Tully is the name of a movie where actress Charlize Theron plays the role of a new mother and experiences some unusual and interesting changes. The dramedy follows her journey and alludes to a series of bizarre changes that some women have reported experiencing after becoming mothers. These include hair loss, dry skin, hot flashes and depression. Now, a team of scientists have discovered a new such post-partum change: a deeper voice. It seems that this only happen after a woman has her first child. Her voice becomes more monotonous and has a tendency to become deeper. This is temporary and usually, the mother’s voice goes back to normal after a year.
In order to reach this conclusion, lead researcher Kasia Pisanski and her team followed a group of 20 pregnant women. They also followed another group of 20 women who had never been pregnant. Over a 10-year period, the team listened to 600 voice recordings from these women. For the mothers in the experiment, the period included the five years before and five years after they gave birth. Most of the women in the two groups were singers, journalists, actresses and even celebrities.
New mothers’ voices really do drop post-pregnancy
So, after conducting this research, the team of experts found that new mothers’ voices dropped by over 5%. This means a half step on the piano. Their highest pitch also dropped by over two steps. Apart from this, it seems that new mothers also had less variation in their voices. The journal Evolution and Human Behavior recently published the study.
The discovery is very interesting and proves why singer Adele famously had trouble hitting certain noted during a concert last year. She admitted writing some songs while being pregnant, which made her have a deeper voice. But why is this happening? Experts are not sure, but it might be because the new mother wants to sound more authoritative.
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