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Abstract
The discursive construction of “baby brain” functions to legitimize gender stereotypes and deflect attention from a host of material conditions that influence how women experience pregnancy and motherhood. This essay focuses on how the baby brain myth gains public legitimacy by tracing and analyzing its recent emergence in both scientific and mass mediated discourse. I argue that the myth gained legitimacy through a rhetoric of significance—one that conflates statistical significance and functional significance—that operates in both science and media discourse. In the conclusion, I offer an alternative interpretation of baby brain's cause, one that highlights the social structures that make pregnancy and motherhood difficult.
Acknowledgements
She wishes to thank Celeste M. Condit for her unwavering support and for inspiring her students to “make better worlds.” She is also indebted to the two anonymous reviewers for their invaluable help in developing this essay. An earlier version of this essay was presented at the National Communication Association's Annual Convention in November 2009.
Notes
1. Heidi Murkoff, interview by Hannah Storm, The Early Show, CBS, October 1, 2007, transcript via LexisNexis (accessed April 12, 2008).
2. Heidi Murkoff, The What to Expect Pregnancy Journal & Organizer (New York: Workman Publishing Company, 2007).
3. Heidi Murkoff, interview by Hannah Storm.
4. Heidi Murkoff, interview by Hannah Storm.
5. Heidi Murkoff, interview by Hannah Storm.
6. Julie D. Henry and Peter G. Rendell, “A Review of the Impact of Pregnancy on Memory Function,” Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology 29, no. 8 (2007): 793–803.
7. To the best of my knowledge, the study was publicized by media in at least the following countries: Australia, India, Scotland, England, Sudan, and the United States.
8. Katherine Ellison, The Mommy Brain: How Motherhood Makes Us Smarter (New York: Basic Books, 2005), 3.
9. Katherine Ellison, The Mommy Brain: How Motherhood Makes Us Smarter (New York: Basic Books, 2005), 3.
10. Laura R. Woliver, The Political Geographies of Pregnancy (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002), 18.
11. Susan Bordo, Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993), 36.
12. Rebecca Kukla, “Pregnant Bodies as Public Spaces,” in Motherhood and Space: Configurations of the Maternal through Politics, Home, and the Body, ed. Sarah Hardy and Caroline Weidmer (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 297.
13. Marsha Marcotta, “MotherSpace: Disciplining through the Material and Discursive,” in Motherhood and Space: Configurations of the Maternal through Politics, Home, and the Body, ed. Sarah Hardy and Caroline Weidmer (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 15.
14. Amy Mullin, Reconceiving Pregnancy and Childcare: Ethics, Experience, and Reproductive Labor (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 1.
15. For example, see Nancy Krieger and Elizabeth Fee, “Man-Made Medicine and Women's Health: The Biopolitics of Sex/Gender and Race/Ethnicity,” in Women's Health, Politics, and Power: Essays on Sex/Gender, Medicine, and Public Health, ed. Elizabeth Fee and Nancy Krieger (Amityville, NY: Baywood Publishing Company, 1994), 15–35.
16. For just a small sample: see Nancy Ehrenreich, ed., “Introduction,” in The Reproductive Rights Reader: Law, Medicine, and the Construction of Motherhood (New York: New York University Press, 2008), 1–19; and Mullin, Reconceiving Pregnancy and Childcare.
17. Lynda Birke, Feminism and the Biological Body (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999).
18. Elizabeth Grosz, Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), 14.
19. Madeline E. Heilman, “Description and Prescription: How Gender Stereotypes Prevent Women's Ascent Up the Organizational Ladder,” Journal of Social Issues 57, no. 4 (2001): 671.
20. Madeline E. Heilman, “Description and Prescription: How Gender Stereotypes Prevent Women's Ascent Up the Organizational Ladder,” Journal of Social Issues 57, no. 4 (2001): 671.
21. Robyn Longhurst, Maternities: Gender, Bodies and Space (New York: Routledge, 2008), 30.
22. US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, “Pregnancy Discrimination Charges EEOC & FEPAs Combined: FY 1997–FY 2009,” http://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/statistics/enforcement/pregnancy.cfm (accessed July 1, 2010).
