Motherhood and Achievement Amnesia

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When a woman slows down after having children, society doesn’t pause with her; it rewrites her story. Past accomplishments fade from memory. Intelligence is re-evaluated downward. Competence is quietly questioned. And a woman once known for her sharp mind is recast as ‘simply’ a mum. Her newly acquired capabilities—logistical wizardry, crisis management, negotiation on no sleep—are dismissed as trivial or ‘soft’ skills.

But what if the real decline isn’t in women’s cognitive power or professional potential, but in society’s ability to remember her worth?

The Invisible Decline

For many women, the temporary slowdown in paid work output after having children is both necessary and expected. Yet in highly competitive and hierarchical fields like academia, any pause is often interpreted as a red flag—not as a life phase, but a sign of diminished ongoing capacity and lesser intelligence. Maternity becomes conflated with perceptions and expectations of mediocrity.

This quiet erosion of status and recognition is what I call achievement amnesia. It’s not that women become less capable; it’s that others forget how capable they are and how often they had already signalled their intelligence, dedication, and long-term potential. And once downgraded to a lesser tier of intelligence and capabilities, they’re required to prove themselves all over again—usually not once, but for extended periods of time.

Intelligence Is Not a Performance Metric

In professional spaces, intelligence is often treated as a performance art, measured through output, visibility, and presence. If you’re not publishing, presenting, and producing, are you still smart?

For women, especially mothers, intelligence tends to be recognised only when it’s visible and continuous—and never interrupted by caregiving, illness, or the radical reprioritisation that often comes with raising children. When output dips, assumptions about intelligence and ability follow. But research doesn’t show a drop in cognitive ability or long-term productivity in mothers. What it shows is bias—a tendency to equate temporary intense caregiving responsibilities with diminished value and lessened intelligence.

From ‘Promising’ to ‘Past It’

Before I had children, I was a high-achieving research student. After I had twins, my productivity temporarily dropped and the reception I received shifted. Colleagues who had once praised my analytical mind and professional trajectory grew distant. I was no longer discussed in the same breath as my male or child-free peers. In subtle and not-so-subtle ways, my intelligence and dedication were reassessed—aided by fading memory and ingrained bias.

It’s a story I’ve seen echoed in countless mothers. Louise, a former postdoctoral fellow, was once shortlisted for leadership roles and hailed as ‘one to watch.’ After two children and a break, she returned—to silence. Leyla, a brilliant clinician-researcher, struggled to regain access to grants and speaking roles after taking parental leave—despite outperforming her peers in patient care and having a clear reason for her temporary dip in research outcomes. Due to this shifted perception, her research responsibilities dried up, and she was set on a primarily clinical trajectory for her future career.

What these women share isn’t a drop in ability but a drop in perceived value: a systemic forgetting of their previous accomplishments, sacrifices, and signs of high intelligence.

The Cost of Re-Proving Yourself

For women, especially those who are neurodivergent or multiple-marginalised, the pressure to re-establish intelligence and legitimacy post-motherhood can be exhausting. It’s not just about catching up on missed work, it’s about convincing others that you’re still worthy. That your mind didn’t soften with the birth of your child. That your priorities expanded, not your limitations. Reminders of others’ perceptions of your decreased intelligence are often continuous and subtle—and you may be called ‘difficult’ for pointing these individual instances out. And while proving yourself once might be energising, doing it again and again is a tax on confidence, well-being, and career momentum.

Why We Need Institutional Memory

If institutions valued continuity, longevity, or overall volume of contribution, rather than constant steady performance, this amnesia might be avoidable. But most systems don’t remember who a woman was before she had kids; they judge who she is now, during the first 5-10 intense years of caregiving, based on reduced recent visibility in the paid workforce.

We need policies that honour performance relative to opportunity. We need mentorship for returners, performance assessments that include skills gained through caring roles, and conscious work to challenge assumptions that mothers are somehow less sharp, less available, or less valuable. If we had institutional memory, mothers wouldn’t need to keep starting from scratch in proving themselves and their intelligence and capabilities.

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Reframing Intelligence

Motherhood doesn’t reduce intelligence; it adds dimensions to it. The juggling act of family life demands emotional regulation, executive functioning, empathy, flexibility, creativity, and decision-making under stress. Just not the kind that shows up on narrow, paid employment performance reviews.

The world doesn’t need women to prove they’re still intelligent after childbirth. It needs to remember they always were and have shown ample evidence of this prior to childbirth. Post-birth career trajectories, especially once the first intensive caregiving years have passed, are strongly negatively influenced by the continuous but often subtle questioning of mums' intelligence and capabilities.