Parenthood may be linked to better cognitive performance and younger-looking brains. Digest
Parenthood reshapes daily life in ways that could influence brain health and aging, yet its long-term effects are largely unknown. A study examined whether the number of children people had was linked to differences in cognitive performance and brain age in both women and men.
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Researchers included 303,196 UK Biobank participants of European ancestry who had no diagnosed brain or nervous-system disorders. The sample comprised 160,077 women, with an average age of 56.7 years, and 143,119 men, with an average age of 57.5 years. Participants were grouped according to whether they had no children, one child, two children, three children, or four or more children. Cognitive performance was assessed with two computerized tasks. In a reaction-time task, participants viewed pairs of cards and pressed a button as quickly as possible when the two cards matched. In a visual-memory task, participants first viewed the locations of matching card pairs and then tried to find those pairs after the cards were turned face down. A separate subset of 13,584 participants, including 6,822 women and 6,762 men, had structural MRI scans used to calculate relative brain age, indicating whether their brain structure appeared older or younger than expected for their age.
- Compared with childless participants, each parent group had slightly faster reaction times in both women and men. The differences were about 4–7 milliseconds in women and 7–10 milliseconds in men, although in women the differences were less certain. For the one-child group, for example, the difference was comparable to being about 1 year younger in women and 2 years younger in men.
- Among participants with children, response times varied little by number of children.
- Participants with children generally made fewer mistakes on the visual-memory task than childless participants, with larger and more consistent differences in men.
- Compared with childless participants, those with two or three children had brain structures that appeared about 0.5–0.7 years younger relative to same-age peers in both women and men. The estimates for one child were uncertain in both sexes.
- Overall, the associations between having children and both response time and visual memory were stronger in men than in women, whereas no clear difference between women and men was found for relative brain age.
The stronger links between having children and better performance on the cognitive tests in men suggest that experiences shared by mothers and fathers, rather than pregnancy alone, may help explain the findings. Having children may encourage parents to adopt healthier lifestyle choices and strengthen social ties throughout life, while adult children may later provide emotional support and help with everyday tasks. These possible benefits may outweigh some of the financial and physical stress associated with raising children.
Although the study accounted for health and lifestyle differences, its observational design cannot prove that having children protects the brain, since people in poorer health may also have been less likely to have children. Even so, the findings highlight that social connections and the lifestyle changes that come with parenthood may be notable factors in longevity. In episode #110, I talk with Dr. Arthur Brooks about the role of love and relationships in building a happier, more meaningful life.