23. Lesley Alderman, “When the Stork Carries a Pink Slip,” New York Times, March 28, 2009, via LexisNexis (accessed May 26, 2010).
24. Nancy Worthington, “Women's Work on the World Wide Web: How a New Medium Represents an Old Problem,” Popular Communication 3, no. 1 (2005): 43–60.
25. Nancy Worthington, “Women's Work on the World Wide Web: How a New Medium Represents an Old Problem,” Popular Communication 3, no. 1 (2005): 43–60.
26. For an example of how rhetorical critics are uniquely positioned to trace public discourse, see Celeste Condit, “Race and Genetics from a Modal Materialist Perspective,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 94, no. 4 (2008): 383–406.
27. In order to gather my texts, I performed a search on the LexisNexis database. I used the key terms “pregnancy” and “memory.” In the year after Henry and Rendell's essay was first published online (November 2007), I received over 900 matches. I narrowed the pool down to about 25 by choosing only the articles that specifically mentioned Henry and Rendell's study. My international text set consists of newspaper articles and news transcripts from around the globe—including Australia, India, Scotland, England, Sudan, and the United States. Over half of my texts are from Australian-based publications, likely because this is where the researchers live and work.
28. Henry and Rendell, “A Review of the Impact of Pregnancy on Memory Function,” 793.
29. Henry and Rendell, “A Review of the Impact of Pregnancy on Memory Function,” 793.
30. Henry and Rendell, “A Review of the Impact of Pregnancy on Memory Function,”, 794.
31. Henry and Rendell, “A Review of the Impact of Pregnancy on Memory Function,”, 796.
32. Henry and Rendell, “A Review of the Impact of Pregnancy on Memory Function,”, 802–3.
33. Of the 14 studies Henry and Rendell include in the meta-analysis, 7 studies do not provide the education level of the participants. Further, of the studies that do provide this information, the numbers vary widely. For example, for the pregnant groups, education varied across studies from 2.3 to 14.3. For more information, see demographic table. Henry and Rendell, “A Review of the Impact of Pregnancy on Memory Function,” 797.
34. Of the 14 studies Henry and Rendell include in the meta-analysis, 7 studies do not provide the education level of the participants. Further, of the studies that do provide this information, the numbers vary widely. For example, for the pregnant groups, education varied across studies from 2.3 to 14.3. For more information, see demographic table. Henry and Rendell, “A Review of the Impact of Pregnancy on Memory Function,”, 796.
35. Of the 14 studies Henry and Rendell include in the meta-analysis, 7 studies do not provide the education level of the participants. Further, of the studies that do provide this information, the numbers vary widely. For example, for the pregnant groups, education varied across studies from 2.3 to 14.3. For more information, see demographic table. Henry and Rendell, “A Review of the Impact of Pregnancy on Memory Function,”.
36. Of the 14 studies Henry and Rendell include in the meta-analysis, 7 studies do not provide the education level of the participants. Further, of the studies that do provide this information, the numbers vary widely. For example, for the pregnant groups, education varied across studies from 2.3 to 14.3. For more information, see demographic table. Henry and Rendell, “A Review of the Impact of Pregnancy on Memory Function,”.
37. Of the 14 studies Henry and Rendell include in the meta-analysis, 7 studies do not provide the education level of the participants. Further, of the studies that do provide this information, the numbers vary widely. For example, for the pregnant groups, education varied across studies from 2.3 to 14.3. For more information, see demographic table. Henry and Rendell, “A Review of the Impact of Pregnancy on Memory Function,”.
38. Of the 14 studies Henry and Rendell include in the meta-analysis, 7 studies do not provide the education level of the participants. Further, of the studies that do provide this information, the numbers vary widely. For example, for the pregnant groups, education varied across studies from 2.3 to 14.3. For more information, see demographic table. Henry and Rendell, “A Review of the Impact of Pregnancy on Memory Function,”, 798.
