Mommy Brain

Last night, my friend Kathy Ellison was in town at Capitola Book Café to read from “The Mommy Brain,” her most recent book. I’m so impressed by Kathy’s research and her positive and optimistic message that she gives parents. Kathy and I met originally at the San Jose Mercury News, both of us at the time young, aggressive reporters, unmarried, without kids, and with an attitude that many people, especially career women, seemed to share. The idea of having children terrified us – not the responsibility or the work involved –but what we perceived it would do to our minds. You know the old saying about how the brain comes out with the placenta?

When Kathy had her two boys, she decided to face her biggest fear about her head head-on by talking to doctors and neuroscientists about exactly what happens to a woman’s brain during pregnancy, labor, the many thousands and thousands of hours spent changing diapers, finding pre-schools, breaking up sibling squabbles, helping with homework, being tested by teens. Does a woman’s brain indeed turn to mush? No, she found. Recent scientific research paints a dramatically different and far rosier picture. Raising children may make moms smarter, from enhanced senses, alertness and memory skills, to a greater aptitude for risk-taking and a talent for empathy and negotiation.

Well, that’s encouraging news. But as I considered Kathy’s findings, I found myself getting annoyed with myself, almost angry. How often had I just accepted the negative prevailing view that the pre-parenting me was obviously smarter, sharper, more edgy? From my own experience, in my deepest knowledge of myself, I knew – I KNEW – that mothering was making me “smarter,” especially in ways that I valued most. I was kinder, more intuitive, better at balancing conflicting goals, just better at life in general. Why then was I so quick to discount my own knowledge of myself?

This also reminds me of an article I read recently in the New York Times about “chemo brain”? For so long, many breast cancer patients have complained that the effects of chemo make them fuzzy brained and less-sharp, not just during treatment, but long after it’s been stopped. Until recently, many doctors have discounted these women’s experience because supposedly, chemo doesn’t do that! Only now, recent studies indicate that chemo DOES do that! Seems that the women actually know what they are feeling. Imagine that! I can only imagine the torment of self-doubt that these patients endured.

Why do we so often let ourselves be talked out of what we KNOW we know?

The article, Chemotherapy Fog Is No Longer Ignored as Illusion, is definitely worth reading: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/29/health/29chemo.html?ex=1179115200&en=f7783b8b798469ad&ei=5070

So is Kathy Ellison’s book: www.themommybrain.com

The First of Many College Checks Mailed

A couple of people pointed out that I promised, but then never posted my daughter's college decision. Oops. This fall, she will be heading across country to Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass. It was her first choice and a good one for her (I think. I hope). Back in the 60s, Hampshire was among the first colleges -- if not the first -- to initiate some innovative educational philosophies and techniques that many colleges and universities have incorporated, including narrative evaluations instead of grades, student-initated projects, cross-discipline studies. While many "progressive" schools from the 60s -- think UC-Santa Cruz, Antioch, etc. -- have grown increasingly mainstream, Hampshire still retains its alternative flavor -- coupled with (we hope) a strong emphasis on academic rigor. Word is that students either love it or hate it, flounder or soar. My girl is aware of all this, and looks forward to the challenge and probably the notorious Halloween Party. www.hampshire.edu http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hampshire_College

On the gorgeous grounds of Hampshire sits The National Yiddish Book Center. The building itself was designed to look like a Polish Jewish ghetto. Sounds weirder than it looks. Strangely enough, the architecture works even in the midst of Hamsphire College's rural farm setting. (Hey, what's higher education without cows and goats on campus?) Coincidentally, a friend from my own college days at Temple University in the 1970s is now program director at the Book Center. Nora and I had our first reunion in 25 years, and Gwen got a future work-study job lined up in the Land of Yiddish Lit. .