, delivering, and caring for a screaming infant instead of the long-term neurological gains that mothers experience for the rest of their lives—especially when it comes to creativity.
Kelly Lambert, PhD, Professor of Behavioral Neuroscience at the University of Richmond, argues that “Every mom is a scientist.” Every day, they’re running experiments and using deductive reasoning to meet the needs infants can’t verbalize. Flexible problem-solving is worth its weight in gold in organizational settings, so why have mothers and their changing brains continued to suffer such slander?
It’s high time that workplaces give “mom brain” its due.
How motherhood boosts creativity
We know pregnancy changes brain structure. Gray matter (which helps us do everything from process information to coordinate our movement) decreases, and white matter, which helps connect various regions of our brains, temporarily increases before eventually returning to baseline. This synaptic pruning does not indicate cognitive decline, but could, instead, be interpreted as the brain rewiring itself for efficiency; teens actually go through a similar process.
As much as we all love to look at brain scans, Dr. Jodi Pawluski, Affiliated researcher with University of Rennes in France who specializes in perinatal (the period surrounding childbirth) mental health, argues that the functional changes birthing mothers experience are more significant. “Size matters,” she says, “but what you do with it is more important.” Most mothers are the default problem-solvers in their homes—women manage 71% of household tasks and scheduling, research shows—so creativity becomes a full-time job all its own.
For example, Pawluski presents a scenario: “The baby’s screaming. What can you give them?” As someone who’s never had a child, I personally would curl into a ball, plug my ears, and wait for the noise to stop. But moms? “They’ll find this empty plastic water bottle, super entertaining for five minutes, and give it to them,” Pawluski says. Then, it’s on to the next fire.
According to Lambert, pre-clinical rodent data has also shown that rats who’ve given birth are faster, more tactically innovative hunters. For example, she and her colleagues set rats loose in a maze to hunt for Froot Loops so they could measure how quickly and accurately the rodents adapted their routes. When the team removed the rewards to test the rats’ memory, the mother rats were more likely to continue searching for a solution by checking other previously baited wells.
In other words, Lambert says, “They seemed to have more strategies.”
Just like human brains, rat brains also go through changes during pregnancy and show high degrees of neuroplasticity. “That’s fertilized neural ground, in my opinion, for creativity and flexibility,” Lambert says.
The “motherhood penalty” and “fatherhood premium” work overtime
Jessica A. Kennedy, Associate Professor of Management at Vanderbilt University, has seen firsthand that organizations often treat fathers and mothers differently. For example, women who become pregnant often face questions around their commitment to their jobs.
“The initial question that they often face is ‘Are you coming back?’” Kennedy says. Additionally, “there’s an assumption that if they are coming back, they’re going to come back and bring less to the table.” This doesn’t seem to happen to men, who instead enjoy a fatherhood premium at work.
Generally speaking, workplaces tend to be optimized for control, Kennedy says. And “When women are focused on confirming that they’re committed, that’s really about proving control and conformity.” This has real-life consequences, both for mothers and for the places where they work.
A Catalyst survey released this January found that women are leaving the workplace at a record pace, and not for lack of commitment. Instead, Catalyst President and CEO Jennifer McCollum said in the survey’s press release, “They reflect the reality that too many jobs still fail to account for caregiving responsibilities and economic pressures.”
“If people have to choose between being a mother and a worker,” Kennedy says, “very few people can say, ‘Well, I’ll just choose to be a mother and not worry about work.’”
Workplaces can work better for moms
Parental leave is not enough. To truly support working mothers, organizations need to become more flexible so that being a working parent doesn’t feel like a constant conflict.
Wondering where to start? A 2024 study examining the impact of motherhood on women’s careers hatched a long list of possible recommendations workplaces could consider, including:
- Adjusting work hours
- Offering remote work
- Allowing women to temporarily restructure their roles according to their needs
- Adding on-site childcare, child-friendly spaces, and breastfeeding rooms to the workplace
- Extending parental leave
- Providing leave for secondary parents so that families can divide caregiving responsibilities equitably
- Encouraging male managers and leaders to model equal parenting
- Providing days off for caregiving
- Creating structured return programs that provide phased scheduling, mentorship and training, and reintegration support
Some workplaces might assume that supporting mothers means giving them less to do. As well intentioned as that instinct might be, Kennedy advises against it. Instead, she suggests speaking directly with mothers to ask, “What can we do right now to best support you?” Chances are, the answer will vary from person to person. No one should suddenly be removed from the promotion track, or a challenging assignment, based on assumptions. By giving mothers the support they need to fully participate, organizations also unlock the benefits of their constantly expanding perspectives.
On a person-to-person level, respecting mothers’ voices is key. Anyone who feels judged or devalued in their workplace is going to become guarded, and as Kennedy points out, “It’s easier to be creative from a safe position than it is from a position of threat.”