Helen Andrews

I sometimes feel like I have lost ten IQ points per child. If my husband and I ever have a fourth, I might have to quit writing altogether and find a less cognitively demanding line of work – maybe run for political office. The causes of “mommy brain” are disputed. Studies have shown that, after she gives birth, certain parts of a woman’s brain become more active while others shrink. Once this was thought to be a result of temporary hormone changes, but now scientists believe that pregnancy causes a woman’s brain to be permanently restructured. Even years after their children’s births, mothers’ brains still show a reduction in gray matter volume.

Parson Weems, the popular author of the early American republic who first invented the apocryphal story of George Washington and the cherry tree, achieved his greatest commercial success as a pamphleteer with Hymen’s Recruiting-Sergeant; Or the New Matrimonial Tattoo for Old Bachelors (1799). In this booklet, the amiable old clergyman suggested that young people ought to get married not only for financial security and in order to bring up young Americans but “for pleasure.” His racy pamphlet went into thirteen editions, and copies were still being sold fifty years later. The new report from W. Bradford Wilcox and Nicholas Wolfinger of the Institute for Family Studies has a much less catchy title: Men and Marriage: Debunking the Ball & Chain Myth.