What Is Matrescence? Understanding the Transition Into Motherhood

Understanding the physical, psychological and emotional transition into motherhood, and why matrescence can change how we live, work and lead.

Written by Eve Ostrovskaya, PCC
Eve is an ICF-credentialed leadership coach, qualified Mentor Coach and Mama Rising® Certified Coach, with more than 20 years’ experience in global HR and organisational leadership. Through her Just Matrescence® approach, she supports mothers navigating professional identity, leadership and the return to work after maternity leave. Published September 2026

What does matrescence mean?

Matrescence is the physical, emotional, psychological, social and identity transition a woman experiences as she becomes a mother. The Cambridge Dictionary defines matrescence as the process of becoming a mother, including the physical and psychological changes involved.

Much like adolescence describes the developmental passage from childhood into adulthood, matrescence gives us language for the profound process of becoming, and continuing to become, a mother.

The transition is not limited to pregnancy, birth or the first few months with a baby. It can continue for years, resurface with each child and evolve as both mother and child move through different stages of life.

Matrescence can affect how you experience your body, relationships, identity, priorities, ambitions and place in the world. For many women, it also has a profound impact on their professional identity, particularly when they are returning to work after maternity leave and trying to understand how motherhood fits alongside an established career or leadership role.

And yet, many mothers have never heard the word.

Matrescence, in simple terms: the developmental transition into motherhood. Like adolescence, it describes a period of profound physical, psychological, emotional, social and identity change: one that can continue long after a baby is born.

What does matrescence feel like?

There is a particular kind of quiet that can happen when you become a mother.

It is not always dramatic. It does not always arrive with tears on the bathroom floor, although sometimes it does. More often, it appears in the small, ordinary moments: opening your laptop after maternity leave and feeling strangely unfamiliar to yourself; sitting in a meeting and realising your tolerance for nonsense has gone; packing the nursery bag while mentally preparing for a presentation; or lying awake long after everyone else has fallen asleep, wondering why a life you worked so hard to build suddenly feels different in your hands.

Many women I work with describe this experience in different ways, but the feeling underneath is often the same. They still love their children. They may still love their work. They remain capable, intelligent, committed and ambitious. And yet, something has shifted.

Their old ways of measuring success no longer quite fit. Their previous pace feels harder to sustain. The person they were before motherhood feels close enough to remember, but not always close enough to return to.

This identity shift does not mean you are failing, losing yourself or becoming less ambitious. It may be part of the developmental transition of matrescence. Understanding it can bring enormous relief because it offers language for an experience many women have been trying to manage silently.

For years, I did not have that language either.

Where does the word matrescence come from?

The term matrescence is generally credited to medical anthropologist Dana Raphael, who introduced it in the 1970s to describe the process of becoming a mother.

The concept was later revived and developed by reproductive psychologist Dr Aurélie Athan. Her work presents matrescence as a multidimensional developmental passage that may begin before pregnancy, birth or adoption and continue into the postnatal period and beyond.

The comparison with adolescence is helpful. We do not expect an adolescent to wake up one morning as a fully formed adult, entirely comfortable with their changing body, relationships, responsibilities and identity. We understand that adolescence is a transition rather than a single event.

Yet women are often expected to become mothers almost instantaneously.

A baby is born and, in the eyes of the world, the transition is complete. The focus moves quickly towards feeding, sleeping, milestones and the baby’s wellbeing. The mother may receive practical information about how to care for her child, while receiving very little preparation for the changes taking place within her.

Matrescence gives that process of becoming a name.

What happens during matrescence?

Every woman experiences motherhood differently, and there is no single correct version of matrescence. The transition may involve changes across several interconnected areas of life.

Physical and hormonal changes

Pregnancy, birth, infant feeding, sleep disruption and physical recovery can all affect how a woman feels in and relates to her body.

Scientific research also points to significant neurological and cognitive adaptation during the transition to motherhood. A 2023 review published in Frontiers in Neuroendocrinology describes motherhood as a major bio-social life event, involving environmental, hormonal and neurobiological changes. The researchers argue that maternal brain development and cognitive adaptation may continue across the lifespan.

This does not mean every difficult feeling or experience can be explained by hormones or changes in the brain. It does demonstrate that becoming a mother is not simply a new set of tasks. It is a significant human transition involving both our inner and outer worlds.

Emotional changes

Matrescence can contain emotions that appear to contradict one another: love and grief, confidence and doubt, joy and anger, tenderness and resentment.

