Meghan Markle's baby brain comment: sexist or science?

Prince Harry is expected to reveal in his memoir, Spare, the details of an argument between his wife Meghan Markle and sister-in-law Kate Middleton during the run-up to his and Meghan's 2018 wedding. After a disagreement about wedding preparations, Meghan told the Princess of Wales that she "must have 'baby brain' because of her hormones," it has been reported.

In an interview with Oprah Winfrey, Meghan spoke about the incident, saying that the argument was born from a disagreement over the dresses of the flower girls at the wedding. The exact cause of the disagreement is unclear, but sources say that, in his memoir, Harry will reveal that the problem arose when Kate asked to have her daughter's dress remade.

Kate allegedly told Meghan that Princess Charlotte's dress was "too big, long and baggy" and that she "burst into tears when she tried it on," Page Six Style reports. After a heated discussion, Meghan criticized Kate for having "baby brain."

Twitter users have been quick to call out the negative connotations of this label, saying that Meghan's comments were stereotypical and sexist. "Telling Catherine she has 'baby brain' while heavily pregnant is about as sexist and condescending as you can get. Can you imagine if someone said that to M? She'd do an entire podcast on it."

"With two words to Catherine, 'Baby-brain,' H has destroyed Meghan's carefully crafted image of Mother, and Homemaker, that she has been cultivating for the last few years in America. It's dismissive, patronizing, and NOT 'feminism.' It reveals a negative attitude to Motherhood," said Twitter user Van72.

Women are often perceived to be forgetful and less competent throughout pregnancy and in the period immediately afterwards, but is there science to back this up?

What Does "Baby Brain" Mean?

A meta-analysis by New Deakin University, published in the Medical Journal of Australia in 2018, found that women do indeed experience "cognitive impairment" during pregnancy. The study, which surveyed 709 pregnant women and 521 non-pregnant women, found that general cognitive functioning, memory and organization were significantly poorer in pregnant women compared with their non-pregnant counterparts, particularly during the third trimester.

During pregnancy, women undergo extreme hormonal fluctuations and biological adaptations to prepare them for motherhood. One of these adaptations appears to be changes in brain structure, as suggested by a study published in the journal Nature Neuroscience in 2016.

The study found that pregnancy renders a reduction in the volume of gray matter in the brain in regions involved in social cognition. Gray matter is the part of the brain involved in processing information.

"According to our studies, it seems that it mainly affects social-cognition processes, although we still need more evidence to support this," Oscar Vilarroya, a professor in neuroscience at the Autonomous University in Barcelona, Spain, and one of the study's co-authors, told Newsweek.

A follow-up study in 2021, published in the journal Brain Sciences by the same group, found that these changes can last for at least six years after the baby has been born.

However, a reduction in gray matter is not necessarily a bad thing. During adolescence, hormonal changes lead to an extensive reduction in gray matter in a natural process known as "pruning," in which the brain increases its efficiency by removing neuronal networks it no longer needs. The pregnant brain may be undergoing a similar process.

The isolation of this gray matter reduction could indicate that, during pregnancy, the brain becomes more specialized to interpret the social cues of their child. Indeed, preliminary studies indicate that pregnant women are better at processing social information than non-pregnant women, including enhanced emotional perception and facial recognition.

A study from Purdue University, published in the journal Current Psychology, also found that, a year after childbirth, mothers perform as well or better than non-mothers in attentiveness tests. Therefore, the diminished attention and memory processing often seen in early motherhood could be more to do with sleep deprivation and stress rather than long-term damage to the brain.

What causes these changes is still uncertain, but Vilarroya said they were likely to be due to the hormonal changes that the body undergoes during pregnancy. "Animal models point to sexual hormones—i.e. oestrogens and progestagens—as the main causes of the change," he said.

A study in 2022, published in the journal Nature Communications, also found that these neural changes appeared to correlate with pregnancy hormones, primarily estradiols in the third-trimester, and had no association with other factors such as stress and sleep.

First-time fathers also show changes in brain structure, specifically reductions in gray matter, but Vilarroya said that these changes were less significant than those seen in women.

Is "Baby Brain" Sexist or Science?

