Abigail Tucker, MOM GENES

[2:03]Zibby Owens: This is Zippy Owens, and you're listening to the award winning podcast, Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. I'm also the host of Moms Don't Have Time to Lose Weight, and I'm the editor of the anthology, which you should run out and buy, called Moms Don't Have Time to A Quarantine Anthology. All proceeds of that book go to COVID nineteen Vaccine Research. And I'm the editor in chief of Moms Don't Have Time to Write a New Publication on Medium, and we're accepting submissions, so please send your personal essays there. And if all that isn't enough, you can follow me on Instagram at Zibby Owens, My website is zibbyowens.com. Okay, now back to this amazing podcast. Abigail Tucker is the author of Inside the New Science of Our Ancient Maternal Instinct. Abigail's work has been featured in the Best American Science and Nature Writing series. She is the New York Times bestselling author of The Lion in the How House Cats Tamed Us and Took Over the World, which was named a Best Science Book of 2016 by Library Journal and Forbes and is now translated into 13 languages. A correspondent for Smithsonian Magazine, she currently lives in New Haven, Connecticut with her husband and four equally amazing children. Welcome, Abigail. Thanks so much for coming on Moms Don't Have Time to Read books to discuss mom genes. Thank you, Zivia. I'm so glad to be here. I always know I'm going to like enjoy an interview when the title is really funny. Just like love plays on words like that. So anyway, I knew this would be very interesting. Can you please tell listeners

[3:30]Abigail Tucker: what your book is about and also what inspired you to write it? So my book is about the science behind this transformation that will probably be familiar to a lot of your viewers, this series of changes that women go through when they become moms. And I'm not talking about gaining 70 pounds or losing your toenails or all these other things. I'm talking about the hidden changes that go on in your brain. And basically, scientists have learned that if you take images of a mom's brain before and after she has kids, the brain looks different. And scientists are sort of trying to tease out what happens and why and what it means for us in our daily normal, busy lives. I love that. And why did you want to start researching this? Well, I have four kids, and I had sort of detected some interesting changes in my own self. And I kind of just thought that I hadn't been sleeping much or that I just had too much on my plate, but I had so many kind of different thoughts and feelings than I normally had. And I also noticed that the same things were happening in a lot of my friends and even just people that I encountered at the playground. I feel like being a mom involves a large amount of people watching. And so, because you're always places with your kids at the doctor's office, in the line at the water slide, at the baby gap, and just observe women and wonder like, what makes you work? What makes me work? What makes us different? What makes us the same? I'm also really interested in animals. And I was curious about the commonalities between human moms and mammal moms that you see at the zoo or at the pet store, that kind of thing. Yeah. Didn't you and your mom go like, watch sheep be born or something? Isn't that like part of this? We did. That's how you know your mom really loves you. If you're like, mom, let's go and spend the whole night at a sheep barn waiting for sheep to have babies so we can see what happens. And it was actually really fun. That's something you can volunteer to do. It's at this farm called the Hickory's in Ridgefield, Connecticut in the spring. They're called night watchers or something like that. And it's basically your job to sound the alarm if and when somebody goes into labor and you hang up with 15 obese sheep for the night. It's really fun. No

[5:45]Zibby Owens: ego boost like a night with obese sheep. You know? Anyway. Yeah. Exactly. And after a night with four kids, it's probably

[5:53]Abigail Tucker: a nice This how

[5:56]Zibby Owens: we moms of four really relax. Let's get away from it all. Oh my gosh, so funny. So there were so many different aspects of this mom science sort of category that I feel like your branding which is so late in like the fact that it's not a full on course in college at this point, right, is a tragedy, it should be. Anyway, so thanks for raising awareness to this. And then there were some facts and figures you sprinkled throughout your book. For instance, according to the latest research, moms hit mobile consumer apps starting at 5AM and reportedly shop 15% faster than other people. Here's why I love this because everybody's always asking like how do you do things quickly or like how do you get stuff done? I'm like well I just when you're a mom you just like you have to get things done quickly like give a busy mom something to do blah blah blah, we all know this. But now it's like there's research behind this. So tell me a little bit about some of these findings that just supported things that you already knew, including something like the ability to shop quickly. Exactly.

