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The experience of parenthood appears to offer incredible benefits to both women and men
In a nutshell
- Parenting more children is linked to increased brain connectivity in areas that typically decline with age, suggesting parenthood may help protect against brain aging.
- The effect was seen in both mothers and fathers, indicating that caregiving experience, not just pregnancy, contributes to these brain benefits.
- Parents with more children also showed greater social connectivity and, for men, stronger grip strength—both predictors of better brain health in later life.
NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. — All the stress, fatigue, and responsibility that comes with having children can leave many moms and dads feeling like they’ve added an extra decade (or more) onto their lives. As it turns out, becoming a parent could do more than just change your life—it might actually protect your brain as you age. A new study suggests that parenthood offers surprising benefits that work against typical age-related changes in brain function.
Using brain scans from nearly 38,000 adults from the UK Biobank, researchers discovered that parenting more children is linked to higher brain-wide connectivity, particularly in networks handling movement and sensation. These same networks showed lower connectivity with increasing age, suggesting that parenthood might help counteract typical brain aging.
“The regions that decrease in functional connectivity as individuals age are the regions associated with increased connectivity when individuals have had children,” said senior study author Avram Holmes, associate professor of psychiatry at Rutgers University’s Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, in a statement.
In all, the research team, which, along with Rutgers Health, included scientists from Yale University and other institutions, analyzed brain scans from 19,964 females and 17,607 males aged 40 to 70.
While pregnancy has long been known to create temporary changes in a woman’s body and brain, this research indicates that the experience of parenthood may have lasting effects on brain function for both mothers and fathers. “The caregiving environment, rather than pregnancy alone, appears important since we see these effects in both mothers and fathers,” Holmes said.
The More Children, The Merrier
For decades, scientists have studied how the brain changes with age. Typically, connectivity within networks like the default, salience/ventral attention, and somato/motor networks decreases as we grow older, while connectivity between networks increases. The researchers observed that higher numbers of children parented was associated with the opposite pattern—increased connectivity, especially within the somato/motor network, which handles physical sensations and movement.
The effect appears to be cumulative: The more children parents had, the stronger the brain differences appeared. This relationship strengthens the argument that parenting itself, rather than simply being a parent or not, may influence brain aging trajectories.
The findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, add to growing evidence that parenthood isn’t just a temporary state but a significant life transition that can have lasting biological impacts. Just as adolescence and aging are considered key developmental periods, parenthood appears to be another critical window when the brain is especially adaptable and capable of forming new connections.
Interestingly, the researchers found that having more children was also linked to several real-world measures. Parents with more children reported more social connections, including a greater ability to confide in others and more frequent visits from friends and family. For men specifically, having more children was associated with increased grip strength—a predictor of overall brain health and independence in later life.
Parenthood Worth Every Yawn, Ache, and Pain
The findings challenge assumptions that having children primarily creates stress and strain. Instead, the research suggests parenting may enrich the brain through increased physical activity, social interaction, and cognitive stimulation.
The research team proposes several possible explanations. Caregiving is a highly sensory process that involves coordinated movement—holding, cradling, and feeding children engages multiple sensory systems, which could explain the increased connectivity in sensory and motor regions.
Additionally, parents must become attuned to their children by integrating multiple types of nonverbal cues, potentially strengthening sensory, visual, tactile, and auditory networks over time. This constant sensory engagement and heightened attention to social cues might reinforce these brain networks in ways that protect against age-related decline.
The researchers note that parents themselves often report lasting changes to their sensory perception. For example, up to 40% of mothers in an Australian study reported experiencing “phantom kicks”—sensations resembling fetal movements—many years after giving birth, suggesting long-term changes in sensory perception in the brain.
Parent Or Not, Caregiving Could Be The Key
Importantly, the study does not suggest that people without children are at a disadvantage or that having children is the only way to maintain brain health. Many factors influence brain aging, including education, physical activity, diet, and social engagement.
The results do highlight the neurological importance of caregiving—a finding that may extend beyond biological parents to adoptive parents, grandparents, and other caregivers. The shared experience of nurturing others, rather than the biological experience of pregnancy alone, appears to be a key factor in these brain changes.
“If what we’re picking up is a relationship between enhanced social interactions and social support that comes about through having increased numbers of children in your life, then that means that we could tap into those same processes even if individuals don’t have a social support network currently,” Holmes said.
For those contemplating parenthood or already raising children, this research offers a new perspective on the long-term benefits of parenting. Beyond the challenges and personal growth that parenthood brings, it might also help keep your brain younger as you age—a benefit that continues long after the children have grown.
Paper Summary
Methodology
The research team used data from the UK Biobank, a large-scale health database containing information from about 500,000 participants. They focused on 37,571 individuals who had complete brain imaging data and information about how many children they had parented.
Participants had functional MRI scans, which show how different parts of the brain communicate with each other. Unlike regular MRI scans that show the brain’s structure, functional MRI shows brain activity patterns.
For each participant, the researchers looked at 419 different brain regions and calculated how they connected to each other. They then compared these connectivity patterns with the number of children each participant had parented, while accounting for factors like age, education, and economic status.
Results
The study found significant differences in brain function associated with parenthood. For both women and men, having more children was linked to higher connectivity, particularly within networks responsible for physical sensations and movement. This finding was remarkably consistent between sexes.
Most importantly, the researchers discovered that the brain connections positively associated with having more children were negatively associated with age. In simple terms, the brain areas that stayed better connected in people with more children were the same areas that typically lose connectivity as people age.
Beyond these brain findings, parents with more children also reported more social connections, including more frequent family visits and a greater ability to confide in others. For men specifically, having more children was associated with stronger grip strength, which predicts better brain health in later life.
Limitations
The study defines parenthood in biological terms—number of births for women and number of children fathered for men—which doesn’t capture the reality of diverse family structures and parenting roles. It also lacks information on important caregiving factors like parental involvement and parent-child relationships.
Additionally, the research examines participants at a single point in time rather than following them over many years. This makes it difficult to establish cause-and-effect relationships.
The sample is also limited geographically and culturally, as participants were primarily from the UK. As Holmes notes, “The study participants were primarily from the United Kingdom, so the findings may not generalize to all cultures and family structures.”
Funding and Disclosures
This research was supported by various institutions and funding sources, including the Kavli Institute for Neuroscience Postdoctoral Fellowship, the American Association for University Women International Fellowship, the American Australian Association Graduate Research Fund Scholarship, the McKenzie Fellowship from the University of Melbourne, the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia, the National University of Singapore Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, the Singapore National Medical Research Council, and other research grants. The authors declared no competing interests.
Publication Information
The study, titled “Protective role of parenthood on age-related brain function in mid- to late-life,” was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on February 25, 2025. The research was conducted by a team of scientists from multiple institutions, led by Edwina R. Orchard and Sidhant Chopra as co-first authors, with Avram Holmes as senior author.