Previous accusations of a woman having "baby brain" have caused significant backlash on social media. In September 2022, CNN's Don Lemon asked political commentator SE Cupp if she was suffering from "mommy brain" after she lost her train of thought. Twitter users criticized Lemon and CNN itself for the comment.

"I look forward to ANY man on planet earth being chided on air for having 'daddy brain,'" said Meghan McCain on Twitter. "Misogynists run media and are rarely ever held accountable for it."

An example of this stereotyping played out clearly when Jacinda Ardern, New Zealand's Prime Minister, announced that she was pregnant in 2018. "Let's play 'Jacinda is pregnant sexist BINGO!' Yup I've already seen complaints that you can't have a leader with baby brain, and that the poor child will be out of wedlock. Anyone got more?" EileenJoy commented on Twitter.

For someone who has spoken openly about the dangers of sexist stereotyping, Meghan's "baby brain" comment is seen by many as being extremely hypocritical.

"Didn't Meghan Markle do a whole podcast series about common words/stereotypes people use against women to hold them back? Yet Prince Harry says in his book that Meghan told Kate she must be hormonal because of 'baby brain.' That's the most stereotypical thing I've heard," said Kayla Adams on Twitter.

While there may be real biological underpinnings to the term "baby brain," the perception that pregnant women are cognitively impaired can instill harmful stereotypes about women's competence during this period, researchers say. These stereotypes promote the discrimination of pregnant women, they say, which may lead to negative treatment in the workplace and heightened symptoms of postpartum depression.

The authors of a 2022 study on social stereotypes about pregnant women, published in the British Journal of Social Psychology, said that this was particularly concerning given the stigma pregnant women already face. Previous research has demonstrated that pregnant women are generally seen to be less intelligent, less committed to their jobs, and overly hormonal, all of which can lead to further discrimination in work and in social settings.

The changes that occur in a person's brain during pregnancy are not necessarily a bad thing, either. Thus, the term "baby brain" unfairly implies that these changes impair a woman's competence, and can be seen as a sexist stereotype that fuels the fire of discrimination against pregnant women.

Harry's memoir is set to come out on Tuesday, January 10, 2023.

Do you have a tip on a science story that Newsweek should be covering? Do you have a question about baby brain? Let us know via science@newsweek.com.

References

Davies SJ, et al., Cognitive impairment in pregnancy: a meta-analysis, Med J Aust, January 15 2018, doi: 10.5694/mja17.00131

Hoekzema, E., Barba-Müller, E., Pozzobon, C. et al. Pregnancy leads to long-lasting changes in human brain structure. Nat Neurosci December 19 2016, https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.4458

Martinez-Garcia M, et al., Do Pregnancy-Induced Brain Changes Reverse? The Brain of a Mother Six Years after Parturition, Brain Sci., January 28 2021, https://doi.org/10.3390/brainsci11020168

Miller V, VanWormer LA, Veil A, Assessment of attention in biological mothers using the attention network test—revised, Current Psychology, June 16 2022, https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-020-00826-w

Anderson, M. V., & Rutherford, M. D. (2011). Recognition of Novel Faces after Single Exposure is Enhanced during Pregnancy. Evolutionary Psychology, January 1 2011, https://doi.org/10.1177/147470491100900107

Pearson RM, Lightman SL, Evans J, Emotional sensitivity for motherhood: Late pregnancy is associated with enhanced accuracy to encode emotional faces, Hormone and Behavior, November 2009, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.yhbeh.2009.09.013

Hoekzema, E., van Steenbergen, H., Straathof, M. et al. Mapping the effects of pregnancy on resting state brain activity, white matter microstructure, neural metabolite concentrations and grey matter architecture. Nat Commun., November 22 2022, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-33884-8

Martínez-García M, Paternina-Die M, Cardenas SI, Vilarroya O, Desco M, Carmona S, Saxbe DE. First-time fathers show longitudinal gray matter cortical volume reductions: evidence from two international samples. Cereb Cortex. September 4 2022, doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhac333.

Pownall M, Conner M, Hutter RRC, Blame it on her 'baby brain'? Investigating the contents of social stereotypes about pregnant women's warmth and competence, British J Social Psychology, October 17 2022, https://doi.org/10.1111/bjso.12587