[7:00]Abigail Tucker: So when you become a mom, the core of this awakening or renaissance or transformation that we talk about, some scientists refer to it as a maternal unmasking, which I really liked because it sounded kind of festive. But at the core of it is this newfound awareness of and sensitivity to infant cues. And you're basically looking at your kid, your baby, monitoring their emotional state, trying to figure out how to keep it alive, that whole thing. But that newfound awareness kind of transfers to other aspects of your life. So moms hear and see somewhat differently than other people if you watch their brains respond in an fMRI scan or put on one of those EEG caps that look like a weird netted sack that you would have onions in at the grocery store. They can just show you stuff like colors or pictures of houses, and your brain reacts differently, sort of more sharply in a lot of ways. And I think that you're just kind of programmed to kind of get it done in a way that maybe you weren't before. That's not to say there aren't deficits, which were a little bit depressing for me as a writer reading the literature. People say, Is there a mommy brain? Do you really get stupider? I don't think you really get stupider, but I think your brain definitely shifts into a different mode and your attention, there's economy of attention, you're paying attention to different stuff. And the one place where researchers do seem to agree that there's sort of a little bit of a, I don't wanna use the word decay, but sort of like a fallback is in the area of verbal recall and the way that you remember words. And so that whole kind of like, I don't know if you have these moments with your mom friends where you're kind of staring at each other and just being like, blah, blah, like, what is the word that we're trying to come up with? And then you finally get it. That may be because the changes that we see in the mom brain are often in the deep down ancient core of the brain, as opposed to the fancy bells and whistles that humanity has the ability to speak.

[9:03]Zibby Owens: I literally consulted multiple neurologists years ago because I could not retrieve words. And I was like, I like it. Of course, then this crazy thing happened to me where they found a brain tumor that turned out had been there my whole life, but they didn't know that at first. So then I had I went off on this like whole thing. And anyway, it became totally it was it was fine. Eventually, they realized that it had been there since I was born and would always be there and no big deal. But obviously, it was very scary when they didn't But know the point is, the thing that started it off is because I could not come up with words and like I'm very into words and talking and reading and writing and all of that and I would be like, is that place where we keep the cars? Know, like I would be calling it a garbage can and I'm like, know it's not a garbage can but I can't find the word and I would ask all my friends like and they're like, no, no, mom brain and I was like, no, no, this is too much. This like, I cannot speak. So reading your book, I'm like, oh my gosh, you know, and then eventually the doctors were like, It's just mom brain, whatever that is. And I was like, This is so unsatisfying to me. Exactly. Long does mom brain last? Like when do you think it goes away? Because some days I don't feel like it's really gone. Right. Does it ever grow back? Yeah, does it grow back? Well,

[10:18]Abigail Tucker: studies that they've done where they do the before and after pregnancy brain pictures show that the changes last for two years. And I was like, okay, two years, I can handle that. And then I kind of looked a little closer at the papers and it was like, two years is the last time they checked. So the changes may last forever. There's an interesting literature on moms and Alzheimer's disease, and they're kind of trying to study whether having kids and having certain numbers of kids is protective against Alzheimer's I saw that. Didn't you say that there were like four, if you have three or more kids,

[10:51]Zibby Owens: have some protection against dementia or something? Doctor. So

[10:54]Abigail Tucker: there is a back and forth about this. There's a relationship that scientists are trying to unpack. And that was sort of a big recent study that showed that if you had a lot of kids, and it's also not just kids, it's also pregnancies. Like if you have a miscarriage, that may also be protective in some way. And scientists are trying to piece together why that is and this relationship between like, well, if we're forgetting words now, can things really get better when we're 85? But it may, it may get better. And I think that's like fascinating area. Whole area, the whole field of research, another interesting factor is the study of fetal microprimerism, which is when the baby Your children's cells cross the placenta into your bloodstream, and some of them end up integrating with your tissue and your heart or your lungs or your thyroid or your brain, you know, hint, hint, hint, and they stay there forever and they become part of your body. And scientists don't really know what they're doing there, if they're working for us or against us, if they might be protecting us from things like Alzheimer's disease. And I just think that if men discovered, you know, one day that their bodies were being patrolled by the cells of their children, we would have like 9,000 labs that were like, We're gonna get to the bottom of this. Instead, we have just like two or three I mean, there might be more than two or three, but a handful of labs that are trying to get to the bottom of this question and figuring out, What do these cells do? Why are they there? How can we use them? What does it mean? And so I was fascinated by all those questions. I was literally,

[12:26]Zibby Owens: I read part of this in the car and I was reading this part to my husband and I was like, Wait, listen to this. And then I was like, Keep going. I'm like, Oh my gosh, listen to this part. And finally he was like, Could we stop talking about this? He's like, what about me? Because also you because also you reported that in that the baby, which becomes like, you know, a middle aged woman, you still have the cells perhaps of your mother even after she's passed away Cause it works both ways. Tell me more about that.