You may feel deeply grateful for your child and still miss parts of your former life. You may love being a mother and find aspects of motherhood relentless. You may want time away from your child and miss them when you get it.

These mixed emotions do not automatically mean something has gone wrong. Two apparently opposing feelings can both be true.

Identity changes

Before motherhood, your identity may have been shaped by your career, relationships, independence, interests, culture and understanding of success. Becoming a mother introduces a powerful new identity, but it does not erase everything that came before.

The challenge is often not choosing between your previous identity and motherhood. It is learning how these parts of you can coexist.

You may find yourself asking:

• Who am I now?

• What matters to me differently?

• What have I gained as well as lost?

• Which expectations am I carrying that no longer belong to me?

• What kind of mother do I want to be?

• What kind of woman and leader am I becoming?

These are not questions to solve during a single nap. They are questions we may revisit throughout motherhood.

Relationship changes

Matrescence can change relationships with partners, family members, friends and colleagues. It may expose previously unspoken expectations about care-giving, paid work, domestic labour and whose time is treated as flexible.

It can also change the relationship you have with your own mother, your childhood and the way you were parented. Old memories or unresolved experiences may surface as you decide what you want to repeat, reject or do differently.

Social changes

Motherhood can change where you go, how you spend your time and who is available to you. Some friendships deepen; others become more difficult to maintain. Your sense of belonging may shift.

At the same time, mothers receive a spectacular amount of unsolicited advice about feeding, sleeping, working, not working and generally existing in public with a child. Matrescence includes finding your own voice amid all that noise.

What are the signs of matrescence?

Matrescence is not a medical diagnosis and there is no clinical checklist. However, you may recognise aspects of the transition in experiences such as:

• feeling unfamiliar to yourself after becoming a mother

• questioning your identity, values or priorities

• grieving elements of your previous life while loving your child

• feeling torn between work and home

• experiencing guilt whichever choice you make

• reconsidering your career or definition of success

• feeling more protective of your time and energy

• noticing changes in friendships or intimate relationships

• feeling pressure to become your “old self” again

• wanting more support but struggling to ask for it

• experiencing increased ambition alongside a reduced tolerance for unsustainable working practices

Recognising yourself here does not mean every emotion is “just matrescence.” Persistent distress, anxiety, low mood, intrusive thoughts or difficulty functioning deserve appropriate professional attention.

Is matrescence the same as postnatal depression?

No. Matrescence and postnatal depression are not the same thing.

Matrescence is a developmental transition rather than a mental-health diagnosis. It can include emotional upheaval, uncertainty and mixed feelings, but it should not be used to dismiss or explain away symptoms of postnatal depression, anxiety, birth trauma or another mental-health condition.

If you are experiencing persistent low mood, intense anxiety, frightening or intrusive thoughts, hopelessness, or difficulty caring for yourself or your baby, please speak to your GP, midwife, health visitor or another qualified healthcare professional. Seek urgent help if you believe that you or someone else may be at immediate risk.

Coaching can provide reflective and practical support, but it is not a replacement for medical care, diagnosis or therapy.

How long does matrescence last?

There is no universal timeline.

For some women, the most intense period occurs during pregnancy and the early postnatal years. For others, the transition becomes particularly visible when maternity leave ends, a second child arrives, a relationship changes or the children become more independent.

Dr Aurélie Athan’s developmental framing recognises that matrescence can recur and evolve over time. Motherhood does not remain still, so neither do we.

You may encounter a new version of matrescence when:

• you return to work after maternity leave;

• you have another child;

• your child starts nursery or school;

• you increase or reduce your working hours;

• your relationship or family structure changes;

• your child reaches adolescence;

• you begin asking what you want beyond active care-giving.

Matrescence is therefore better understood as an evolving process than a stage with a tidy finishing date.

My experience of matrescence, work and leadership

I had worked incredibly hard to build my career. I came to London in my early twenties from a small seaside town near St Petersburg, with a foreign degree, an accent and the feeling that every door into professional life had to be pushed open with both hands.

I grafted. I studied. I climbed from the bottom into increasingly senior and complex work, eventually leading teams and working in a Fortune 500 organisation. When motherhood came, I was not prepared to let go of what I had worked so hard to create.

I wanted both: the career and the children, the leadership role and family life, the ambition and the love.

For a while, I thought the answer was to become superwoman.

I said yes to more work, more travel, more responsibility and more proving. I loved hearing, “I don’t know how you do it all,” or, “You must be made of strong stuff.” Those comments made me feel validated, as though exhaustion were evidence that I was succeeding.

