Matrescence: The Transition to Motherhood
Written by Stephanie Kokts-Porietis
As a new mother, I devoured pregnancy and motherhood books hoping that they would round out the anecdotes and advice I had received from others with scientific research and data. A word I kept coming across in these texts was ‘matrescence.’ Why had I not heard about this term until now? It seemed like a relatively well-kept secret and yet a word that explained so much of what I was, and am, experiencing.
To understand matrescence, it may be helpful to first define the life stages and offer examples.
Life Stages
Erik Erikson’s eight stages of psychosocial development encapsulate what it means to grow and change or, alternatively, stagnate throughout our lives. As a registered psychologist I first encountered Erikson’s theory in my undergraduate psychology courses and often reference them during my client sessions.
The stages begin in infancy and last until late adulthood. Each stage represents a psychological and social developmental task that can either result in ‘success’ or ‘failure’. If an individual is ‘successful’ in negotiating the developmental task, then they will have created a strong foundation for the future stages. For example, an infant’s developmental task is to get their basic needs of nourishment and affection met, typically by crying to inform their caregivers. If a child’s basic needs are met, they will likely establish a foundation of trust. If not, they may grow up without hope that the world is a safe and trustworthy place.
Adolescence
One well-known life stage is adolescence. Adolescence typically lasts five to ten years (although neurologically the brain continues to structurally develop for much longer). The teenage brain undergoes significant changes due to its plasticity during this sensitive time period (Konrad et al., 2013). Basic cognitive and emotional functions are reorganized and rewired to help youth adapt to their environments and develop age-appropriate skills.
Adolescence is a period fraught with identity and role confusion as teenagers test their limits and experiment with longer limbs, deeper thoughts, and more intense emotions. Erikson believed that a successful transition from adolescence to adulthood sets up the foundation for a strong, values-based identity and well-developed sense of self.
Adulthood
But what about adulthood? Are we in fixed emotional and cognitive states in our reproductive years? Erikson would say that adults in their 20s and 30s primarily face a crisis of intimacy versus isolation. If they are successful in creating intimacy with others, then these adults will go on to form strong bonds and relationships. If unsuccessful, Erikson posits that adults will experience significant loneliness.
It seems oversimplified to say that in adulthood we either create relationships or we are alone - a bit like if we are playing The Game of Life and missed the spaces to add a spouse and children to our car. What actually happens in the messy middle?
Caveats
Now, I am going to be speaking about parenthood in a minute and specifically about motherhood. Before I do so, I want to introduce a significant caveat: Not being a parent does not disqualify one from growth, change, and connection. In fact, I would recommend Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning as the eminent resource for finding meaning and purpose within oneself that does not require procreation.
However, if you have ever struggled with the transition to parenthood then learning about matrescence may be for you.
Matrescence
Like adolescence, motherhood brings its own period of rapid hormone changes (yes, including acne and night sweats!), identity confusion (who will stay at home with the new baby and who will go to work?), emotional overload, social pressures, and neurological developments. Dana Raphael (1973), medical anthropologist and author, coined the word ‘matrescence’ in the 1970s. She stated, matrescence is “the process of becoming a mother – a developmental passage where a woman transitions, through pre-conception, pregnancy and birth, surrogacy, or adoption to the postnatal period and beyond.”
Although the name originated more than fifty years ago, the concept is relatively new and has not been studied to nearly the same degree as other life changes.
What About Patrescence?
Raphael uses the term “mother” specifically and so did the books and research that I read. However, fathers can also go through significant changes. For example, while mothers develop nurturance through a variety of neurochemical processes developed throughout the pre- and postpartum periods, fathers’ brains become wired for bonding with repetitive daily action (Abraham et. al, 2014). Fathers, too, benefit from a process called synaptic pruning which we will learn more about below (Martínez-García et al., 2023).
Before a Baby is Born, A Mother is Born
Mothers experience long-lasting (possibly permanent) grey matter reductions in pregnancy (Martínez-García, 2021). Are these studies saying that mothers have less brain power? Are the “pregnancy brain” and “mom brain” myths true? While at first glance, less gray matter seems devastating, the truth is far more empowering.
Mothers experience synaptic pruning similar to the process in adolescence that helps young brains correct redundancies and fine-tune emotional and cognitive processes (Martínez-García, 2021). Infants are born with trillions of synapses, more than they could possibly use. Throughout childhood, these synapses are naturally cut back and shaped into useful connections that form super highways for information processing.
This natural pruning and regrowth period is associated with mother-to-child attachment and may help explain how a mother is able to effectively interpret her infant’s signals. (Martínez-García, 2021; Wan et al., 2014). New moms experience an increase in visual, sensory and insula activation that prompt pro-social empathy and warmth towards their newborns (Wan et al., 2014). Essentially, matrescence rewires the mother’s brain to attune to the child.
What Next?
Just like adolescence, new mothers and fathers experience a foundational time of growth and change. Although there is no specific marker for ‘success’ within this transitory period, it seems clear that parents, just like teenagers, benefit from neuroplasticity. That is, we are more likely to succeed because our brains change to keep up with the demands of our new job.
The transition to motherhood is complex; no baby or mother is the same. Simply by having a word for this transition period we are able to “name it to tame it” (a phrase coined and popularized by psychiatrist Dr. Dan Siegel). We can say of ourselves, or to the mothers in our lives, that the changes experienced in motherhood are real, they are not just in our heads, and they have a name: matrescence.
Recommended Reading (Pregnancy and Motherhood):
Expecting Better: Why the Conventional Pregnancy Wisdom Is Wrong--and What You Really Need to Know by Emily Oster
Matrescence: On Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Motherhood by Lucy Jones
To Have and to Hold: Motherhood, Marriage, and the Modern Dilemma by Molly Millwood
Recommended Reading (Existentialism):
Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl
References:
Abraham, E., Hendler, T., Shapira-Lichter, I., Kanat-Maymon, Y., Zagoory-Sharon, O., & Feldman, R. (2014). Father's brain is sensitive to childcare experiences. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 111(27), 9792–9797. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1402569111
Konrad, K., Firk, C., & Uhlhaas, P. J. (2013). Brain development during adolescence: neuroscientific insights into this developmental period. Deutsches Arzteblatt international, 110(25), 425–431. https://doi.org/10.3238/arztebl.2013.0425
Martínez-García, M., Paternina-Die, M., Barba-Müller, E., Martín de Blas, D., Beumala, L., Cortizo, R., Pozzobon, C., Marcos-Vidal, L., Fernández-Pena, A., Picado, M., Belmonte-Padilla, E., Massó-Rodriguez, A., Ballesteros, A., Desco, M., Vilarroya, Ó., Hoekzema, E., & Carmona, S. (2021). Do Pregnancy-Induced Brain Changes Reverse? The Brain of a Mother Six Years after Parturition. Brain sciences, 11(2), 168. https://doi.org/10.3390/brainsci11020168
Martínez-García, M., Paternina-Die, M., Cardenas, S. I., Vilarroya, O., Desco, M., Carmona, S., & Saxbe, D. E. (2023). First-time fathers show longitudinal gray matter cortical volume reductions: evidence from two international samples. Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991), 33(7), 4156–4163. https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhac333
Raphael D, The Tender Gift: Breastfeeding. 1973: Prentice-Hall.
Wan, M. W., Downey, D., Strachan, H., Elliott, R., Williams, S. R., & Abel, K. M. (2014). The neural basis of maternal bonding. PLoS one, 9(3), e88436. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0088436