[12:52]Abigail Tucker: So I don't know as much about that, but there had been interesting, there was one interesting study maybe five or six years ago that showed that the cells of your mom, so my mom's cells are in my body, that they may have some say, to use a colloquial word, in which embryos I have make it to gestation, that the mom may be sort of screening for sexual partners that are similar to her. That sounds like too close to the real truth. You know what I mean? Like, of course, that's what your mom is doing. And so that, again, like that is an even farther outfield, the fact that our bodies have our moms present in them. We also have, if you've had multiple kids, those kids are all in there. Maybe they have different agendas, who knows? And then this idea that if you've had a miscarriage or something like that, that child may be inside of you rebuilding part of your liver if you have liver disease. It's just so cuckoo. It's literally like a science fiction movie. I kept being like, Are you sure? And of course, I'm reading all this literature about mommy brain and like, Is this a waking dream? But no, it's real. And these scientists who study this stuff are just so fascinating. There's people at Mount Sinai in New York who are trying to figure out how we might be able to use these fetal cells that help rebuild, that might have a regenerative effect in maternal hearts, if we might be able to harvest these somehow and use them to help other people with heart problems. But it's just like, there's so much potential here. And I think it's just a field that everybody should be kind of tuned into. Oh my gosh. I'm on the board of Mount Sinai actually. And now I'm like, yeah, I'm like, wait. I like, we're getting all these presentations at our board meetings that are like, whatever. And this I'm like, why is this not a topic at our board meeting? Like, come let this guy come in and present or whoever's. Exactly.

[14:45]Zibby Owens: Oh my gosh. Alright. Well, I'll be making a phone call after this. Let's see what happens. Let's get him. I'm kidding. I'm like so unimportant. I have this massive board of like 80 people or whatever. Anyway, no. I just you know, when I was growing up, my mother would always tell me about death, which I like obsessed over. Right? She was like, you know, you always live on in the hearts and minds of other people. And now reading this book, like, you actually do. Like, it's not just a nice phrase. Like, your cells live on. It's it's just it's I don't know. Gives me the chills. Today's episode is sponsored by Quince. Summer always makes me rethink what I'm reaching for every day. Lighter fabrics, better materials, pieces that just feel good the moment you put them on and look effortless. That's why I keep coming back to Quince. They focus on high quality essentials. Think breathable linen, soft organic cotton, washable silk, but without the luxury markup. It's that rare balance where everything feels elevated but still easy. Quince has beautiful everyday pieces like 100% European linen pants, dresses, and tops with styles starting at $32. Their denim is soft and easy to wear. I wear my jean jacket all the time. And their organic cotton sweaters are perfect for layering on cool summer nights. Everything at Quince is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. Quince works directly with ethical factories and cuts out the middlemen, so you're paying for quality, not brand markup. And it's not just clothing. Quince has really become a destination for elevated essentials across home, kitchen, bedding, and beyond, making it easy to bring a more premium feel into everyday life. In addition to my jean jacket, I recently got a white tank top dress with a beautiful cotton skirt that is absolutely gorgeous, and I can't wait for it to be warm enough so I can wear it every day, but it has been a cool spring. Elevate your summer wardrobe. Go to quince.com/zippy for free shipping on your order and three hundred and sixty five day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's quince.com/zippy for free shipping and three hundred and sixty five day returns. Quince.com/zippy.

[18:32]Abigail Tucker: No, it's so fascinating. And there's comfort in it. And then there's also kind of wonder in it. Like, we just don't understand this. It's something understand more, but I have to say that a lot of the people who are studying this are women and moms. And that was one of the cool things about the book, getting to, you know, when you write about science, it is still a male dominated field. And so I loved in the book getting to talk to all these young mothers who study mothering in monkeys, mothering in mice, mothering in people. Some of them were pregnant at the time and it was just so refreshing. And I loved knowing that they were kind of like, you know, walking the walk too. You know, it's not like just studying these things in a test tube. Were going home. They were, you know, fighting to have this research time. They had two toddlers at home. And so it just, I just love that part. Wow.

