Parents who raised more children show brain wiring that runs opposite to the pattern seen in aging. In a brain scan study of more than 37,000 middle-aged and older adults, each additional child was linked to stronger connections in movement and sensation networks, the very networks that weaken as people get older.
The effect showed up in fathers as well as mothers. That points to the experience of caregiving, rather than pregnancy alone, as a possible driver.
The study was led by Edwina R. Orchard of the Yale Child Study Center, with Avram J. Holmes of Rutgers University as senior author and colleagues at Yale, the National University of Singapore and Monash University. It was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on February 25, 2025 (read the paper).
A brain scan study of 37,571 parents and non-parents
The team used resting-state brain scans from the UK Biobank, the largest population neuroimaging dataset available. The sample held 19,964 women and 17,607 men, with an average age in the mid-50s and between zero and six children each.
For each person, the researchers split the brain into 419 regions and measured how strongly activity in each pair of regions moved together. That produced 87,571 connections per participant.
They then asked two questions separately for women and men. Which connections track the number of children a person has parented? And which connections track age? The analyses were adjusted for education and the Townsend deprivation index, a measure of neighbourhood poverty.
More children, stronger sensorimotor connections
In women, 12,740 connections were linked to the number of children, and 84.3% of them were stronger in those with more children. In men, 36,474 connections were linked to parenthood, and 98.4% of them were stronger.
The stronger connections sat mostly within the somato/motor network, which handles movement and bodily sensation, and between it and the default, visual and attention networks. Regions such as the hippocampus and the posterior cingulate cortex featured heavily. Weaker connections clustered in deep subcortical structures like the thalamus.
The pattern was strikingly similar in both sexes. Across all connections, the parenthood effects in women and men correlated at r = 0.67, rising to 0.90 at the level of whole networks. A formal test found no significant difference between the sexes.
The results held when the researchers dropped everyone without children, which suggests the link is not just a gap between parents and non-parents. It behaved like a dose effect, growing with each additional child.
The mirror image of aging
Age had a broad effect on the same brains. Most age-linked connections grew weaker over time: 86.5% in women and 67.5% in men. The biggest declines ran between the somato/motor network and the rest of the brain, while connections within the subcortex grew stronger.
When the team compared the two maps, they ran in opposite directions. Connections that strengthened with more children tended to weaken with age. The negative correlation was r = -0.42 in women and -0.56 in men across individual connections, and -0.66 and -0.81 at the network level.
Parents of more children also reported larger households, more frequent visits from friends and family, and a greater ability to confide in someone close. Among men, more children went with better grip strength and working memory scores.
The authors are careful about cause. The data are a single snapshot, and having more children is tied to many social and lifestyle factors that the adjustments for education and deprivation may not fully capture. They list direct effects of caregiving, a richer and more complex environment, and these co-varying factors as competing explanations.
Their conclusion is that the changes accompanying parenthood “may confer benefits to brain health across the lifespan.” The fact that fathers, who never go through pregnancy, show the same pattern is what steers the explanation toward daily life with children.
Study Details:
- Title: Protective role of parenthood on age-related brain function in mid- to late-life
- Authors: Edwina R. Orchard, Sidhant Chopra, Leon Q. R. Ooi, Pansheng Chen, Lijun An, Sharna D. Jamadar, B. T. Thomas Yeo, Helena J. V. Rutherford, Avram J. Holmes
- Journal: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Publication Date: February 25, 2025
- DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2411245122