Matrescence matters: helping clients navigate the motherhood transition
Coaching Today, July 2024

'What do you think?’ The question jolted me out of a daydream. After a fractured night’s sleep following a transatlantic flight, before sitting through endless PowerPoint slides with graphs measuring ‘key performance indicators’ outlining the department’s strategic direction, perhaps it was inevitable that I had zoned out. The question about what I thought our new ‘mission statement’ should be was a reasonable one. The problem was that my personal mission had been completely overtaken by the birth of my first child.

As I was sitting there, thousands of miles from home, stuffed into a suit, I felt the familiar throb of my breasts engorging with milk. I made an excuse and scuttled off to the bathroom to pump furtively. And then the thought struck me: I was a lactating mammal in a room full of machines and metrics. This was not normal. 

It was as surreal a moment as it sounds. Ultimately, this realisation led to me quitting my corporate job. I couldn’t live with the sense of incongruence that combining this kind of ‘high-powered’ career and motherhood demanded of me. Mostly, this was due to an internal shift in my identity and values. But it was also due to the fact that in our society, the roles of ‘work’ and ‘motherhood’ are treated as separate and invisible to each other. There is little or no acknowledgement of the enormity of the change women have to accommodate in matrescence (the transition to motherhood). 

Since that pivotal moment in a meeting room on the other side of the world, I have spent over 10 years supporting mothers, parents and caregivers as a birth worker, perinatal yoga teacher, mindfulness practitioner, and now as a specialist therapeutic coach. 

In this article, I examine how bringing the concept of matrescence into the coaching space can have a positive impact on individual outcomes, despite persistent structural barriers for mothers at work and in other domains.¹ 

My view is that an understanding of matrescence can help therapists/coaches to: 

• normalise feelings: help clients realise that they are not alone in their experience
• situate distress: enable clients to see individual issues within a broader context
• enable growth: empower clients to find their own agency within motherhood. 

I will explore each of these in turn. 

First, I want to acknowledge that there are limits to this approach. This article describes aspects of a therapeutic coaching process I use with clients who are resourced and able to embark on forward-looking work. Clients who present with trauma or diagnoses within the spectrum of perinatal mood and anxiety disorders (PMADs) will likely require further support from a maternal mental health and trauma specialist. For example, I support clients with birth trauma and severe postpartum depression and anxiety, but this is beyond the scope of what I share here. 

Normalise feelings: help clients realise they are not alone in their experience 

‘I just don’t know what’s happening to me. I mean, I’ve never been happier on one level, but I feel so trapped and frustrated at the same time.’ 

When clients first come to me, they often struggle to articulate the sense of disconnect between what they think they should feel and what they do feel as mothers. They cannot reconcile their conflicting emotions, and have a deep sense of shame for even daring to suggest their experience of motherhood is not positive and fulfilling. 

Karen Kleiman, founder of The Postpartum Stress Centre, refers to the ‘constellation of losses’ wrought by the transition to motherhood. She goes on to catalogue ‘sleep, finances, alone time, her former self, couple time, self-identity, body image, adult conversation, predictability, calmness, spontaneity, freedom, friends, her previous body, career, leisure time, privacy, intimacy, sexuality, confidence, self-esteem, to name a few’.² Reading this list sounds catastrophic. In no other area of life would we expect someone to shoulder these losses alone, let alone embrace change of such magnitude without ambivalence. Yet, by expecting mothers to return to work with no supporting ‘village’, no awareness of matrescence, and nowhere to take their distress, this is exactly what we do.³

So, where to begin in coaching clients who are navigating what Siri Hustvedt calls ‘the forgotten land of the mother’ in modern Western culture?⁴ One place to start is by enabling these clients to give voice to the mixed feelings they have about motherhood. Through the lens of psychoanalysis, Rozsika Parker defines maternal ambivalence as the ‘experience shared variously by all mothers in which loving and hating feelings for their children exist side by side.’⁵ When I share this concept with clients, it goes some way to removing a sense of shame for having contradictory feelings about their children, and opens the door to more self-compassion. This can enable more acceptance and integration of the complexity of being a mother. However, when we explore what lies behind the anger or challenging emotions they feel, an even more complex picture often emerges. Clients need language for not only an intense emotional landscape, but also to process change across a huge array of internal and external domains. This is where the concept of matrescence comes in. 

The term ‘matrescence’ was first coined in the 1970s by medical anthropologist, Dana Raphael.⁶ From her extensive studies, she noted that the transition to motherhood was treated as an important life stage requiring dedicated support across many cultures. She called this transition ‘matrescence’ and she named the person who cares for the mother during this time a ‘doula’ (after the Greek word for this role). In recent years, the term matrescence has been revived by Aurélie Athan, a clinical psychologist, who describes matrescence as:

‘a developmental passage where a woman transitions through pre-conception, pregnancy and birth, surrogacy or adoption, to the postnatal period and beyond. The exact length of matrescence is individual, recurs with each child, and may arguably last a lifetime! The scope of the changes encompasses multiple domains — bio-psycho-social-political-spiritual— and can be likened to the developmental push of adolescence.’⁷ 

In my therapeutic coaching practice, I find that when I share this definition of matrescence, it resonates deeply with clients. The biggest ‘a-ha’ moment is when they are able to compare what they are currently going through with the tumult of adolescence. I witness an emerging recognition that motherhood is a developmental stage in which everything they thought they knew about themselves changes. This is a powerful counterbalance to the internalised sense of shame I often encounter in clients, thinking they are alone in struggling so much. Although an awareness of matrescence doesn’t necessarily help these clients to reconcile the losses and gains of motherhood, the huge shifts in identity, and deep conflicts in their emotional landscape, it does help them to make sense of what is going on for them as a normal process, rather than an individual aberration. 

