Matrescence: On the Metamorphosis of Pregnancy, Childbirth and Motherhood

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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. 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. Beautiful and creative ... Jones is a pioneer ... she skilfully elucidates the monumental shifts motherhood brings ... I found myself inwardly cheering -- Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett ― Guardian Experiencing the reality: Before the birth, mothers often imagine the baby according to their culture, their personal history, and their own childhood. At birth the reality may be different and the gap between fantasy and reality may be a source of negative or confusing emotions.

Matrescence by Lucy Jones - Penguin Books Australia Matrescence by Lucy Jones - Penguin Books Australia

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) Stern DN, Bruschweiler-Stern N, Freeland A. The birth of a mother: How the motherhood experience changes you forever. New York: Basic Books; 1998. Jones writes beautifully with searing honesty about life-changing physical and emotional impact of having a child.” —Rachel Sylvester, The Times (UK) 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 DochartaighYou'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 Which is indicative of the need for journalist and prize-winning nature writer Lucy Jones‘ book, an ambitious, wide-ranging work that is at once memoir, analysis and social study. Matrescence, Jones tells us, is as significant as adolescence. Yet the permitted language of motherhood – phrases like, “feeling a bit tired” and, “the baby blues” – does nothing but diminish the experience. Having internalised society’s message that motherhood must be kept separate from the colleagues and employers, that it is “mindless and unintellectual”, Jones found herself subject to an increasing sense of alienation. ”I had always believed in the power of words,” she says. “But here, they failed me.”

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

A passionate and thorough exploration of the growing scientific evidence showing why humans require other species to stay well - Guardian 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 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 Because your upbringing is bound to influence your maternal identity, she advises taking the time to really think about the way you were mothered. Ask yourself "what are the things that I want to replicate with my own child?" or "what are the things that I want to do differently?" she says. It's OK to chart your own course, she adds. It's about owning your parenting journey.

Losing Eden | Penguin

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. 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 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.” 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