Payback time for moms

The female brain is a dynamic structure, which expresses its plasticity most readily following reproductive experience.
---from the Department of Psychology-Neuroscience, University of Richmond

According to research out of the University of Virginia(1), there may be psychological compensation for all those sleepless nights, saggy breasts, and stretch marks that accompany motherhood. Those tedious months of pregnancy, suckling, and pup-rearing...oh right, we're talking rats here.

Neuroscientist Dr. Craig Kinsley and colleagues proved that mother rats adapted better to the stress of confinement in a Plexiglas restraint tube than their female colleagues who'd not yet coped with the demands of ungrateful offspring. Did they consider that lady rats--married, with children--may have just been grateful for the relative peace and quiet afforded by those Plexiglas walls? Speaking from my current perspective of mom to one teenager on site for summer, I would easily adapt, right here, right now, to voluntary confinement at an air-conditioned hotel.

The researchers conclude: "The data suggest that reproductive (hormonal) and/or maternal (pup exposure) experience may inure a female and her brain to stress, rendering her less susceptible to the behavioral-or other-disruptions that stress sensitivity can produce."
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(1)Wartella, J et al. Single or multiple reproductive experiences attenuate neurobehavioral stress and fear responses in the female rat.Physiol Behav 2003 Aug;79(3):373-81.