Matrescence: On the Metamorphosis of Pregnancy, Childbirth and Motherhood

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It is difficult to put into words the importance of this book. I felt it in my heart. I carried it with me, I think I always will. Jones has written the book we desperately needed. Daisy Johnson It talks about the rawness of emotions that being a mother brings, the infinite joy and the helplessness, the initial isolation and the power of healing a community brings, the reshaping of a mother's brain (literally) and the way of looking at life expands and contracts at the same time. A radical new examination of the transition into motherhood and how it affects the mind, brain and body 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.

Matrescence - Amy Taylor-Kabbaz What is Matrescence - Amy Taylor-Kabbaz

I devoured this book over the course of 2 weeks after my husband showed me an article he thought I’d be interested in that mentioned it. He knows me well 😁 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) What helped you navigate the first year of motherhood? Send us a note at [email protected] . A producer may be in touch with you.Lucy Jones's book is a much needed cold shower, a removal of the pink colored lenses through which we are taught to look at motherhood. It's the honest friend you wished you had when you wondered what it will mean to bring a child into the world, if you truly wanted to know and did not only hope for the sanitized, rosy picture that media often serves us. It talks about the day to day realities of child bearing and about how the institution of motherhood in most countries expects the mother to be a village by herself and renounce most of personal ambitions or desires on the altar of the child, without offering her any valuable support. A wild and beautiful book ... a book that will be passed among friends and will no doubt bring solace ... Reading this, I felt a jolt of recognition ... more than six years later I can still feel the searing, silencing shame. I wish someone could have handed me Matrescence -- Sophie McBain ― New Statesman A sympathetic interviewer and scrupulous journalist…a thorough, well-balanced report - The Spectator

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

It's a holistic change in multiple domains of your life. You're going to feel it perhaps bodily, psychologically. You're going to feel it with your peer groups. You're going to feel it at your job. You're going to feel it in terms of the big philosophical questions.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 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) The result is a wonderful story of one woman’s brutally truthful experience of matrescence, interspersed with examples of metamorphosis and matrescence from other species, as if to put the human experience of motherhood into a much bigger context, whilst also managing to deliver a summary history of motherhood paradigms and ideologies throughout the ages. In this, the author has accomplished quite a feat. Wonderfully intoxicating.. In meticulous detail, Jones quests to bring us an impressive array of answers to the question of whether “nature connection” has a tangible effect on our minds, and how, and why? 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 by Lucy Jones review – smashing motherhood myths

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. Beautiful and creative ... Jones is a pioneer ... she skilfully elucidates the monumental shifts motherhood brings ... I found myself inwardly cheering Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett, Guardian Complex feelings of ambivalence: The pregnant mother can be happy and at the same time overwhelmed by her situation, experiencing worry, frustration, and fear. She may wish to be alone but at the same time want to experience the signs of new life in her changing body. This book describes motherhood in the REAL world and discusses the way society treats women from a patriarchal view. Who controls childbirth, what natural is, and how women need to advocate for more knowledge.Don’t you just love being a mum?” another new mother asked me at that time, although her eyes were as dark-rimmed as mine, and more than six years later I can still feel the searing, silencing shame. I wish someone could have handed me Matrescence, Jones’s latest book. Matrescence is a concept introduced in the 1970s by anthropologist Dana Raphael in her book Being Female: Reproduction, Power and Change. She described the complex transitions that take place in a woman’s life as she becomes a mother. In a sense, like the term adolescence, matrescence refers to a healthy but demanding change. A mother-to-be experiences dramatic physical, hormonal, and emotional changes as well as changes in her body shape and in her social identity. In another book, The Birth of a Mother: How the Motherhood Experience Changes You Forever, Daniel Stern, a psychiatrist, suggests that giving birth to a new identity can be as demanding as giving birth to a baby. 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 Reflections on maternal lineage: Becoming a mother may provide a re-experience of her own childhood—repeating or trying to improve what was or was not. I read your book, or more accurately devoured it! Loved it . . . It will be the new classic text in Motherhood Studies.” -Andrea O’Reilly, founder, Motherhood Studies

The Birth of a Mother - The New York Times The Birth of a Mother - The New York Times

It has animal and earth science, political and economical discussion, and a whole lot of truth and guidance for understanding matrescence (and even patrescence). 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 Times

When they know the milestones and markers of Matrescence, they can navigate this time of their lives powerfully – without overwhelm, perfectionism and shame. 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 Foxes Unearthed: A Story of Love and Loathing in Modern Britain was published by Elliott & Thompson in 2016.