As a mother...

[Ducksinthebath]

"As a mother..." seems to be how about how just about every opinion expressed to me about the Middle East situation seems to start at the moment.

Same for XL Bully issues, the recent party conferences and every blooming thought that comes out someone's head about the environment.

I feel like I'm in an echo chamber with Andrea Leadsom and it's irritating.

Ok, can you tell me how you would objectively define " better thinking" if you didn't use those parameters ?

I was answering this. If you didn't want me to define better thinking why did you ask me to do so?

And that their thinking after pregnancy is better, more empathetic, more connected to the plight of the world's children yadda yadda yadda.

You also replied to the above with this:

Yeah but, the problem is that is exactly what the evidence shows.

Thereby stating that the evidence shows the thinking of women after pregnancy is better, more empathetic etc

Why did you state this and then later on link better thinking to a better memory and better executive function if you didn't mean that @Goldencup ?

You can stop back-pedalling, @Goldencup - the attached is what you said. You agreed with the use of “better” and “more empathetic”.

I'm not quite sure why with their superior memory and better functioning brain than us mere forgetful dysfunctional childfree women they managed to forget that one...

Yeah, I mean I'm pretty sure I have more empathy than all the mothers who kill and/or abuse their kids.

Fuck me. Every time there’s a thread on this board in active, this happens. Every time.

I’ve been pregnant seven times and have no living children.

I’m exactly as empathetic and nurturing now as I was before any of that happened. I have, like most people, matured and developed emotionally and in all other ways, commensurate with my age. Which would have happened regardless of my reproductive state.

I hope none of you mothers ever need to rely on a childfree person to care for your child, since so many of you seem to think we are so inherently inferior. Will you be asking the paramedics and medical staff, child carers and teachers about their parenting status as your primary measure of their fitness to do the job?

Mothers are not innately superior beings. Not more caring, more capable, ‘better thinking’ (WTF?). There are people and people. Some are awful, some aren’t. Read all the posts and you can see that the posters who look positively the worst on this thread are the ones who have children. Good anecdotal evidence against the argument they seem to be desperate to make to women who have no children.

My DD wasn't planned and I had never felt broody. What was I before I had her if not childfree? 🤔

I'm pretty sure I have more empathy than my narcissistic abusive mother. But apparently not

Although I note we still haven't seen any evidence that specifically shows that all mothers are more empathetic than all childless people which was what I requested

By comparison, the thought of someone dropping us in Gaza with our three dc makes me feel ice cold with terror. Not because I'm a wonderful mummykins who loves her ickle ones sooooo much.

But you know what @MillieVonPinkle ? Way back (as I am clearly a lot older than you), my sister & I had just out her boys to bed. Her younger DS was maybe about 4, the elder 6, and we were watching the television news. There was awful footage of families fleeing from Syria I think, under bombardment. Or Iraq. Anyway.

I just wept. I imagined in specific and graphic detail what we'd do - waking up my 2 nephews, telling them to dress in as many warm clothes as they could, and to hurry. Then packing what we could into our backpacks, and walking away from the bombing. Me carrying the younger boy when he was tired, pleading with them to be quiet, and keep walking. Not eating so they could eat. I went through it all in my mind and slept hardly a wink that night. As I type this I'm remembering how I felt that night, watching that footage. I'm almost crying now.

So, you know ...

I haven't watched the television news since last Friday. I just can't.

So we can agree that through both nature and nurture ( most) mother's brain become both more responsive to subtle emotional cues ( which could be interpreted as more emphatic) and have enchanced memory, congnitve reserve and better executive function than on average than those without children. Allowing for the lack of control group of women who have other long term caring responsibilities. Whether or not this constitutes " better thinking" is of course a value judgement. Which is why in my earlier post I talked about differences. However I freely admit I walked straight into the trap when someone else suggested that is what mother's mean.

It that clear enough ?

If you were truly childfree you would not have chosen to go ahead with the pregnancy.

Careless?

Childfree people (or what the definition means to me) aren't just not planning to have children, we are actively preventing them at all costs!

