In this unflinching look at modern-day motherhood, British journalist Lucy Jones methodically examines the journey women make from single entities to pregnancy, birth and motherhood – matrescence.
Jones, previously the author of Losing Eden, an account of why humans psychologically and emotionally need nature, argues that the maternal phase of life should gain the same recognition and status as adolescence, comparable as it is in the awesome physical, biological and psychological changes a woman undergoes.
She weaves in her own experience – she had three children close together in age – with the latest research on pregnancy and motherhood. But Jones’s own matrescence was marked by acute anxiety and postnatal depression.
She had no pain relief beyond gas at all three births, instead choosing motivational tapes, breathing exercises and hypno-assistance. The pain of her labours sets the tone for the book, and her shocks continue to mount at the “hidden” secrets of motherhood (sleepless nights, postnatal depression, difficulty breastfeeding).
“The pain was, again, extraordinary,” Jones writes of her second labour at home. “This labour was a tundra, cold and hostile. Towards the end, the pain became hot and fiery, as if my body was filled with waves of lava.”
And of her third labour: “The baby’s head moved rapidly through me and suddenly the pain was much more severe. As if I’d been struck by lightning.”
These “revelations” often come about because of Jones’s strangely conservative attitudes to motherhood in the first place. This included her commitment to using no pain relief during her labours, her strident belief that “breast is best” (and her horror when her breasts didn’t produce enough milk) and her “naive” understanding of the newborn months, which she was expecting to be pastel-hued and dreamy.
“Had I accepted the agony of childbirth without pain relief because I thought it was my due suffering as a woman?” she writes. “Was this some kind of quasi-religious masochism, or deep-seated lack of self-respect and shame?”
Jones frequently ascribes her apparently misguided beliefs about motherhood – and chronic inability to ask for help – to the wider Western culture. Yet so many journalists of her generation write on motherhood in a more questioning manner; Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett’s Republic of Parenthood column in the Guardian is a standout. Journalists like Cosslett are aware of the cultural norms and expectations of Western motherhood, but have not subscribed to them. Meanwhile, Jones believes deeply in the mother as all-sacrificing narrative, and is, initially at least, a slave to it.
“In untangling my social preconceptions about mothers, I realised I had in mind not one but two basic, limiting and fantastical images of maternity. On one side was, of course, the good mother, who was constantly loving without ever reaching capacity, self-annihilating but blissed-out. She was gentle and kind, intuitively nurturing, and took constant pleasure in her children,” Jones writes of the pressure she felt to excel at motherhood.
“On the other side was the bad mother.”
While her personal experience is useful as a case study in what can go wrong, especially in Western societies, it would have been more compelling and rounded an account to read further about the joys and pleasures of this undoubtedly special time of life.
The best parts of Matrescence are its research-based journalism, and Jones is a skilful and considered reporter when she investigates the latest scientific research delving into the single most stressful biological event in a woman’s life.
Among the gems is new research from the Netherlands that, contrary to the idea of mothers experiencing “baby brain” – mental fog and memory lapses –shows brain scans have found evidence that mothers’ cognitive abilities grow after they fall pregnant. Baby brain may be just an insulting myth, whereas the seeming reality of a brain boost is thought to be an evolutionary response to taking on greater responsibilities in caring for children.
Matrescence is a noble attempt, and more attention (and research money) needs to be devoted to exploring this fascinating time in a woman’s life, as well as supporting her through it. A broader and more even-handed approach would have made it more compelling.
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