Because your upbringing is bound to influence your maternal identity, she advises taking the time to really think about the way you were mothered. Ask yourself "what are the things that I want to replicate with my own child?" or "what are the things that I want to do differently?" she says. It's OK to chart your own course, she adds. It's about owning your parenting journey. Athan & Reel argue that there is little interest or up-take of research in the psychology of mothers or maternal development per se. They call for a study of ‘matrescence’, to explore women’s lived experience of becoming and being mothers, to challenge the pathologisation of women’s ‘mixed feelings’ about mothering, and to normalise more complex and varied experiences of motherhood than just fulfilment or illness narratives enable. - JANE CALAGHAN, FEMINISM & PSYCHOLOGY (2015) This book should be a must-read for pretty much everyone. We don't talk about the hidden realities of the biological, social and psychological effects of matrescence nearly enough. Thank you, Lucy Jones, for changing that - Dr Jodi Pawluski Over the past ten years, I have been gathering the data, the stories and the understanding of what happens to a woman when she becomes a mother. Nearly 5,000 women - yes, 5,000! - have been through my online programs, my coaching, my events and my retreats, and I know them.

Matrescence by Lucy Jones - Penguin Books Australia Matrescence by Lucy Jones - Penguin Books Australia

Scientists are also only now discovering how profoundly and permanently pregnancy changes a mother’s physiology: scans show that a mother’s brain is structurally different from the brain of someone who hasn’t borne a child. Multiple parts of the brain’s grey matter shrink, but this isn’t evidence of “baby brain” – memory loss and mental deterioration – but rather, scientists suggest, evidence of fine-tuned connections and enhanced efficiency in areas associated with caregiving and attachment. The changes are not driven solely by biology but are also a product of parenting: men’s brains also change after parenthood, as do the brains of non-biological mothers. A vital, hopeful book ... to read Matrescence is to emerge chastened and ready for change Marianne Levy, i News Matrescence took me on a journey of reminescence through my own pregnancies and early years of motherhood, eliciting wry recognition, surprise at new evidence and insight, and gratitude for a work that really sees what it is to mother - Clare Chambers Feeling not good enough: New mothers may set for themselves the goal of being perfect. The unreality of that may lead to exhaustion and feelings of guilt I was challenged, comforted, educated and nourished by this book ... It is the single most powerful, life-changing, heartachingly healing thing I have been given ... The kind of book we must ensure every one of us reads Kerri ní Dochartaigh

This book will stay with me for a long, long time. I'll be also buying copies for all the women I love. I was encouraged by the maternal developmental theorists that existed, but it was in the writing of another Columbia-trained scholar that I found the answer and ultimately the conceptual basis of my own theoretical work as a burgeoning reproductive psychologist. Dana Raphael coined the term matrescence (and "doula") and I immediately recognized it as ahead of its time. My unique contribution was to extend its application— from anthropology to psychology—to maternal mental health to challenge conventional diagnostic thinking. This was not just a biosocial experience, but a psychological one too! Better yet a bio-psycho-social-spiritual one— a holistic change in the multiple domains of a mother’s experience in which no area of life is left untouched. Now it was time to get the word out and start researching both the universal aspects and individual differences among mothers. If you have been a mom with children of any age, you will find something here that gives you some ‘aha’ moments…whether that’s learning how the institution of motherhood has been manipulated to suit altering political agendas, or learning how neuroscience is now beginning to explain why a Motherhood Identity crisis actually occurs, or understanding the best way to support a mum with young children in 2023, whose reality is likely to be very different from our own experience of matrescence, there is something here for every one. Mattrescence is an anthropological term, referring to the process of becoming a mother. Motherhood transforms a woman biologically and emotionally. It alters her social status, her identity and her relationships, and redirects the focus of her days. It is perhaps the most profound metamorphosis most women will go through and yet, Jones observes, this process remains largely overlooked in our culture and by science. You will not even find the word matrescence in the dictionary. We recognise that adolescence, another period of rapid physical and emotional change, can be painful and awkward, and yet expect women to slip effortlessly into their new roles and their new bodies. The first step is to start talking about this metamorphosis, the highs and lows and growing pains.

Matrescence: Why Discussing The Transition To Motherhood Matrescence: Why Discussing The Transition To Motherhood

The term “matrescence,” coined by anthropologist Dana Raphael in the mid-’70s and brought into common use in psychology by clinical psychologist Aurelie Athan, head of the maternal psychology lab at Columbia University, describes a woman’s transition into parenthood. The term deliberately evokes the passage into adulthood — adolescence — though the two aren’t exactly on equal footing in our collective consciousness. - ERIN ZIMMERMAN, THE CUT (2018) The author touches on the impact of matrescence on identity throughout the book and towards the end, sums up, with seeming resignation, that after the birth of her 2nd child, about 2 years after her first, “any delusion of self-reliance and independence were truly shattered.”According to these authors, matrescence may start as soon as a woman is trying to conceive and may continue through pregnancy, well into the postpartum stage. It is the ups and downs of pregnancy, the good and the not so good; it is a transition, a healthy change. It is important to distinguish the natural experiences of matrescence from postpartum depression, which is considered as a psychiatric ailment. Jones writes with real feeling about the hold of foxes on the human imagination, and her own deep affection for the beguiling creatures - Daily Mail

Matrescence: On the Metamorphosis of Pregnancy, Childbirth

An exploration of the contrast between myth and reality and between individual and social expectations ... Jones writes beautifully and with searing honesty about the life-changing physical and emotional impact of having a child Rachel Sylvester, The TimesMatrescence, is going to set mothers’ worlds alight. Finally, someone has properly expressed what the process of becoming a mother does to women: their sense of self and their brains. We all owe her a debt because it wasn’t just in our heads... Groundbreaking stuff Emma Barnett, Red You'll marvel, wince and want to take to the streets after reading Lucy Jones sweeping and courageous multidisciplinary survey of the motherlands. I wish we'd read it before we had our kid. (Mother) nature read in truth and awe Tom Mustill During pregnancy, childbirth, and early motherhood, women undergo a far-reaching physiological, psychological and social metamorphosis.

Matrescence by Lucy Jones review – smashing motherhood myths

And if the thought of doing anything that isn't about the baby makes you feel guilty, don't be. Creating the space to focus on your own needs is a positive thing for your child, Alpern says. Part memoir, part scientific and health reporting, part social critique, ecological philosophy, eco-feminism and nature writing, Matrescence is a kind of whodunnit, ferreting out with the most nuanced, searing and honest observations, why mothers throughout this heightened transition are at a breaking point, and what the institution of intensive, isolated motherhood can tell us about our still-dominant social and cultural myths. The fox has for centuries been held as the incarnation of such unlovely traits as deviousness, cunning and cruelty. ... However, the characteristic that emerges most strongly from the nature writer Lucy Jones's book about Vulpes vulpes is its ambiguity. ... [An] intriguing compendium of fox lore - Michael Prodger, The TimesBeautifully written, movingly told and meticulously researched, Losing Eden is an elegy to the healing power of nature, something we need more than ever in our anxiety-ridden world of ecological loss. Woven together with her own personal story of recovery, Lucy Jones lays out the overwhelming scientific evidence for nature as nurturer for body and soul with the clarity and candour that will move hearts and minds - a convincing plea for a wilder, richer world - Isabella Tree, author of Wilding