Mother Brain

How Neuroscience Is Rewriting the Story of Parenthood

By: Chelsea Conaboy

Narrated by: Chelsea Conaboy

This program is read by the author.

A groundbreaking exploration of the parental brain that untangles insidious myths from complicated realities, Mother Brain explodes the concept of “maternal instinct” and tells a new story about what it means to become a parent.

Before journalist Chelsea Conaboy gave birth, she anticipated the joy of holding her newborn, the endless dirty diapers, and the sleepless nights. What she didn’t expect was how different she would feel—a shift in self, as deep as it was disorienting. Something was changing: her brain.

New parents undergo major brain changes, driven by hormones and the deluge of stimuli a baby provides. These neurobiological changes help all parents—birthing or otherwise—adapt in those intense first days and prepare for a long period of learning how to meet their child’s needs. Yet this science is mostly absent from the public conversation about parenthood.

Conaboy delves into the neuroscience to reveal unexpected upsides, generations of scientific neglect, and a powerful new narrative of parenthood.

A Macmillan Audio production from Henry Holt and Company.

©2022 Chelsea Conaboy (P)2022 Macmillan Audio

Essential reading for everyone, especially those who work with children and families

This is a beautiful review of recent literature on brain changes in people who parent — not phrased that way out of political correctness but because it is increasingly clear that sex doesn’t influence the brain changes of nurturance so much as pregnancy, proximity and involvement. Men identified as male at birth also face a crisis — even if it’s a good crisis! — when their sons and daughters; nieces and nephews are born. Every new baby is an opportunity to explode old frameworks and build new ones. Why? How? Conaboy explores the physiologic brain changes that underlie the changes in a brain affected by pregnancy as well as brains impacted by child rearing, and considers how parenting and “alloparenting” create more empathetic societies.

If you work with families this is absolutely essential reading. If you love Winnicott and Brazelton, distrust Sears, and can’t figure out why Ainsworth and Bowlby sit funny with you, this is the read to understand why.

If you read one book this year, let it be this

This is an outstanding book that will transform the way you think about mothers and parenthood. We take so much for granted, and assume so many things about what our role should be. Thank you, C Conaboy!

I'm Not Finished But Everyone Should Read This

This book is informative, well researched, and extremely important. Whether you are a parent, plan to be a parent, or never plan to parent anyone, read this book.

The reading performance, however, is terrible. She sounds like a bored robot. Read this book, but don't listen to it.

Wish I’d read this before

I gave birth to my daughter in September 2021, this book came out around a year later. It’s prescience and maturity and empathy and deep, deep knowing, would have been exactly what I needed in my early post partum days. It is smart and kind, a combination of science and humanity. I have recommended this book to every new mother in my life and many other parents, too. I am thankful for this book.

A real disappointment

I was very excited to learn about the science of motherhood, until the author erased the unique role of biological females by claiming that anyone can be a mother. This is blatantly false— I am a data scientist, and there are loads of studies that show how biological female mothers are linked to their own children right from the start, in a way that no other female or non female could never come close to replicating. Or just ask a child who has lost her biological mother.

Don’t waste your time. The book Mom Genes is MUCH BETTER.

Monotone

Her voice is monotone and monotonous. The descriptions aren’t scientific. Only women can get pregnant.