[19:23]Zibby Owens: So like, where do we go from here with all of this information? Like, I'm so excited to know it. And I feel like finally, you know, understood about the way my brain is working, but like, maybe there's now something more

[19:36]Abigail Tucker: I can do armed with this knowledge. Like what's our to do list now that we know? Doctor. So one of the things that I thought was so interesting, especially in light of the pandemic, was the way that moms, we are so kind of programmed to care for our kids and to carry on and, you know, to obey this instinct that arises in us that's new to us. But we are really at the same time sort of susceptible to environmental influences and things like stress. You know, we think of stress as being like, oh, I had a stressful day. It was hard. Scientists who study things like rat moms and monkey moms have seen how stress can actually kind of degrade the maternal brain or stunt its growth. Basically, if you have women under stress, enough stress, it can be really, really bad despite the power of this instinct. And I just think there's so many lessons that we can take from other countries about how we can safeguard the mental health of mothers and do things like provide better prenatal care, things like paid maternity, and actually paid paternity leave, surprisingly, for things that we can push for. And even the way women are treated in hospitals, like I learned a little bit about hospitals that they have in Israel and about how, you know, that these certain fancy maternity hospitals, can have down pillows there and you get so much extra help and there's like fancy toiletries and all these things. It's sort of like, well, who cares? You had your baby. But actually, no, these are signals and cues from the environment that mean that people care about you. On a personal level, you know, women are super, new moms are super receptive to social signals. And anything that you can do for a new mother in your own life, if it's, you know, call her, email her, check-in, don't make her one dinner, make her five dinners, you know, let her know that she's cared for and her baby's cared for because these things actually can impact the development of her brain. And that's something that I sort of told myself again and again, that these little gestures, they're not just being polite or like, you know, good manners when you show if you buy a gift for a new mother or make sure that she has diapers if her husband has to go away for a business trip, these are actually sort of like psychological selves that we can give to each other until the government catches up with us.

[21:54]Zibby Owens: I was just in a bookstore the other day. Found these, like, adorable little socks for babies, you know, like, little library cards. I was like, I'm just I'm just gonna, like, send these to a couple of moms I know who just had babies. And I was like Exactly. You know, I'm like, why not? Like, how much it's not like they're expensive. It would probably make someone's day. I would've loved to get something like that when I was like in the thick of it covered in vomit and everything from being a new mom. They'll remember it forever, you know? I mean, that's the kind of stuff like when you're in the trenches, just remembering that people out there actually care and that you have a social network,

[22:27]Abigail Tucker: these are things that can even help protect women against postpartum depression. It's just like we are social animals and we are constantly drinking in signals from the world. And as women, we can influence those signals and build each other up, I think. And you gave us justification for watching HGTV,

[22:44]Zibby Owens: is like my guilty pleasure. And I'm like, there's a biological reason why this is my end of the day pleasure.

[22:54]Abigail Tucker: Exactly. Oh my gosh. I am so with you on that. And sometimes I'm like, is this why I can't remember any words? Is it because I watched, you know, Love It or Listen Again? And I think knowing that that kind of stuff is okay. I think, you know, anything you can do to take the stress out a little bit at the end of the day is helpful to you and to your whole family. And that goes for, you know, when I say women should help each other, there is really interesting research on things like how paternity leave can result in a drop in the amount of antianxiety medications that new moms fill. Because dads are, you know, the book talks a little bit about the differences between dads and moms, and I think that there are differences, but I think it's also kind of established fact that dads can make a huge difference in helping their partners develop into moms and to kind of help control the environment in which they become moms. And so I just think anything that we can do in our homes and in our broader worlds to help is just like

[23:59]Zibby Owens: time well spent and money well spent. I should not admit this per your comment on antianxiety medication, but I literally brought my, like, prescription thing of antianxiety medicine into the c section room because I hadn't been taking it while I was pregnant. And, like, I didn't even wait till I got to, like, the cooling off air. Whatever the next room is, I was on the table, like, popping it in with like, who needs champagne? Yeah, I wish they could have put it in my bloodstream. They should really do that instead. Oh my gosh. I'm with you. I actually forgot that even happened until Ray the second but anyway, So what are you working on now? I know this just is coming out, but like, where are you going from here? Are you uncovering other secrets? Are you delving deeper into this science? Like what's your next step?

