Matrescence: On the Metamorphosis of Pregnancy, Childbirth and Motherhood

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Matrescence: On the Metamorphosis of Pregnancy, Childbirth and Motherhood

Matrescence: On the Metamorphosis of Pregnancy, Childbirth and Motherhood

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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 A sympathetic interviewer and scrupulous journalist…a thorough, well-balanced report - The Spectator Athan has helped put matrescence — a term coined by the late medical anthropologist Dana Raphael — front and center in the larger discourse. She helped create TC’s new curriculum in Reproductive & Maternal Well-being (including) her own “Mother Matrix: Developmental and Clinical Implications... - EARLY RISERS, TC TODAY ALUMNI MAGAZINE (2016)

Matrescence Matrescence

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)

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To read this book – and I very much hope its audience is not confined to women who are about to or have recently given birth – is to emerge chastened and ready for change. Anger is not an emotion we expect from mothers. But, as Jones says, good anger is necessary. Let us hold to that.” —Marianne Levy, I News (UK)

Matrescence by Lucy Jones review – smashing motherhood myths

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 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. 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. Matrescence is a wild and beautiful book, a blend of memoir, science, psychoanalytical thinking and nature writing with a poetic sensibility and a strong sense of political purpose New Statesman *Best Books of the Summer*

Perhaps reviving the conceptual term matrescence, coined by and borrowed from anthropologist Dana Raphael (1975), would be most apt within the landscape of maternity. Much like adolescence, it is an experience of dis-orientation and re-orientation marked by an acceleration of changes in multiple domains: physical,psychological,social, and spiritual. We are indeed indebted to the early ‘maternal developmentalists’ who aptly characterized motherhood in its multi-dimension and dynamism, both the oppressive and the liberating—the dichotomous phenomena that are often the hallmark of any major life transition. Their perspectives equalized and served to normalize, rather than pathologize, the 'mixed-feelings’of women. - AURÉLIE ATHAN, FEMINISM & PSYCHOLOGY (2015)

Matrescence by Lucy Jones | Waterstones

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 Matrescence has since been mainstreamed from academia to the general public, traveled globally, and continues to be amplified by many more voices. Now anyone can learn the concept and welcome the whole spectrum of experience from stress to wellness---the possibility of resilience and even flourishing while mothering! During my years in Clinical Psychology, I was unable to find good explanatory models for the psychological transition to motherhood. I set out to find out everything I could from each related field from spirituality to cultural anthropology. With the help of my students, we also conducted an extensive literature review of all of the scientific studies in the past 25 years, in a variety of disciplines, including psychology, psychiatry, medicine, nursing and others. This revealed a strange neglect of focus on mothers themselves without the impact on their children, and the vast majority spoke about their risk for illness with few other positive perspectives.From the acclaimed author of Losing Eden (“Powerful, beautifully written”—Anthony Doerr) an important, moving, passionate and passionately written inquiry—personal and scientific—into what happens—mentally, spiritually, physically, during the process of becoming a mother, from pregnancy and childbirth to early motherhood and what this profound process tells us about the way we live now. But as the book went on I found I enjoyed reading about vampire bats and aurora borealis and spiders that eat their own mothers, and found her desire to place matrescence within the context of a wider ecology, and her emphasis on “the psychic and corporeal reality of our interdependence and interconnectedness with other species”, admirable. I also respect her absolute refusal to pander to the “enjoy every minute” brigade. As she writes in the introduction, “my children (she has three, all born close together) have brought me joy, contentment, fulfilment, wonder, and delight in staggering abundance. But that’s just part of the story. This is the rest.” Like many women, Jones describes feeling 'hoodwinked' by the norms of motherhood Jones writes like a novelist, capturing wild swings of emotion, doubt, the adoration of a new baby, and (always) the tension between what she thinks is expected of her and the pressure of her own mixed-up feelings Daily Mail 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. Indeed, the chapter on the maternal brain is especially fascinating and, more importantly, validating for those of us who feel society’s minimising of matrescence flies in the face of our experience of it. This feeling is neatly summarised by Jones when she writes: “The closest I had ever been to death, to birth, to growth, to the co-conscious, to rapture, to rupture – was, according to the world around me, boring.” To read these words feels affirming, even radicalising. I find myself inwardly cheering at one point when another mother describes how “insipid/idealistic portrayals of motherhood made me less interested in it as a young person. I thought it was boring when it’s one of the most extreme socio-political experiences I have ever been through.” And she reveals just how far, on a societal level, we have screwed up – the tussle between “natural” and “medicalised” childbirth that leaves so many mothers caught between the two; the way we raise babies and children in our nuclear families, isolated, alone. To be a mother in 2023 is far, far harder than one might expect – although given the ongoing invisibility of mothers, even to those intending to join their ranks, perhaps there is no expectation at all.

Matrescence: A great adventure about to begin | British Matrescence: A great adventure about to begin | British

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. 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 Times 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 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 ChambersThe best book I’ve ever read about motherhood. Matrescence is essential reading, bloody and alive, roaring and ready to change conversations.”–Jude Rogers, The Observer (UK) If you only read one book about what it means to become a mother, let it be this one. Sure, there are a million books out there about how to take care of a child (and most of them are contradicting each other, or shift gears every couple of years), but very few about what it means to become a mother, to go through matrescence. During pregnancy, childbirth, and early motherhood, women undergo a far-reaching physiological, psychological and social metamorphosis. 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



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