Matrescence: On the Metamorphosis of Pregnancy, Childbirth and Motherhood

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D. (1973) and which I later built upon, is a developmental passage where a woman transitions through pre-conception, pregnancy and birth, surrogacy or adoption, to the postnatal period and beyond. The cultural myths of motherhood hold strong, and at times I found myself craving more delight, particularly because Jones’s writing on this aspect of motherhood is some of the most beautiful and creative in the book. Because of our high rates of maternal mental illness, because of entrenched inequality and misogyny. Athan has helped put matrescence — a term coined by the late medical anthropologist Dana Raphael — front and center in the larger discourse. Alexander Sacks, a psychiatrist, offers these suggestions to manage the stressful aspects of matrescence in her book, What No One Tells You: A Guide to Your Emotions from Pregnancy to Motherhood.

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

That is not this book, though, and even for mothers who found matrescence a smoother experience, there is much to be gleaned as Jones skilfully elucidates the monumental shifts it brings, from the foetal cells that remain in a mother’s body for decades to evidence that pregnancy and birth has a dramatic, long-term impact on the brain that may even be permanent.

Jones never becomes bogged down in the material, which is quite an achievement considering its scope. I am in private practice and consult with women of all ages as well as professionals working to improve the wellbeing of mothers.

Matrescence by Lucy Jones review – the birth of a mother

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. We also only focus on motherhood within a very limited time frame from conception to childbearing and then, that’s about it.Their perspectives equalized and served to normalize, rather than pathologize, the 'mixed-feelings’of women. Jones hints at her “conservative (childhood) home”, and I found myself wondering how our own mothers shape our experience of matrescence. Radical, questioning and profound, it urges us to recognise and honour the many transformations of motherhood. After a caterpillar spins itself into a cocoon it dissolves into goo, so that if you were to pierce the cocoon its contents would spill out, but it retains a group of cells known as imaginal discs, one for each body part, and it holds onto its memories.