Matrescence: On Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Motherhood

Hoekzema’s study—of women before conception, through pregnancy and in the postpartum period—found that significant changes in the brain happened in the Default Mode Network (DMN), an area associated with processes like the perception of the self, self-referential processing, self-related mental explorations and autobiographical memory. The observed

The presence of fetal cells in healed Cesarean section wounds suggests they could migrate to the site of damage to help in repair. But they’re also found at sites of disease, which could suggest they may have detrimental roles.

I thought early motherhood would be gentle, beatific, pacific, tranquil: bathed in a soft light. But actually it was hard-core, edgy, gnarly. It wasn’t pale pink; it was brown of shit and red of blood. And it was the most political experience of my life, rife with conflict, domination, drama, struggle and power.

The modern institution of intensive motherhood silences women, contributes to maternal mental illness, and leaves women too worn out to fight. To fight for what? Potentially transformative policy changes, such as proper maternity leave, flexible working hours, better and more affordable childcare. And even if you don’t have any compassion for new m

in a society with a focus on competition, capital and accumulation, optimizing children fits right into neoliberal economics. There is an unnecessary, insidious cruelty to the societal construction of motherhood. An “invisible violence,” as Adrienne Rich puts it.

It didn’t surprise me to read that researchers at the University of Massachusetts found, in a synthesis of literature on working mothers, that matrescence was associated with enhanced knowledge, skills and capacity. They found evidence that it “strengthened women’s mindset, willpower, and overall emotional intelligence.”[7] Nothing that I had previ

Hrdy brings some common sense to the issue. “We should be asking ourselves how we failed to expect these ambivalent emotions in their every nuance,” she writes.[11] “There are good reasons why infant demands sometimes seem so insatiable, and there are equally good reasons why mothers sometimes find such servitude overwhelming and resist them.”

New research into the neurobiology of parenting and caregiving helps explain why alloparenting succeeds in different cultures. We are learning that a person doesn’t need to be pregnant for the brain to reconfigure into an infant-caregiving brain: hands-on parenting can rewire a male brain in a similar way to the effect of pregnancy and childbirth.

the science of the maternal brain published to date tells us that mothers in this vulnerable period need care, and particularly protective social policies. The one strategy which seems to inoculate most new mothers against mental illness is social support. Social support, according to scientific tools and scales, includes emotional and practical su