It’s hard to describe what it feels like to become a mum, but it has a name: matrescence
- Written by: Belinda Eslick, Honorary Research Fellow, The University of Queensland
“Completely life-changing”. “Nothing could have fully prepared me”. These are the sorts of phrases you often hear from women when they become a mother.
These descriptions can point to the complexity and depth of the experience. It can be joyous and stressful, exhausting and euphoric, profound and mundane. It’s unlike any other life transition, and – try as we might – hard to capture in words or short phrases.
It turns out, though, there is a word for this process of becoming a mother: matrescence.
It’s a simple but powerful concept that’s changing the way we think about mothering. Here’s what matrescence means and how the concept can help mothers and those supporting them to navigate and understand this time of life.
Where did the term come from?
The term matrescence was coined in a 1973 essay by medical anthropologist Dana Raphael to describe the transition to motherhood. Raphael found most cultures had rites of passage that recognised “the time of mother-becoming”. However, Western countries such as the United States and Australia tended not to.
These practices, which vary depending on the cultural setting, have something in common. They acknowledge that, like adolescence, becoming a mother is a complex experience that brings a period of learning and transformation.
Raphael also coined the term “patrescence”, which, while not the focus of her study, recognised that fathers and other parents also go through a period of transition.
It would take decades, but matrescence made it into the public consciousness in 2017 in an article and widely-viewed TED Talk by reproductive psychiatrist Alexandra Sacks. Books, podcasts and media coverage have abounded since.
What changes during matrescence?
Most public discussion of matrescence still tends to centre the challenges of mothering, for example postpartum depression and anxiety.
But there is increasing interest in the many kinds of changes experienced in matrescence, such as dramatic brain changes or the phenomenon of microchimerism, where foetal cells from pregnancy can remain in the mother’s body, and vice versa.
Research on these phenomena matter not just scientifically, but philosophically.
Other body changes include powerful hormonal changes in pregnancy, birth, and postpartum. There’s also research looking at how having children and breastfeeding can reduce the risk of breast cancer.
Much of this research is emerging, which is unsurprising given historical and ongoing medical misogyny.
More than physical changes
Mothers can also experience significant shifts in identity, including changes in personal values, new priorities, or a sense of loss for other parts of themselves.
Mothers encounter new social dynamics and peer groups, too. The new social identities of “mother” or “mum” (or the markers “working mum” or “stay-at-home mum”) introduce new expectations, norms and ideals.
Relationship dynamics with partners, friends and family can shift significantly.
Mothers can also experience an expansive new relationship with their baby, though this might be sentimentalised or downplayed by others.
Other new emotional experiences, ranging from intense love and gratitude to “mum guilt” and “mum rage”, can arise, too, sometimes leading to maternal ambivalence.
New sensory experiences such as breastfeeding and physical contact can lead mothers to feeling overstimulated or “touched out”, but can also bring joy.
Women also take on a new political and economic identity when becoming mothers. In 2025, mothers are often expected to remain ideal workers in the paid workforce, sometimes navigating a return to paid work while caring for an infant and performing the bulk of crucial unpaid reproductive household labour and care.
This juggle can lead to maternal burnout and negative impacts on mothers’ wellbeing.
This all contributes to the “motherhood penalty” – the well-documented, entrenched and persistent economic injustice experienced by mothers.
Matrescence is a term that helps to capture the breadth of these experiences in all their enormity and complexity.
The oppression of ‘motherhood’
Matrescence doesn’t happen in a vacuum. As Raphael’s original essay showed, it’s shaped by many cultural, economic, and political factors. It’s not the same for every mother.
In her 1976 landmark feminist study on mothering, North American writer and poet Adrienne Rich made the useful distinction between the experience of mothering and what she described as the patriarchal institution of motherhood.
It was the institution of motherhood, Rich argued, that oppressed mothers, not mothering itself. The flipside of this argument was that a liberating motherhood was possible under different conditions.
When it comes to matrescence, the institution of motherhood in Western societies like Australia tends to sideline the experience of mothers, and the transition to motherhood is still largely experienced in isolation and silence.
Often, a focus on the baby overshadows the maternal-infant relationship or the needs of the mother, with many new mothers feeling unsupported or invisible.
New mothers are also often expected to live up to the “good mother” ideal by being totally self-sacrificing or naturally competent at mothering.
Societal norms can overlook the transitional and transformative period of matrescence, with mothers urged to “bounce back” – either by returning to a “pre-baby” body shape or by promptly getting back to paid work in the same capacity as before giving birth.
These experiences are exacerbated by a range of factors, including class, race, partnered status, sexual orientation and life stage, among others.
How does matrescence help?
While the concept of matrescence has become popular among some mothers and those working in maternal wellbeing, wider awareness of the term and the many changes new mothers experience is important.
For mothers, just knowing the concept can help by normalising what they might be experiencing. It can also help those who are pregnant or considering having a baby to prepare for motherhood.
But it can also help us to recognise that becoming a mother is not just a matter of flicking a switch, but a long and profound process of change that requires supportive conditions.
For individual mothers and families, this might mean friends and family offering to provide food or household help (rather than visiting just to hold the new baby).
Collectively, it means broader social changes, including changing cultural attitudes and better social, economic, and health policies to support mothers and families. These should recognise that when a baby is born, so is a mother.
Authors: Belinda Eslick, Honorary Research Fellow, The University of Queensland
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