Matrescence: Birth of a Mother
It says a lot about our society that the one golden ticket words that describes the whole complicated mess of becoming a mother—matrescence— an anthropological term to describe the physical, psychological and emotional changes (akin to adolescence) that marks the “birth of a mother,” is a word known by so few of us.
It’s important to remember mamas are made at different times in a woman’s life, and under a wide range of circumstances, making motherhood a negotiation of identity (and sexuality) at various age grades and life chapters. Considered too young, out come the “teen mom” jabs, considered too old, a punch in the face with the atrocious scientific category, geriatric, the slur of the fertility field. More than just how many times around the sun you’ve been on this planet, “mama sex” is also a complicated recipe between hormones, physiology, relationship status, length of relationship, sexual history, birth story, feeling about one’s body and holistically, sense of self. Throw in a dash of societal tension regarding women’s sexuality as a whole -- age and aging -- and it’s nothing short of identity vertigo---one that makes many of us feel lost and profoundly alone in the dark unknown woods of motherhood.
While separated from our “villages” and traditional avenues of support and maternal education, we are also a generation of mothers confronted with the most intense information deluge that humanity has ever experienced. While generations of mothering ideology is constantly pushed on us: thoughts on how to feed our babies, how to get them to sleep, how to positively parent (i.e. tricks on how to not mess up these neuro-plastic sponges) all reverberating in the pages of fervently read parenting books, mommy blogs and social media posts, the stories and resources to help us navigate becoming a mother are shockingly limited.
It says a lot about our society that the one golden ticket word that describes the whole complicated mess of becoming a mother- matrescence- an anthropological term to describe the physical, psychological and emotional changes (akin to adolescences) that marks the “birth of a mother,” is a word known by so few of us.
While the term was first coined in 1973 by medical anthropologist Dana Raphael (she also brought the word “doula” into popular discourse), it was Reproductive Psychiatrist Alexandra Sacks whose 2017 New York Times Article “A Birth of a Mother” and her subsequent TED talk in 2018 that gave the word contemporary cultural momentum. It is said, “In a sense, a mother has to be born psychologically much as her baby is born physically. What a woman gives birth to in her mind is not a new human being, but a new identity.” A cultural light bulb moment for many of us “discovering” a single word that so aptly sums up the convergence of factors that shapes one of the most profound caterpillar to butterfly moments a human could ever experience.
But matrescence, like its little sister adolescence, also encapsulates the tremendous growing pains that are inherent in this profound transition, many of which are compounded by societies complicated and tumultuous relationship with birth, postpartum, pelvic health and wellness, mental health and female sexuality. While I wish it wasn’t the case, where vaginas are involved, society’s true taboos and hang ups become impossible to ignore.
In the past few decades, as more and more academics turned their attention to motherhood, many of our institutions and systems have come into question, with childbirth becoming a locus of dissent. The history of maternal medicine --- its degradation of female knowledge and practitioners (hello, witchcraft accusations) and even the ethically compromised roots of gynecology as a discipline (Marion Sims, the father of gynecology presents conducted fistula surgeries on black female slaves without anesthesia) --- have become well referenced red flags to many advocating for new and improved approaches to maternal care. Particularly in a privileged country such as the United States, what could be accounting for such dismal rates of maternal mortality, rates even more exponentially tragic when compounded by race, ethnicity and socio-economics?
Although matrescence, once discovered, can feel like a cultural panacea, a sword raised to the sky to fight so many maternal health inequalities, it is also an important feminist touchstone that so few of us (and our practitioners) currently integrate this perspective into our perinatal care and support.
Distilling much of this for the first time for the general public, the 2008 documentary, The Business of Being Born, was a cultural watershed moment for modern motherhood and a questioning if how we give birth is actually best for mothers and babies or rather a legacy of outdated approaches, in many cases, with patriarchal and capitalist foundations. Maybe it’s time to rework a system that was so obviously failing so many?
As modern motherhood, as a movement is forced to self educate on issues such as the medicalization of birth (treating birth as an illness rather than natural process), birth trauma (experienced both physiologically resulting in postnatal pelvic health problems as well as psychologically, leaving women with a variant of PTSD), and the gender health gap (a medical gulf created by gender bias that provides unequal treatment, diagnosis and care), a new canon fights to have its voice heard---and fighting against the mainstream is no easy task. Championed by midwives, doulas, maternal activists and advocates as well as birth feminists, this new attitude and approach is rooted in a belief that it is a woman’s right to make empowered choices about her birth experience. Wrapped into the movement is a belief that mothers need and deserve a holistic mother centered approach toward birth as well as postpartum.
We become mothers in the womb of society, and modern motherhood deserves better.
Mothers deserve an ideological “womb” that not only retweaks its attitudes towards childbirth and postpartum care, fully integrates matrescence into discourse and practice, but also one that understands how our newly formed maternal identity can’t be disentangled from social, cultural, and historical pressures and inputs (how our mothers and their mothers attitudes influence and impact us). And if those weren’t combustable enough elements, in this book project, I will be investigating how all those factors interact with maternal sexuality or “mama sex.”
Like the multitude of factors that impact the “womb” that nurtures our modern motherhood, a mother’s relationship with sex can’t be disentangled from how she feels about herself, how she feels about her partner, as well as how society impacts and constructs her worldview—a worldview if made up of all the social/cultural/historical factors that shape one’s personal experiences of being a mother but also as a sexual being.
As I research further and further within the terrain of mama sex, I see the great battle that is being waged between matrescence vs. society, realizing this is the whack-a-mole identity politics game I had been playing daily since I became a mother. Join the #mamasexrevolution and let’s fight this battle together.
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