Those confusing feelings that first-time mothers get? There’s a word for it

After becoming a mother for the first time, many women are flooded with confusing feelings. Instead of the glorified image of early motherhood they’d been sold – where they gently rock their baby, warmed by the soft glow of love – many feel adrift. Their whole lives have changed, they’re swamped by huge shifts in hormones, and often feel weepy and disillusioned.

Unlike adolescence, matrescence is an ongoing process.Credit: Stocksy

Amy Taylor-Kabbaz can relate. After welcoming her first child 15 years ago, she loved her baby but “really struggled” with the transition to becoming a mum, feeling as though she’d lost herself in the process.

As a journalist, she figured people must be talking about this. “I looked around and no one was,” she says. “So I started down this rabbit hole of trying to understand it … but never really felt like I landed on what ‘it’ actually was.”

The book she published in 2019, Mama Rising, and online programs she subsequently founded, led to her meeting thousands of mothers who felt the same. “We were all asking, ‘Why do we feel like this? Is there something wrong with us?’ ”

Everything changed for Taylor-Kabbaz one day about five years ago. She was listening to a podcast when she heard the word “matrescence” being used to describe the transition to motherhood. Her response was visceral. “I literally sucked in my breath and burst into tears,” she says. “It was like a light had been turned on and I could see the way forward.”

The word “matrescence” was first coined in the 1970s by anthropologist Dana Raphael to encompass the changes that occur during the transition to motherhood, a process often likened to adolescence.

“I literally sucked in my breath and burst into tears. It was like a light had been turned on and I could see the way forward.”

Amy Taylor-Kabbaz

“Just as a child doesn’t wake up on their 13th birthday as an adult, it’s the same when we become a mother,” Taylor-Kabbaz says. “We go through this period of physical, emotional and hormonal changes, but also these massive psychological, social, cultural and economic ones.”

Unlike adolescence, however, Taylor-Kabbaz says matrescence is an ongoing process. It’s at its most intense in the first seven years after becoming a mother. But, she says, every time your child goes through a new phase – entering school, for example – you go through another transition as a mother.

These transitions are often laden with conflicting feelings. Without knowing about matrescence, many mothers flounder, concerned about what their feelings mean. They worry about how they can love their child fiercely but not always love being a mother. They also struggle to marry their “old self” to their new role.

But this tug of war between your child-free self and your role as a mother are both common and an expected part of matrescence, Taylor-Kabbaz says, adding that just knowing the name for this transition can offer enormous comfort. Taylor-Kabbaz says her mentor, psychologist Dr Aurelie Athan, calls the label matrescence a “gift” similar to that of labelling teenagers “adolescents”.

Taylor-Kabbaz says having a word to describe a period of upheaval is pivotal, as it normalises an expected transition. She says when many people hear about matrescence, there’s an element of frustration that they didn’t know about it sooner. “And then there’s relief: ‘Oh, I thought it was just me. Now I can understand why I feel the way I do.’ ”

If you’re concerned about your thoughts or feelings during matrescence, please speak to your doctor. While matrescence is an expected transition, the possibility of postnatal depression may need to be excluded.

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