39. Of the 14 studies Henry and Rendell include in the meta-analysis, 7 studies do not provide the education level of the participants. Further, of the studies that do provide this information, the numbers vary widely. For example, for the pregnant groups, education varied across studies from 2.3 to 14.3. For more information, see demographic table. Henry and Rendell, “A Review of the Impact of Pregnancy on Memory Function,”, 797.
40. Of the 14 studies Henry and Rendell include in the meta-analysis, 7 studies do not provide the education level of the participants. Further, of the studies that do provide this information, the numbers vary widely. For example, for the pregnant groups, education varied across studies from 2.3 to 14.3. For more information, see demographic table. Henry and Rendell, “A Review of the Impact of Pregnancy on Memory Function,”.
41. Jacob Cohen, Statistical Power Analysis for Behavioral Sciences (Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, 1988), 78.
42. Henry and Rendell, “A Review of the Impact of Pregnancy on Memory Function,” 798.
43. Henry and Rendell, “A Review of the Impact of Pregnancy on Memory Function,”, 798–9.
44. For this measure, the postpartum group's performance failed to reach statistical significance.
45. Henry and Rendell, “A Review of the Impact of Pregnancy on Memory Function,” 799.
46. Henry and Rendell, “A Review of the Impact of Pregnancy on Memory Function,”, 798.
47. Henry and Rendell, “A Review of the Impact of Pregnancy on Memory Function,”, 799.
48. Henry and Rendell, “A Review of the Impact of Pregnancy on Memory Function,”, 798.
49. Henry and Rendell, “A Review of the Impact of Pregnancy on Memory Function,”.
50. Merriam-Webster Online, s.v. “Significant,” http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/significant (accessed August 16, 2010).
51. Merriam-Webster Online, s.v. “Significant,” http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/significant (accessed August 16, 2010).
52. Merriam-Webster Online, s.v. “Significant,” http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/significant (accessed August 16, 2010).
53. Henry and Rendell, “A Review of the Impact on Pregnancy on Memory Function,” 793.
54. Henry and Rendell, “A Review of the Impact on Pregnancy on Memory Function,”.
55. Natasha Wallace, “‘Baby Brain’ Gets the Official Nod,” The Sydney Morning Herald, February 6, 2008, via LexisNexis (accessed March 26, 2008).
56. “‘Baby Brain’ Not a Myth,” Sunday Territorian, February 7, 2008, via LexisNexis (accessed March 26, 2008); and Lyndsay Moss, “Why Having a Baby Really Does Make Women More Forgetful,” The Scotsman, February 7, 2008, via LexisNexis (accessed March 26, 2008).
57. “Pregnancy Does Make Women More Forgetful,” Hindustan Times, February 7, 2008, via LexisNexis (accessed March 26, 2008).
58. “‘Baby Brain’ Not in Women's Heads: Study,” The New Zealand Herald, February 6, 2008, via LexisNexis (accessed March 26, 2008); and Denis Campbell, “Pregnancy ‘Does Cause Memory Loss’: Psychologists Reveal ‘Baby Brain’ is Not a Myth and New Mothers Suffer Forgetfulness for Years,” The Observer, February 3, 2008, via LexisNexis (accessed March 26, 2008).
59. “Baby Brain not a Myth.”
60. “Baby Brain Myth Becomes a Reality,” Daily Telegraph, February 6, 2008, via LexisNexis (accessed March 26, 2008).
61. Campbell, “Pregnancy ‘Does Cause Memory Loss.’”
62. “Pregnancy Does Make Women More Forgetful.”
63. Russ Mitchell and Harry Smith, “Healthwatch: Study Confirms ‘Pregnancy Brain’ Makes Pregnant Women Forgetful,” The Early Show, ABC, February 7, 2008, via LexisNexis (accessed March 26, 2008).
64. Henry and Rendell write: “The results of the present meta-analysis provide clear-cut findings, which help resolve the previous ambiguities in the literature.” “A Review of the Impact of Pregnancy on Memory Function,” 798. Further, the authors contend “the results clearly demonstrate that pregnancy is associated with objective deficits” (799).
