Parental Brain 101: Maternal Anxiety and Aggression (Ch 6)

Here we are at the much-anticipated (by me) chapter on neural mechanisms of anxiety and aggression in mothers. However, a reminder (to me), this is a book (The Parental Brain by Michael Numan) based on the normative brain changes that occur in moms. Because of this, this chapter on anxiety and aggression is not about the neural changes related to heightened clinical levels of anxiety or anything related to Mom Rage, but I will touch on this below.

First of all, let’s remember that anxiety and aggression are normal emotions and responses to certain situations. During the early postpartum period, in mice and other animals, we generally see a reduction in ‘classic’ anxiety-like behaviours (usually measured by exploration) and an increase in protective behaviours (usually referred to as ‘aggression’). For example, postpartum female rats usually spend more time on the open arm of an Elevated Plus Maze (it looks like it’s name) and are more aggressive to intruders than non-maternal females. These changes in anxiety and aggression postpartum make sense to me; a mother is likely more motivated to search for her young, and thus, enter the more ‘dangerous’ arms of the maze, and she wants to protect her young from strange intruders. I hope that seems obvious to you too.

In fact, I would say this is something the majority of human moms feel too - motivation to care for and protect their young.

Before I go further, I want to clarify that maternal aggression in this case is the idea of being a ‘mama bear’, or ‘maman poule’ if you are a French speaker. Both phrases refer to the protectiveness that mothers have for their young.

Growing up in western Canada one of the things we were always told was to steer clear of a mother bear as she is the most dangerous of all bears! This type of mama bear aggression is NOT Mom Rage.

Mom Rage is defined as “uncontrollable episodes of intense anger associated with mothering that are not goal-directed and may derive from feelings of powerlessness, injustice, and stress” (source). Maternal aggression is goal-directed (protection of young) and is not anger associated with the act of mothering. Does that make sense? I hope so.