Thanks. I am unsure now as to whether you agree with me or not if we are referring from the same 2016 study.

Having said that, I used the term IQ rather loosely. And colloquially. Probably not the best choice of term. The import of what I meant was that pregnancy brain/mommy brain changes from the pre pregnancy female brain. The brain elasticity gives it the ability to redirect its connections elsewhere.

Brain plasticity also has been known to reshape itself past a few years post child birth. Whether it will go back to the old normal, we don’t know. But clearly it can be trained.

The point I was trying to make was that Mileva Maric Einstein couldn’t have babies and keep getting pregnant..and not expect her academic performance to suffer. Sitting for exams is not like some office jobs of today where a lot of it is cut and paste/stamp and pass/management kind of jobs. So the pregnancy and children certainly did create a set back for her academic ambitions.

I was probably not clear about underlining the bit about brain plasticity. It takes a while for the ‘mommy brain’ to re-adjust. After the nursing phase, hormonal storms calm down. But she didn’t catch a break or have a supportive husband in Einstein.

The entire reproductive biological engine of a woman is a highly efficient finely tuned machine. One of the key functions is to bond with the baby. This involves changes in serotonin, dopamine, oxytocin, adrenaline and endorphins. That’s a heavy dose of hormonal changes. It is irrational to expect the same level of performance as was pre pregnancy. The only jobs she can excel involves babies. To expect anything more from women by painting them in super-woman colours is cruel and uneducated. But that’s what we ask of our ‘working moms’. It doesn’t have to be so if we accept our species strengths and non-strengths. That is much more respectful and would serve women and our species and society better. It is a disservice to women when we equate ‘Male ability’ equals ‘Female ability’. Women can do a lot more for which there is no common measure.

Take for example: performance reviews. There are metrics for that at work. You can compare grades. You can compare experience. You can compare efficiency at work. But how do you compare a woman’s pregnant hormones to a man who can never be pregnant. There are no metrics they share. It’s a whole different ball game.

When we reset the counter during maternity leave, it’s a new brain that comes back after hormones have subsided. How could anyone expect Mileva Einstein jump right back on the horse and perform as she did pre pregnancies? She had gained a whole higher score if Mommy IQ and probably a hit on the Math IQ points. I can’t go on Facebook when my cats are hungry. Imagine when you are hormonal and nursing and pregnant and have to study for higher math exams in an environment where women were not even admitted in the first place at that time. Her academic career was done. Finished. That was my point.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/05/parenting/mommy-brain-sci...

[..]
The brain’s gray matter, located mostly in the outer layers, plays a large role in muscle control and in the execution of high-level tasks like seeing, hearing, processing memories and emotions and decision making. The brain also contains white matter, which insulates the axons, helping brain signals travel further, faster and encouraging motor and sensory function. In Dr. Hoekzema’s study, the white matter of pregnant women’s brains did not appear to be changed at all by pregnancy and new motherhood, while gray matter volume was reduced.

Dr. Hoekzema said that these changes might partially occur because of a process known as “synaptic pruning,” a brain phenomenon that eliminates certain connections between brain cells to encourage the facilitation of new connections. Researchers believe that this process could help people focus on specific behaviors or activities — in this case, taking care of an infant. In other words, a “loss” of brain material might seem like a bad thing, but the changes could actually, in part, be beneficial to people faced with new conditions like parenthood, according to Dr. Hoekzema.

In Dr. Hoekzema’s study, the images showed reductions in gray matter in the hippocampus, which is largely responsible for regulating memory. Instead of focusing on relatively inconsequential tidbits of information, like a movie title, your pregnant or new-mom brain may reallocate resources to the parts of the brain that control “theory of mind,” which allows you to figure out what someone else wants and needs. Dr. Hoekzema says these same areas of the brain also lit up when mothers looked at their infants, suggesting that synaptic pruning might even promote mother-baby bonding.
[..]

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This is a link from 2019: (nat.neuroscience the original is from 2016/2017)

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30008085/
[..] Pregnancy and the postpartum period involve numerous physiological adaptations that enable the development and survival of the offspring. A distinct neural plasticity characterizes the female brain during this period, and dynamic structural and functional changes take place that accompany fundamental behavioral adaptations, stimulating the female to progress from an individual with self-directed needs to being responsible for the care of another life. While many animal studies detail these modifications, an emerging body of research reveals the existence of reproduction-related brain plasticity in human mothers too. Additionally, associations with aspects of maternal caregiving point to adaptive changes that benefit a woman's transition to motherhood. However, the dynamic changes that affect a woman's brain are not merely adaptive, and they likely confer a vulnerability for the development of mental disorders. Here, we review the changes in brain structure and function that a woman undergoes during the peripartum period, outlining associations between these neural alterations and different aspects of maternal care. We additionally discuss peripartum mood disorders and postpartum psychosis, and review the neuroimaging studies that investigate the neural bases of these conditions.[..]

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30878665/

[..] Emerging research points to a valuable role of the monoamine neurotransmitter, serotonin, in the display of maternal behaviors and reproduction-associated plasticity in the maternal brain. Serotonin is also implicated in the pathophysiology of numerous affective disorders and likely plays an important role in the pathophysiology of maternal mental illness. Therefore, the main goals of this review are to detail: (1) how the serotonin system of the female brain changes across pregnancy and postpartum; (2) the role of the central serotonergic system in maternal caregiving and maternal aggression; and (3) how the serotonin system and selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor medications (SSRIs) are involved in the treatment of maternal mental illness. Although there is much work to be done, studying the central serotonin system's multifaceted role in the maternal brain is vital to our understanding of the processes governing matrescence and the maintenance of motherhood.[..]