Complex feelings of ambivalence: The pregnant mother can be happy and at the same time overwhelmed by her situation, experiencing worry, frustration, and fear. She may wish to be alone but at the same time want to experience the signs of new life in her changing body. Which is indicative of the need for journalist and prize-winning nature writer Lucy Jones‘ book, an ambitious, wide-ranging work that is at once memoir, analysis and social study. Matrescence, Jones tells us, is as significant as adolescence. Yet the permitted language of motherhood – phrases like, “feeling a bit tired” and, “the baby blues” – does nothing but diminish the experience. Having internalised society’s message that motherhood must be kept separate from the colleagues and employers, that it is “mindless and unintellectual”, Jones found herself subject to an increasing sense of alienation. ”I had always believed in the power of words,” she says. “But here, they failed me.”

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 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)According to these authors, matrescence may start as soon as a woman is trying to conceive and may continue through pregnancy, well into the postpartum stage. It is the ups and downs of pregnancy, the good and the not so good; it is a transition, a healthy change. It is important to distinguish the natural experiences of matrescence from postpartum depression, which is considered as a psychiatric ailment.

Anyone who has ever spent any time on a labour ward will know why: birth can be long, bloody and traumatic. And that is just the first step along the road to the creation of a different being, a mother. It is life-changing, it is wonderful, but for many it is also fraught with worry and feelings of inadequacy. This book should be a must-read for pretty much everyone. We don't talk about the hidden realities of the biological, social and psychological effects of matrescence nearly enough. Thank you, Lucy Jones, for changing that - Dr Jodi Pawluski But as the book went on I found I enjoyed reading about vampire bats and aurora borealis and spiders that eat their own mothers, and found her desire to place matrescence within the context of a wider ecology, and her emphasis on “the psychic and corporeal reality of our interdependence and interconnectedness with other species”, admirable. I also respect her absolute refusal to pander to the “enjoy every minute” brigade. As she writes in the introduction, “my children (she has three, all born close together) have brought me joy, contentment, fulfilment, wonder, and delight in staggering abundance. But that’s just part of the story. This is the rest.” Like many women, Jones describes feeling 'hoodwinked' by the norms of motherhoodLevels of distress caused in motherhood (no status, no social suooorr, sleep deprivation) rather than post natal depression