You may feel like parenthood has aged you at a rapid pace, but science says otherwise. A recent study found that having kids keeps the brain “fit” and young… ”mom brain” be damned.

This news comes out of a Yale University study, the first to ever look at parental brain function. Most previous studies have focused on how pregnancy affects the brain, not the effect of parenting on cognitive health. And based on the research, which surveyed a large sample size of 37,000 adults over the age of 40 from the U.K. Biobank, having children helps keep the brain “fit” with age. The reasoning, researchers believe, is that kids provide “cognitive stimulation, physical activity and social interaction,” which we need more and more of as we get older. Other experts reason that it could be because coping with the emotional and social stresses of parenting naturally strengthens our brain connectivity.

The biggest takeaways from the study are that:

• the more kids a parent has, the greater the boost in brain activity — one of many benefits of your kids having siblings

• improved cognitive health with age was found in both male and female participants, which led researchers to conclude that the brain boost was because of the caregiving environment, not pregnancy

• having kids can be a “protection” of sorts against cognitive aging, since the parts of the brain that typically deteriorate over the years had actually improved in the brains of parents

The caveat is that the researchers know that more studies need to be done to figure out if this is correlation or causation. And of course, there are plenty of ways other than having kids that we can improve mental sharpness as we get older. But it’s good to know that even though daily life with little ones can sometimes feel like it’s killing all our brain cells, the pros they bring out ultimately outweigh the cons. If only the same were true for our bodies after baby, right?

If you want to read more about this study and kids’ effect on parents’ brains, click here.

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