Matrescence is a Normal Life Passage
- Kathy Morelli
- Feb 22, 2023
- 4 min read
Updated: Mar 4
Matrescence is a normal life passage and it's also one of life's most intense life experiences. Matrescence encompasses the physical, emotional and psychological growth of a woman as she integrates the experience of becoming a mother. Her identity changes, her body changes, her life focus changes. Emotional shifts are part of matrescence, a neurobiological transition that affects the nervous system during the perinatal year.
Matrescence is one of life's most profound and underrecognized transitions. It encompasses the physical, emotional, and psychological transformation a woman undergoes as she integrates the experience of becoming a mother — a process that reshapes her identity, her body, her relationships, and her entire sense of self. And yet, for all its magnitude, it has rarely been given the language it deserves.
A Neurobiological Transition, Not Just an Emotional One
Matrescence is not simply a mood shift or an adjustment period. It's a neurobiological transition — a fundamental reorganization of the brain and nervous system during the perinatal year. Research in neuroscience has shown that pregnancy and early motherhood trigger measurable changes in gray matter, hormonal architecture, and threat-detection systems, all in service of helping a mother attune to and protect her child. These changes are real, they are significant, and they are normal.
Reproductive psychiatrist Dr. Alexandra Sacks, who brought the term matrescence into mainstream conversation through her 2017 New York Times essay, describes it as the developmental process of becoming a mother — one that deserves the same cultural recognition we give to adolescence. The emotional turbulence a new mother feels is not a sign that something is wrong. It is a sign that something profound is underway.
This life passage is inclusive of all who do the work of mothering: adoptive mothers, stepmothers, transgender mothers, and dads who mother. Matrescence belongs to anyone whose identity is being reorganized by the experience of caring for a child.
The Adolescence Parallel — and Why It Matters
If you think about adolescence — the disorientation, the identity searching, the simultaneous longing for the old self and curiosity about the new one — you begin to understand matrescence. Developmental psychologist Daniel Stern was among the first to draw this parallel, noting that the transition to motherhood produces identity shifts as seismic as those of adolescence, yet receives a fraction of the cultural scaffolding.
If you think about adolescence and how much a person grows during adolescence, how the sense of self expands and changes. Reproductive psychiatrists suggest that matrescence is a life passage with identity shifts similar to the seismic emotional and psychological upheavals of adolescence.
Adolescents are given time, patience, and a shared cultural understanding that they are in process. New mothers are often expected to feel instantly complete — grateful, bonded, capable, and healed — within days of one of the most transformative experiences of human life.
The gap between that expectation and the lived reality is where so much unnecessary suffering lives.
Why the Word Itself Is Healing
There's alot written about pregnancy, birth and postpartum depression. However, without a word to to describe the concept of matrescence, there has been far less language devoted to describing the normal lived experience of becoming a mother - the normal growth that occurs as a woman learns how to care for a newborn, how to integrate her new responsibilities into her self concept. And this growth and identity change extends for years, as parents continually grow and change in response to the growing child's needs.
By adding matrescence to our everyday lexicon, we create space to explain and validate what new mothers so often feel but struggle to articulate — the grief for the self that existed before, the fierce love coexisting with exhaustion, the disorientation of being someone's everything while still trying to remember who you are. Naming this transition gives new parents greater insight into their own emotional lives and reduces the shame that so often accompanies the harder moments.
Knowing that it is normal to feel overwhelmed, ambivalent, or lost while caring for a newborn is not a small thing. It can be genuinely liberating.
It is also worth noting that matrescence does not end at six weeks postpartum, or even at six months. Identity integration continues for years, as parents grow and change in response to each new stage of their child's development. Matrescence is a passage, not a moment.
The emotional and nervous system shifts of matrescence are supported by the Mindfulness Ring for New Mothers — a circle of gentle practices for grounding, bonding, sleep resilience, and postpartum mental health.
Matrescence and Postpartum Depression — An Important Distinction
The emotional intensity of matrescence — the mood swings, the vulnerability, the nervous system activation — is a normal part of this transition. It is distinct from postpartum depression, which is a clinical condition requiring careful attention and support.
Normal mood swings and normal emotional struggles are common in the transition to motherhood. This is distinct from postpartum depression, which requires careful attention and support. The warning signs of postpartum depression are outlined here.
You do not have to navigate either experience alone.
Supporting the Transition
The emotional and nervous system shifts of matrescence are supported by the Mindfulness Ring for New Mothers — a circle of gentle practices for grounding, bonding, sleep resilience, and postpartum mental health.
Related in the Mindfulness Ring for New Mothers
Sources
Bastidas, G., (2022). How to navigate matrescence – the ups and downs of new motherhood. Retrieved February 27, 2023 from
Hoekzema, E., et al. (2017). Pregnancy leads to long-lasting changes in human brain structure. Nature Neuroscience, 20(2), 287–296.
Sacks, A. (2017). The birth of a mother. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/08/well/family/the-birth-of-a-mother.html
Stern, D. N., & Bruschweiler-Stern, N. (1998). The Birth of a Mother. Basic Books.
Hoekzema, E., et al. (2017). Pregnancy leads to long-lasting changes in human brain structure. Nature Neuroscience, 20(2), 287–296.
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