Over time, however, the cost became impossible to ignore. Sleep deprivation, relentless work travel, the emotional weight of parenting, the invisible mental load at home and the pressure to keep performing at work all gathered in my body.

I became irritable and quieter. I withdrew from support. I became, in my own words, a productivity robot. People at work would say, “Wow, you work so fast,” and the superwoman part of me felt satisfied, even as the human part of me was disappearing.

I did not need to become more efficient. I needed to understand the transformation I was experiencing.

Only much later did I discover that there was a word for it.

That word was matrescence.

Matrescence and returning to work after maternity leave

Returning to work is one of the moments when matrescence often becomes impossible to ignore.

You may go back to the same organisation, role or desk, but you are not returning under the same conditions. Your responsibilities have changed. Your time may no longer feel entirely your own. Your emotional world has expanded, and the professional identity that once felt secure may suddenly need to be renegotiated.

You may wonder:

• Will people still see me as committed?

• Have I fallen behind?

• Can I still perform at the same level?

• What happens if my child needs me during the working day?

• Do I still want the career I was building?

• Why does everything feel harder when I know I am still capable?

A return-to-work plan can solve some practical questions. It cannot, by itself, resolve an identity transition.

This is why confidence after maternity leave rarely returns through productivity tips alone. Confidence grows as you begin to understand what has changed, recognise what remains important and make deliberate choices about how you want to work and lead now.

How can matrescence affect leadership and ambition?

Motherhood is often presented as a threat to ambition. The more interesting truth is that it may change the shape of ambition.

You may remain every bit as driven while becoming less willing to sacrifice your health, relationships or sense of self in order to demonstrate it. You may become clearer about what matters and more impatient with performative busyness. You may develop stronger boundaries, greater empathy and a more realistic understanding of human capacity.

None of these changes automatically makes every mother a better leader. Motherhood is not a corporate development programme wearing a muslin cloth.

But the experience can develop capacities that matter in leadership: tolerating uncertainty, adapting rapidly, considering competing needs, regulating emotion, having difficult conversations and functioning without complete control.

The problem is that many workplaces focus primarily on what motherhood supposedly takes away: time, availability, energy and flexibility. They are less practised at recognising what women may bring back.

A mother returning to leadership may not need help becoming who she was before. She may need the space and support to understand who she is now, and to lead from there.

Why does understanding matrescence matter?

When an experience has no name, we tend to personalise it.

We think:

Everyone else seems to be coping.

I should be back to normal by now.

Perhaps I am simply not organised enough.

Maybe I am no longer cut out for this.

Understanding matrescence offers another possibility: you are not failing to return to normal. You are moving through a significant developmental transition for which our workplaces, families and wider culture often provide inadequate recognition.

Naming the transition does not make every challenge disappear. It can, however, replace some of the shame with understanding. It allows women to talk more honestly about what they are experiencing and to ask for the support they actually need.

For an accessible introduction to the term and its impact on new mothers, BBC Tiny Happy People also offers a useful overview.

How can coaching support you through matrescence?

Coaching offers a confidential space to explore the identity, career and leadership questions that can surface during matrescence.

It is not about telling you how to mother, handing you another list of things to do or helping you become even more efficient at carrying an unreasonable load.

Depending on your circumstances, coaching might help you:

• understand how motherhood has affected your identity;

• rebuild confidence before or after returning to work;

• clarify your ambitions and priorities;

• challenge guilt and unrealistic expectations;

• establish boundaries that support sustainable performance;

• prepare for conversations with your manager or partner;

• recognise the leadership strengths developed through motherhood;

• create a definition of success that belongs to you.

My Just Matrescence® approach brings together my experience as an ICF-credentialed leadership coach, more than 20 years in global HR and organisational leadership, and my own lived experience as a working mother of three.

I support ambitious mothers who are preparing to return to work, finding their feet after maternity leave or questioning whether their old way of working still fits. I also work with organisations that want to support working parents more meaningfully through matrescence workshops, returner programmes and leadership coaching.

You are not going backwards

Matrescence can feel disorientating because growth does not always feel like progress while it is happening.

You may be grieving, questioning and rebuilding at the same time. You may be deeply in love with your child and still miss the freedom, certainty or identity you once had. You may want to be present at home and remain fully engaged with your ambitions.

You are allowed to want both.

The question is not necessarily:

How do I get back to the woman I was before motherhood?

A more useful question may be:

Who am I becoming and how do I want her to live, work and lead?

If you would like support exploring that question, you can book a free 30-minute discovery call or contact me to discuss individual coaching, matrescence workshops or organisational support.