Oh @SoLongAndThanksForAllTheVaricoseVeins so sorry.

This sort of stuff must be particularly hard (understatement of the year).

I just never had the chance, no-one wanted to have a family with me - socially infertile, I tend to say. Not that I didn't try to find 'the one.'

But life does get better.

I’ve been pregnant seven times and have no living children. I’m exactly as empathetic and nurturing now as I was before any of that happened

I'm very sorry for your losses @SoLongAndThanksForAllTheVaricoseVeins. I think your statement is unlikely to be true though in terms of empathy.

Consciously or unconsciously you're probably more empathetic now towards other women who've experienced a miscarriage or loss of a child than before.

It would be difficult and unusual for lived experience of something to not alter your empathy levels, whatever that experience was.

A pov that's clearly unpopular though, but I find it difficult to understand why.

Sorry for typos trying to drink tea at the same time. I am also dyslexic was before being pregnant and unfortunately motherhood didn't cure it.

Thank you, but it’s not at all hard now - it all happened in a period of two years over 20 years ago, and we just stopped trying and returned to preventing pregnancy, so I was then childfree by choice - we could have had invasive treatment but decided against.

My life is my life, I love it, and it’s much better for the positive decision not to put myself through it any more. I’m glad you seem to be happy, too.

I would feel just as strongly about this moral superiority of mothers nonsense if I was one, though.

No we can't agree. Your summary reads nothing like the abstract of the paper you linked to:

Profound environmental, hormonal, and neurobiological changes mark the transition to motherhood as a major biosocial life event. Despite the ubiquity of motherhood, the enduring impact of caregiving on cognition and the brain across the lifespan is not well characterized and represents a unique window of opportunity to investigate human neural and cognitive development. By integrating insights from the human and animal maternal brain literatures with theories of cognitive ageing, we outline a framework for understanding maternal neural and cognitive changes across the lifespan. We suggest that the increased cognitive load of motherhood provides an initial challenge during the peripartum period, requiring continuous adaptation; yet when these demands are sustained across the lifespan, they result in increased late-life cognitive reserve.

The paper states that those who have caring responsibilities may have an increased later life cognitive reserve.

Other factors that increase a later life cognitive reserve are education, having an engaging job and taking part in stimulating activities.

I think I know me better than you think you might, so I will take issue with your presumption.

I had nursed a very sick grandparent to her death before all that happened, and I would argue that was much more traumatic, and made me a much better person, than a series of early losses. I had lived with a parent with a significant mental illness for 25 years. I had watched a friend die of cancer at 22.

Are these considered less significant experiences in the development of empathy and maturity than having a child?

The paper I linked to isn't original research, it has many references. My best understanding from those studies and others is that maternity fundementally changes a person's neurobiology. That isn't what you took from it, that's fine. It remains my understanding and it makes perfect evolutionary sense - but you don't need to agree with me, nor I with you.

Mumsnet should rename this board to "a place to tell childfree and childless women they're wrong, no matter what the subject".

Doesn't change my original post that you took issue with though

No 2 peoples brains are alike
A lot of different events, not just pregnancy change a person's brain function

You seem very determined to write off the impact of other life events on neurobiology including the impact of having children on fathers brains. So I'm afraid your logic and reasoning is not really very convincing to back up your theory of you having "better thinking"

I notice you still haven't acknowledged or apologised for your ableist comment so I'm not holding out much dependency on the more empathetic thinking either

Everyone's empathy is at an individual level, as is everyone's intelligence. It would be a mistake to assume because someone's empathy may have increased through one type of lifetime event that makes them more empathetic than someone else who may have gone through 2 or 3 lifetime events that increase their empathy, or someone who might just have been fundamentally more empathetic in the first place.

Not that it's any of your business but I wasn't careless.

I was as childfree then as you consider yourself to be.

You couldn't be more wrong. If you knew what I did for a day job ! Of course what you say is self- explanatorily true.

I never suggested these events don't shape our cognition and emotional responses, we know they do. But not in the same way as parenthood, they can't. Just like having a baby can't simulate the changes of being in a war zone or coping with parental drug addiction.