Matrescence: On the Metamorphosis of Pregnancy, Childbirth and Motherhood

Product Information

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 A beautiful contemplation of the extraordinary yet ordinary metamorphosis that adult humans undergo as they become mothers. I was entranced . . . a passionate and powerful maternal roar for change. Wonderful.” —Gaia Vince, award-winning journalist; author of Adventures in the Anthropocene

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 In this ground-breaking, deeply personal investigation, acclaimed journalist and author Lucy Jones brings to light the emerging concept of 'matrescence'. Drawing on new research across various fields - neuroscience and evolutionary biology; psychoanalysis and existential therapy; sociology, economics and ecology - Jones shows how the changes in the maternal mind, brain and body are far more profound, wild and enduring than we have been led to believe. She reveals the dangerous consequences of our neglect of the maternal experience and interrogates the patriarchal and capitalist systems that have created the untenable situation mothers face today. 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. 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) 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.”There is no other time in a human's life course that entails such dramatic change-other than adolescence. And yet this life-altering transition has been sorely neglected by science, medicine and philosophy. Its seismic effects go largely unrepresented across literature and the arts. Speaking about motherhood as anything other than a pastel-hued dream remains, for the most part, taboo. Beautiful and creative ... Jones is a pioneer ... she skilfully elucidates the monumental shifts motherhood brings ... I found myself inwardly cheering -- Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett ― Guardian 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 A sympathetic interviewer and scrupulous journalist…a thorough, well-balanced report - The Spectator

We have therapists and counsellors who see women who have had problems with pregnancy, birth and postnatal depression — find them here 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.

Find Welldoing therapists near you

Need deeper social change to help rather than anti depressants for postnatal depression )treating symptom not cause) 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. Science writer Lucy Jones had imagined this stage in her life would be soft-focused and peaceful, but she slammed into a completely different experience. Telling her story alongside interviews with medical experts and academic researchers, she has written an unvarnished, straight-talking book, Matrescence: On the Metamorphosis of Pregnancy, Childbirth and Motherhood that should spark a debate about the way we prepare women for this huge upheaval. But it will also be treasured by any new mothers who ever felt blind-sided and lost in the first months with their babies. 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. A passionate and thorough exploration of the growing scientific evidence showing why humans require other species to stay well - Guardian