65. Henry and Rendell write: “The results of the present meta-analysis provide clear-cut findings, which help resolve the previous ambiguities in the literature.” “A Review of the Impact of Pregnancy on Memory Function,” 798. Further, the authors contend “the results clearly demonstrate that pregnancy is associated with objective deficits”, 793.
66. Wallace, “‘Baby Brain’ Gets the Official Nod”; and Natasha Wallace, “Pregnancy ‘Impairs Memory,’” The Age, February 6, 2008, via LexisNexis (accessed March 26, 2008).
67. KPIX San Francisco, 6 O'clock News (6:25 pm), February 7, 2008, transcript provided by inewsnetwork (Global Broadcast Database—English), via LexisNexis (accessed March 26, 2008).
68. Moss, “Why Having a Baby Really Does Make Women More Forgetful.”
69. While some of the articles did mention how sleep deprivation could contribute to baby brain, they did so after mentioning how hormones may be the cause. The overall construction of baby brain in the media, I argue, functions to detract from a cultural understanding of baby brain. Therefore, even though there are instances when the media mention lack of sleep as a cause (as do Henry and Rendell), the general impression they give, through their selection and misuse of particular aspects of Henry and Rendell's essay, is one of baby brain being a hormonal condition.
70. “Pregnancy Impairs Memory: Australian Study,” Suna News Agency, February 5, 2008, via LexisNexis (accessed March 26, 2008).
71. Wallace, “Pregnancy ‘Impairs Memory.’”
72. Campbell, “Pregnancy ‘Does Cause Memory Loss.’”
73. KPIX San Francisco, 6 O'clock News.
74. Henry and Rendell, “A Review of the Impact of Pregnancy on Memory Function,” 798.
75. “‘Baby Brain’ Not a Myth.”
76. “Pregnancy Does Make Women More Forgetful.”
77. “Pregnancy Impairs Memory: Australian Study,” Agence France Presse, February 5, 2008, via LexisNexis (accessed March 26, 2008); and “Pregnancy Impairs Memory,” Suna News Agency.
78. “‘Baby Brain’ a Real Condition: Study,” newswire from Australian Broadcasting Corporation, February 6, 2008, via LexisNexis (accessed March 26, 2008).
79. “Baby Brain—Legend Now a Reality,” The Daily Telegraph, February 6, 2008, via LexisNexis (accessed March 26, 2008).
80. Genevieve Morton, “Oh Baby, It's a Real Brain Teaser,” Hobart Mercury, February 6, 2008, via LexisNexis (accessed March 26, 2008).
81. Michael Calvin McGee, “Materialism,” in Rhetoric in Postmodern America: Conversations with Michael McGee, ed. Carol Corbin (New York: Guilford Press, 1998), 144.
82. Myra Leifer, “Pregnancy,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 5, no. 4 (1980): 756.
83. Alison Sweeney, Bob Harper, and Jillian Michaels, The Biggest Loser, NBC, season 6, episode 14, aired December 16, 2008.
84. For an interesting critique of contemporary motherhood and care feminism, see Nancy J. Hirschmann, “Mothers Who Care Too Much: What Feminists Get Wrong about Family, Work, and Equality,” Boston Review, July/August 2010, http://bostonreview.net/BR35.4/hirschmann.php (accessed August 1, 2010). For a popular press investigation into parenting and a review of data suggesting that parenting makes parents unhappy, see Jennifer Senior, “All Joy and No Fun: Why Parents Hate Parenting,” New York Magazine, July 4, 2010, http://nymag.com/news/features/67024/ (accessed August 1, 2010).
85. Karine Moe and Dianna Shandy, Glass Ceiling and 100-Hour Couples: What the Opt-Out Phenomenon Can Teach Us About Work and Family (Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 2010), 63.
86. According to Garey Ramey and Valerie Ramey, the amount of time college educated women spend on childcare has risen in the past 40 years from 13 hours to 22 hours. College-educated men's time commitment has risen too, from 4 to 10. Non-college educated women now spend 16 hours per week with their children, and their male counterparts spend around 8 hours. For more information, see Garey Ramey and Valerie A. Ramey, “The Rug Rat Race,” Brookings Papers on Economic Activity (Spring 2010), http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Files/Programs/ES/BPEA/2010_spring_bpea_papers/2010a_bpea_ramey.pdf (accessed August 21, 2011).
