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. 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. Jones writes with real feeling about the hold of foxes on the human imagination, and her own deep affection for the beguiling creatures - Daily Mail The transition to fatherhood is also an identity shift. However, matrescence—as the quoted authors point out—is a psycho-neuro-hormonal-biological-social event that is a unique life experience of women. It is the shift from being a woman to being someone’s mother. In a humanistic perspective, that is at once a beautiful and extraordinary accomplishment. The anthropologist author Dana Raphael and the psychiatrist authors suggest there is more happening: pregnancy and birth experiences change a person, a bit like an adolescent emerging from that period is a somewhat different person. As psychiatrist Daniel Stern puts it: “a mother is born.”

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. She believes that women come into this great change with very little preparation, physically and mentally. For example, few of them know that pregnant women and new mothers are highly vulnerable to mental illness. Thoughts of suicide and self-harm in new mothers are relatively common and 40% of women with postnatal depression have never had depression before, but may go on to have it again. 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. Jones never becomes bogged down in the material, which is quite an achievement considering its scope. At times I even wanted more. Jones hints at her “conservative (childhood) home”, and I found myself wondering how our own mothers shape our experience of matrescence. But to go there is to ask a lot of a writer, and I don’t blame her for not doing so. Jones is a pioneer, and as such has left some ground unexplored. This book is a beginning, and a fine one at that. Carve out time for self-care. It is exhausting to be pregnant and it is exhausting to care for a baby. It is important to carry on with usual relationships and activities as best as one can. Mothers-to-be and new mothers need to be creative and use the support of family, relatives, friends, or paid care to ensure time for self-care. 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)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 beautiful contemplation of the extraordinary yet ordinary metamorphosis that adult humans undergo as they become mothers. I was entranced. Jones's lyrical, compassionate exploration of the ever-shifting boundaries of selfhood that evolved within our interconnected biosphere, confronts today's societal demands for individual autonomy, culminating in a passionate and powerful maternal roar for change. Wonderful - Gaia Vince 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. 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 sympathetic interviewer and scrupulous journalist…a thorough, well-balanced report - The Spectator Identity crisis feeling and confusing emotions- your instinct is becoming a mother is big deal (you are solely responsible, everything changes etc) but society doesn’t value motherhood role yet also advocates you ‘must do it right’ (so much guilt tripping, ‘doing it all’ concept etc)

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Recognizing changing family dynamics: The birth creates a new family. New possibilities for intimate connections as well as new stresses may have to be dealt with in relationships with the partner, family, and friends.

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.” Drawing on her own experiences of twice becoming a mother, as well as exploring the latest research in the fields of neuroscience and evolutionary biology; psychoanalysis and existential therapy; sociology, economics and ecology, Jones writes of the physical and emotional changes in the maternal mind, body, and spirit and shows us how these changes are far more profound, wild, and enduring than have been previously explored or written about.

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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 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. The 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)

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 Bolstering her own experience with scientific research, Jones shows the huge changes going on in the maternal mind, brain and body, and asks why it is so little talked about

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Jones writes beautifully with searing honesty about life-changing physical and emotional impact of having a child.” —Rachel Sylvester, The Times (UK)