[24:50]Abigail Tucker: So first on the list is I'm going to take the summer and actually hang out with my kids. There was a little bit of irony because I would be like, you know, I have to go up into the attic kids and write this book about the maternal instinct. You know, like I definitely, in the course of my writing process, because I had to just try to carve out time every day, I definitely did a fair bit of kid ignoring. So I need to spend the summer kind of hanging out with them. But I am generally just super interested in how you can use sort of high science to understand the stuff that goes on in our own lives. My last book was about how house cats took over the world, like basically the story of this pet that we have and really has no business being in our homes and does nothing good for us. But how did this happen? And so I anticipate a new book that explores another aspect of our domestic existence and how we can use concepts from biology and sort of the cool stuff in the labs that are in all of our cities, but nobody knows about to understand our present predicament as, you know, moms and also just kind of like as humans. So you don't know what it's going to be or you don't want to talk about it? I don't. I honestly don't know. I have some ideas. I'm really interested in, you know, the way that women interact with each other, not just with our kids. So I might, it might be related to that.

[26:10]Zibby Owens: Interesting. Maybe something with food.

[26:15]Abigail Tucker: Honestly, then you could explain

[26:18]Zibby Owens: away the Food Network watching. Yes, which is

[26:22]Abigail Tucker: another mindless pleasure. Exactly.

[26:25]Zibby Owens: It'll all have a reason. Yes.

[26:28]Abigail Tucker: This all makes us all according to our plan. Absolutely.

[26:31]Zibby Owens: So what advice do you have to aspiring authors?

[26:35]Abigail Tucker: Oh gosh. Well, I just say, I think the most important thing is just to write about something that you love and that you are genuinely interested in and that you're in some way living. I think that the most successful science writing in particular has a personal dimension, and you have to really kind of feel like you've got some skin in the game basically. And like the research that you're learning about isn't just kind of objectively interesting, but it actually matters to you and the people that you love. So that's what I'd say. And then the other thing is that if you're a writing mom, there is a certain amount of ruthlessness involved. Like you must write every day. I don't have a five day work week. I have a, you know, abbreviated work day, basically seven days a week. And so that's how I can squeeze in the time. And so I guess I just say that, you know, you have to kind of make that claim for yourself because otherwise, you know, you're just gonna get kind of sucked into the vortex of what's going on every day. You need like, I'd say you can get a lot done in two hours.

[27:38]Zibby Owens: Yeah. I did something yesterday and I was like, wow, it only took me three hours to do blah, blah, blah, And my husband's like, that's because the kids aren't here today.

[27:46]Abigail Tucker: Yeah, exactly. It took me months to just sit down for those three hours, but once I had them, I could do it. You can do anything in three hours. And actually, I mean, I feel like back when I used to go into the office, I basically worked for three hours. Like I did a lot of other stuff. I chatted, I got lunch, all this stuff. But I feel like if you can pour your

[28:06]Zibby Owens: best brain into something for two hours, like most days a week, then you're good. Well, I feel like in your spare time, should try to make the science of the mom brain into a much bigger movement and thing. I mean, I think this should be something where like people are donating money and and and hospitals and science and like schools, universities. I feel like people, we need to like elevate this as a topic. I mean, it's so hugely important and miss and like not adequately represented. So you should be in charge of like whatever foundation that is. Can run it and fundraise and make it a whole big Let

[28:44]Abigail Tucker: me call my babysitter. Okay. But actually now that you mentioned that Zibby, one important thing is that like I happen to live in a neighborhood near Yale University, and my neighborhood has all these little signs up looking for moms to donate their brains to experiments. And I did that. I volunteered. For these researchers, getting moms to carve out a little bit of time from their lives to do these, you know, perfectly safe, actually super interesting experiments is a big challenge. And so I think especially if you live in a place like New York, or if you live, you know, really anywhere where there's a research university, it's not a bad idea to figure out if there is a lab that's studying human moms, because you just go in and, you know, chat and put on, you know, a funny cap that's reading the electrical signals on your scalp and look at baby pictures, and it really can change. It saves these researchers time and energy because they mostly have to do a lot of recruiting by going to like baby yoga classes and putting up all these flyers when they could be using that energy to actually push the science forward. We can help them with that. We can show up. I love that. We were driving from Massachusetts back to New York, and I was like, let's just stop at Sally's and pick up the pizza. Yeah.

[29:57]Zibby Owens: And we like, hauled it in, flung into New Haven, grabbed the pizza, put it on our laps, got back on 95, and kept going. So anyway Detour. Oh my gosh. We've got to do it. Gosh. Well, it was so nice chatting with you. I find your research absolutely fascinating and so important and I feel like it's just the beginning and it's very exciting. Thank you so much for having me. This was so fun. My pleasure. All right. Have a great day. Bye, Sydney. Bye. Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at Zibby Owens and at moms don't have time to read books. Also, sign up for my newsletter at zibbyowens.com and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound for the sound editing, and thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.