87. Vicky Lovell, Elizabeth O'Neill, and Skylar Olsen, Maternity Leave in the United States: Paid Parental Leave is Still Not Standard, Even among the Best US Employers, Fact Sheet IWPR# 131, (Washington, DC: Institute for Women's Policy Research, August 2007) http://www.iwpr.org/publications/pubs/maternity-leave-in-the-united-states-paid-parental-leave-is-still-not-standard-even-among-the-best-u.s.-employers (accessed August 21, 2011).
88. Vicky Lovell, Elizabeth O'Neill, and Skylar Olsen, Maternity Leave in the United States: Paid Parental Leave is Still Not Standard, Even among the Best US Employers, Fact Sheet IWPR# 131, (Washington, DC: Institute for Women's Policy Research, August 2007) http://www.iwpr.org/publications/pubs/maternity-leave-in-the-united-states-paid-parental-leave-is-still-not-standard-even-among-the-best-u.s.-employers (accessed August 21, 2011).
89. Vicky Lovell, Elizabeth O'Neill, and Skylar Olsen, Maternity Leave in the United States: Paid Parental Leave is Still Not Standard, Even among the Best US Employers, Fact Sheet IWPR# 131, (Washington, DC: Institute for Women's Policy Research, August 2007) http://www.iwpr.org/publications/pubs/maternity-leave-in-the-united-states-paid-parental-leave-is-still-not-standard-even-among-the-best-u.s.-employers (accessed August 21, 2011).
90. For several analyses comparing US childcare options with those offered in other industrialized countries, see Kim England, ed., Who Will Mind the Baby: Geographies of Childcare and Working Mothers (New York: Routledge, 1996).
91. Moe and Shandy, Glass Ceiling and 100-Hour Couples, 73.
92. National Association of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies, Parents and the High Cost of Child Care: 2010 Update, Special Report, (Arlington, VA: Author, 2010): 1, http://www.naccrra.org/docs/Cost_Report_073010-final.pdf (accessed August 1, 2010).
93. National Association of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies, Parents and the High Cost of Child Care: 2010 Update, Special Report, (Arlington, VA: Author, 2010): 1, http://www.naccrra.org/docs/Cost_Report_073010-final.pdf (accessed August 1, 2010), 2.
94. National Association of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies, Parents and the High Cost of Child Care: 2010 Update, Special Report, (Arlington, VA: Author, 2010): 1, http://www.naccrra.org/docs/Cost_Report_073010-final.pdf (accessed August 1, 2010).
95. Rachel Connelly, Deborah S. DeGraff, and Rachel A. Willis, Kids at Work: The Value of Employer-Sponsored On-Site Care Centers (Kalamazoo, MI: Upjohn Institute Press, 2004).
96. Joan Williams, Unbending Gender: Why Family and Work Conflict and What to Do About It (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 70.
97. Jane Waldfogel, “Understanding the ‘Family Gap’ in Pay for Women with Children,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 12 (1998): 137–56.
98. Ann Crittenden, The Price of Motherhood: Why the Most Important Job in the World is Still the Least Valued (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2001), 10.
99. Susan J. Douglas and Meredith W. Michaels, The Mommy Myth: The Idealization of Motherhood and How It Has Undermined Women (New York: Free Press, 2004), 4.
100. Susan J. Douglas and Meredith W. Michaels, The Mommy Myth: The Idealization of Motherhood and How It Has Undermined Women (New York: Free Press, 2004), 23.
101. The Pew Research Center, Motherhood Today: Tougher Challenges, Less Success: Mom's Biggest Critics are Middle-Aged Women, May 2, 2007, http://people-press.org/report/325/motherhood-today--tougher-challenges-less-success (accessed August 1, 2010).
102. Douglas and Michaels, The Mommy Myth, 26; see also Joan C. Williams and Holly Cohen Cooper, “The Public Policy of Motherhood,” Journal of Social Issues 60, no. 4 (2004): 849–65.