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. Perhaps reviving the conceptual term matrescence, coined by and borrowed from anthropologist Dana Raphael (1975), would be most apt within the landscape of maternity. She challenges the ideal of the nuclear family raising children in western societies, when babies are raised by networks of “othermothers” across the world, and in the animal kingdom, including in colonies of bats. As you get more comfortable expressing your feelings, try joining a new mom group through Facebook or your local community center, Alpern says.

Matrescence by Lucy Jones review – smashing motherhood myths

During pregnancy a foetus’s cells mingle with those of its mother, spreading its DNA throughout her body. It is a rite of passage for the woman that is both an ending and beginning: she will never be who she used to be, and she doesn't fully know who she is yet.The concept of matrescence has spurred my writing and thinking on the subject in an expansive way--it has that effect! In this ground-breaking, deeply personal investigation, acclaimed journalist and author Lucy Jones brings to light the emerging concept of 'matrescence'. These uncomfortable feelings are a normal part of matrescence; they don’t always need to be pathologized. The term deliberately evokes the passage into adulthood — adolescence — though the two aren’t exactly on equal footing in our collective consciousness.

Matrescence, Lucy Jones captures how hard it is to be a In Matrescence, Lucy Jones captures how hard it is to be a

Caring for a baby day and night is particularly difficult in that first year but as you get the hang of things and become more confident, you'll start to recognize the person you were and have always been. And while it can sound like a bad thing at first, it’s simultaneously an amazing opportunity for growth and healing . I am both depleted, but also learning new wellsprings of patience within me that I didn’t know that I have,” Athan said. Speaking about motherhood as anything other than a pastel-hued dream remains, for the most part, taboo.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. How can this be, Lucy Jones asks, when it is “a transition that involves a whole spectrum of emotional and existential ruptures”?

Matrescence: On the Metamorphosis of Pregnancy, Childbirth

Rather than honoring the transformation that has taken place, the cultural conversation around new motherhood, at least in the United States, has too often focused on “bouncing back. Many women have been told the village is to help raise the child in the form of babysitting and childcare. But I view the modern village as a network of women who nurture and support the growing mother,” she said. In recent years, the matrescence movement has picked up momentum thanks to social media, where moms are introducing each other to the term and having honest conversations about the many changes, joys and struggles of this phase of life. Because, coming up against the expectation of what mothers should be, Jones had “a creeping sense that I wasn’t wired for this”.And even larger questions like spiritual and religious questions about the sort of origins of all things. If at times there is an uneasy tension in this book between the science, memoir, social commentary and flashes of creative writing, this is a testament to its ambition. My unique contribution was to extend its application— from anthropology to psychology—to maternal mental health to challenge conventional diagnostic thinking. Mothers go through the developmental passage of matrescence whether they give birth or welcome a child via adoption or surrogacy.