Matrescence: On the Metamorphosis of Pregnancy, Childbirth and Motherhood

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A beautiful, intelligent book that is as tender and moving as it is demanding and urgent. An absolutely essential new addition to the literature of mothering and parenthood.” —Clover Stroud, author of The Wild Other Scientists are also only now discovering how profoundly and permanently pregnancy changes a mother’s physiology: scans show that a mother’s brain is structurally different from the brain of someone who hasn’t borne a child. Multiple parts of the brain’s grey matter shrink, but this isn’t evidence of “baby brain” – memory loss and mental deterioration – but rather, scientists suggest, evidence of fine-tuned connections and enhanced efficiency in areas associated with caregiving and attachment. The changes are not driven solely by biology but are also a product of parenting: men’s brains also change after parenthood, as do the brains of non-biological mothers. We need, and deserve, new “ecologies of care”, Jones writes. This is a book that will be passed among friends and will no doubt bring solace to those reeling from a loss of self, still grappling with their maternal ambivalence and a postpartum universe of fear. For there is nothing “natural” about our idealised image of the selfless, nurturing earth mother – and matrescence can be joyful, painful, creative, destructive, exciting, tedious, liberating, restrictive, life-affirming and utterly, savagely wild. Athan & Reel argue that there is little interest or up-take of research in the psychology of mothers or maternal development per se. They call for a study of ‘matrescence’, to explore women’s lived experience of becoming and being mothers, to challenge the pathologisation of women’s ‘mixed feelings’ about mothering, and to normalise more complex and varied experiences of motherhood than just fulfilment or illness narratives enable. - JANE CALAGHAN, FEMINISM & PSYCHOLOGY (2015) Jones writes with real feeling about the hold of foxes on the human imagination, and her own deep affection for the beguiling creatures - Daily Mail

There will be blood - New Statesman

A wild and beautiful book ... a book that will be passed among friends and will no doubt bring solace ... Reading this, I felt a jolt of recognition ... more than six years later I can still feel the searing, silencing shame. I wish someone could have handed me Matrescence -- Sophie McBain ― New StatesmanPurchasing a book may earn the NS a commission from Bookshop.org, who support independent bookshops

Matrescence: On the Metamorphosis of Pregnancy, Childbirth Matrescence: On the Metamorphosis of Pregnancy, Childbirth

Beautiful and creative ... Jones is a pioneer ... she skilfully elucidates the monumental shifts motherhood brings ... I found myself inwardly cheering -- Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett ― Guardian A vital, hopeful book ... to read Matrescence is to emerge chastened and ready for change Marianne Levy, i News The fox has for centuries been held as the incarnation of such unlovely traits as deviousness, cunning and cruelty. ... However, the characteristic that emerges most strongly from the nature writer Lucy Jones's book about Vulpes vulpes is its ambiguity. ... [An] intriguing compendium of fox lore - Michael Prodger, The Times An exploration of the contrast between myth and reality and between individual and social expectations ... Jones writes beautifully and with searing honesty about the life-changing physical and emotional impact of having a child Rachel Sylvester, The Times

To read this book – and I very much hope its audience is not confined to women who are about to or have recently given birth – is to emerge chastened and ready for change. Anger is not an emotion we expect from mothers. But, as Jones says, good anger is necessary. Let us hold to that.” —Marianne Levy, I News (UK) A beautiful, intelligent book that is as tender and moving as it is demanding and urgent. There is something insightful and original in the way Lucy Jones seamlessly combines the analytical with the emotional, and it is an absolutely essential new addition to the literature of mothering and parenthood Clover Stroud