By Christina Mathieson, LMFT #115093, founder of My Mental Climb.
There is a word for what is happening in the months and years after a woman becomes a mother: matrescence. It describes the developmental transition into motherhood the same way adolescence describes the transition into adulthood. Identity reorganizes, the body changes, relationships shift. The self you were before the baby is not gone, but it is no longer the only self in the room.
I am writing this as someone three months into my own matrescence, with a baby sleeping for this short window. Before becoming a mother myself, I did not understand how big of a shift this process actually is, even with a decade of clinical experience working with women. I had read the research, named it for clients, walked them through it in session, and none of that prepared me for what it feels like from the inside.
Where the word comes from
The term matrescence was first used by anthropologist Dana Raphael in the 1970s. It largely sat on a shelf for decades until reproductive psychologist Aurelie Athan revived it and built a body of work around it in the 2010s. The framing is straightforward: motherhood is not a single event that happens at birth. It is a developmental passage, and like adolescence, it includes physical change, hormonal change, identity restructuring, and a recalibration of every important relationship in a woman's life.
Most cultures used to acknowledge this transition in some form; modern Western culture mostly does not. Women are sent home from the hospital with a baby and an unspoken expectation that they will return to their pre-baby selves once the sleep deprivation eases up. The selves do not return, something else emerges, and there is rarely a framework for understanding it.
Why naming it matters
A lot of what new mothers experience gets framed as either postpartum mental illness or "you should have it together by now." Both framings miss the larger reality, which is that this is a developmental passage that asks a person to become someone new. There is grief in that, even when the baby is wanted and loved, there is identity confusion, and there is ambivalence that does not fit neatly inside how mothers are supposed to feel.
When you have a name for what is happening, you stop treating it as a problem and start treating it as a process. The grief for the version of yourself who slept eight hours a night is allowed to exist alongside the love for the small person who keeps her up. The friendship that has gone quiet for now is allowed to be on a pause without it meaning the friendship is over. The body that is not what it was is allowed to be in the middle of a transition, not a permanent loss.
What I am living right now
In my own three months, the things I have had to actively learn are not the parenting basics. The parenting basics come quickly because you don't have a choice, it is a kind of baby bootcamp where survival makes you figure them out fast. The harder learning has been about how to let myself receive. Saying yes when a friend offers to bring a meal, letting people see me in pajamas with a sink full of dishes, telling another mother that I am tired in a way I did not know was possible. None of that came naturally. All of it has changed which friendships feel meaningful and which ones feel like one more thing on the list.
I have also had to accept that the version of myself who could push through anything is not the version of myself who is parenting this baby. Matrescence asks for a different kind of strength, one that includes being held instead of holding everything.
When matrescence becomes a clinical concern
There is a meaningful distinction between matrescence and postpartum mood disorders. Matrescence is a developmental transition that is normal, demanding, and often confusing. Postpartum depression, postpartum anxiety, and postpartum OCD are clinical conditions that require treatment. The line between them is not always obvious from the inside, especially because matrescence and postpartum mental health symptoms can overlap.
A general heuristic: if you cannot feel pleasure, cannot bond with the baby, are having intrusive thoughts that scare you, are sleeping less than the baby allows you to, or are losing weight without trying, those are signs to talk to a therapist or your OB-GYN soon. Postpartum Support International is a good starting point. If you are tired, weeping more than usual, identity-confused, mourning your old life, and uncertain about what kind of mother you want to be, that is matrescence, and a therapist who understands the framework can be enormously helpful.
What helps
The interventions I see make the biggest difference, both with clients and in my own life over these three months:
Naming the transition. Tell another woman that you are in matrescence and watch what happens when she has a name for it too.
Letting friendship adapt. Some friendships will stay close, some will fall away, some will surprise you. The ones that survive are usually the ones with permission to be in different seasons of life.
Lowering performance standards. Cereal for dinner, getting back to texts days later instead of within the hour, short walks with the dog instead of hikes. The version of you who washed and styled her hair regularly is on hiatus. That is appropriate, not a failure, it is the season you are in.
Vulnerability with at least one other mother. Not the highlight reel, the actual hard things. This is where matrescence stops being lonely.
Professional support when needed. Either matrescence-specific therapy or postpartum mental health treatment, depending on what is going on. The two are not mutually exclusive.
When to reach out
If you are in the middle of this transition and feeling like there is no language for what you are experiencing, that itself is reason enough to talk to someone who has the framework. I'm Christina Mathieson, LMFT #115093, founder of My Mental Climb, and I work with women on identity, motherhood, and the relational shifts that come with both. A free 15-minute consult is a no-pressure place to start, we will talk about where you are and figure out what kind of support fits.
Further reading: Matrescence research at Columbia, by Aurelie Athan · Postpartum Support International · The Birth of a Mother by Alexandra Sacks, The New York Times
Tagged
Last clinically reviewed: by Christina Mathieson, LMFT #115093.