Situate distress: enable clients to see individual issues within a broader context 

‘Everyone else seems to have it together. I don’t know how the other mums do this seamless return to work and putting the baby in daycare thing. I am the only one who can’t cope.’ 

Much of my work with clients involves holding space for the contradictory feelings and complex identity shifts that motherhood brings. Sharing the concept of matrescence can help normalise at least some of this experience. However, while matrescence may be developmentally normative, it is also a culturally situated process.⁸ Culture shapes the way that individual mothers perceive the nature of their role. There are assumptions about different types of mothers in our society. Labels such as ‘SAHM’ (stay-at-home mother), ‘single mum’, ‘working mother’, and ‘mumpreneur’ are often pitched against each other. Clients may mould themselves to these cultural norms in a way that restricts their sense of agency. Therefore, another aspect of my therapeutic coaching process is to explore the underlying values clients hold about themselves as mothers, and how these intersect with other roles in their lives. Specifically, I help clients to articulate and examine their expectations about what a mother ‘should’ be and do. 

The model of motherhood that most of my clients struggle with is derived from the ‘perfect mother’ myth pervasive in Western culture.⁹ The perfect mother is untroubled by conflicting emotions, content within a maternal role, ever-loving and available for her children, while simultaneously able to return to work, and ‘bounce back’ into a pre-pregnancy body. So, it is perhaps unsurprising that individuals think they are at fault when they fail to live up to this impossible ideal. The complex reality of their matrescence doesn’t match the fantasy version of motherhood they may have held. They assume that they have a mental health problem, or are unique in being unable to cope with the demands of modern motherhood. 

Working mothers face a particular double-bind, which sociologist Sophie Brock calls the ‘care/career conundrum’.¹⁰ On the one hand, there is a pressure to perform intensive mothering that requires them to be ‘selfless’ in attending to the needs of their children. On the other hand, there are the demands of a successful career that require them to be ‘selfish’ in prioritising work over care. This conundrum is borne out by Kathy Cotter’s research on the transition from being a stay-at-home mother to paid employee.¹¹ Participants in her study typically placed the needs of their partner and children before their own, and sought to minimise disruption to others in returning to work. 

Cotter argues that coaches and therapists can play a key role in enabling such clients to explore losses, examine gendered assumptions, consider barriers to a successful return to work, and plan for long-term self-care.¹¹ I agree wholeheartedly, and propose the addition of matrescence as a supportive concept in this dialogue. Sharing the magnitude of ‘bio-psycho-social-political-spiritual’ change matrescence brings, helps clients to accept a wider range of feelings. Unmasking the current cultural conditions in which this transition to motherhood is largely ignored or unsupported further helps them to place their own sense of guilt or failing within a broader context. 

Enable growth: empower clients to find their own agency within motherhood 

‘I have to get this right. Nothing has ever mattered so much to me. I need someone to tell me I’m doing a good enough job.’ 

Once clients begin to view their experience through the lens of matrescence, I find it opens up space to create a version of motherhood that works for them. As the dominant cultural narrative perpetuates the ‘perfect’ mother, my view is that one of the most powerful ways to support clients is to explore what being a ‘good enough’ mother might mean to them. Sometimes, this exploration leads to small incremental changes in what they want to continue doing. Other times, it precipitates a complete rejection of a particular aspect of the ‘perfect mother’ myth they have previously adhered to. 

An example of this can be illustrated by a common experience of stress that several clients have shared around organising children’s birthday parties. We have explored what would be ‘good enough’ in this context. One client decided to host a large party for her child’s entire class because she knew she would feel guilty if she didn’t. Her concession to not having enough time to do everything herself was to involve a party planner and get a shop-bought cake. Another client decided to scrap the idea of parties altogether despite a sense that it was what she ‘should’ do. She asked her son which friend he would like to have on a special play-date. She saw that he enjoyed the day just as much and felt encouraged to do something similar the following year.

Although this may seem trivial, it is often everyday decisions and tasks that define an individual’s sense of control over their lived experience of motherhood.¹² When clients are able to unpack assumptions and motives behind something like hosting a birthday party, it can lead to a sense of agency around much larger questions in their lives, such as if or when to return to work full time, how to challenge the division of labour in the household, or whether to homeschool their child. 

Once again, I find that turning to the concept of matrescence as a developmental framework supports exploration of these larger questions. As children grow and develop, so too do the demands they make of their caregivers. In Donald Winnicott’s classic definition, the ‘good enough’ mother is highly attuned and responsive to her newborn infant but gradually diminishes her input over time to enable her growing child to adapt to the external world.¹³ I think it is just as important to acknowledge that mothers grow and develop too. Matrescence holds that motherhood is not a fixed state or identity, but rather a constantly evolving process. It might be likened to a dance that continues between a mother and her children throughout the lifespan.¹⁴ Making this dance visible to mothers and to those that support them enables greater choice around what steps they might take.

In conclusion 

My experience as a mother returning to work after the birth of my daughter 12 years ago was one where I felt invisible. I felt overwhelmed by trying to maintain a façade of ‘perfect worker’ in my career and ‘perfect mother’ in my home life. Despite generous maternity leave and flexible working policies, there was no acknowledgement of the immense change I was going through, and no support to help me integrate the different aspects of my experience. 

In the last 10 years, I have supported mothers who tell a similar story. It is time to change the script. I believe that coaches and therapists are well placed to help clients articulate the invisible. They can do this by using the language of matrescence, and by bringing an awareness of motherhood as socially constructed process to the conversation. Although this knowledge alone does not change the systemic inequalities that mothers face in our society¹⁵, I believe it helps individual mothers to challenge an internal narrative that keeps them feeling guilty and isolated. When mothers feel heard, change is possible.