Maybe you were more forgetful when you were pregnant, maybe you weren’t. Maybe you spent the first trimester huddled over a wastebasket barfing, or maybe your gestation made Pinterest look sloppy. Doesn’t matter, because it’s the perception that you’re a quivering mess that leads to discrimination, not reality.
But first: the research. Does pregnancy affect your brain or doesn’t it? The answer is surprising: YES OF COURSE BUT NO NOT REALLY and it all depends yadda yadda. That is the conclusion to be drawn from a broad overview of the existing research in an excerpt at Science of Us. In a post debunking the myth of a “pregnancy brain,” AKA, “pregnesia,” “baby brain,” “preg-head,” and so on, we learn that studies show that pretty much everyone — including pregnant women — thinks that pregnancy brain equals cognitive decline. Christian Jarrett writes from his book Great Myths of the Brain:
Given these views, perhaps it’s no wonder that researchers have uncovered disconcerting evidence about the prejudice shown toward pregnant women, especially in work contexts. Although such prejudice is driven by multiple factors, widespread belief in baby-brain likely plays an important part. Consider a study published in 1990, in which Sarah Corse at the University of Pennsylvania invited male and female MBA students to interact with a female manager they’d never met before, and then rate her afterward. In fact, the “manager” was a research assistant acting the part, and the key finding was that students given the additional information that the woman was pregnant reported finding their interaction with her less satisfying than students not fed this lie.
The myth of the baby-brain hasn’t come out of thin air. Countless surveys of pregnant women, using questionnaires and diary reports, have found that many of them — usually about two-thirds — — feel that being pregnant has affected their mental faculties, especially their memories. Of course, that doesn’t mean that it has. Neither does it prove that the cause is some biological consequence of the state of pregnancy as opposed to lifestyle factors, like fatigue and stress.
But isn’t all this a little counterintuitive? What good would it do pregnant women to suddenly become less competent? As Jarrett notes: Shouldn’t women’s brains get BETTER at stuff to take care of their kids, just as animal’s brains do? The answer is yes, actually, and they do:
When I asked Kinsley why the human literature was full of findings about cognitive impairments while the animal research points to improvements, he said the disparity may have to do with the kinds of tasks and behaviors that were being studied in humans. “Much of the data from human mothers has been derived from asking females to demonstrate cognitive enhancements to skills, behaviors, occupations that are largely irrelevant to the care and protection of young,” he said.
Cool studies, guys. Has anyone looked into how dumb it makes a dude to have a boner 12 times a day for 85% of his life and the effect on his workplace productivity? Just wondering.
When it comes to issues where women get it stuck to them both ways, pregnancy is on the short list, just under asking for a raise or demonstrating leadership. It is yet another tightrope wherein women have to somehow simultaneously convince the world they are worthy and competent by one set of standards while still signaling compliance with another set of standards of behavior/appearance so as not to appear too threatening but still be taken seriously. All while the pressure on your bladder is a real bitch.
Proof of this can be found in the heartening work of employment law. In a recent conversation with one such attorney, Tom Spiggle, author of the new book You’re Pregnant? You’re Fired! Protecting Mothers, Fathers, and Other Caregivers in the Workplace, I learned that, not surprisingly, this perception of incompetence due to baby brain is a big driver in discrimination on the job.
“It’s one of two things,” said Spiggle by phone. “It’s older employers who think a woman should be at home with the kids, or it’s this idea that baby brain means you’ll be less competent or distracted because you have kids.”
Lower-income women are of course hit much harder by this bias. Spiggle says many of the most blatant discrimination situations he’s aware of often concern women in low-income positions such as wait staff at bars or restaurants — but that due to lack of resources, they are much less likely to seek legal counsel or file suit.
As such, his book targets the type of women in the cases he’s handled directly, those of professional women who have an impending sense that their newly announced pregnancy is not going to bode well for their careers.