Naming the Shift: Matrescence -Why It Matters Making Mothers Visible

Words are my tools and language is my passion. From singing, acting, writing and communicating I’ve built a career on them. Their power to shape culture, frame debate and legitimise experience. The pen is mightier than the sword etc etc. 

In the last two years, I became a mother, and as we approach Mothering Sunday (with IWD only just behind us), I keep coming back to one word that still sits outside official record of the English Language. 

Matrescence.

It isn’t in the Oxford English Dictionary. Not yet.

Mansplaining made it in. To be fair it needed a word to be able to recognise and call it out. We’ve welcomed nepo baby and the hideous terms situationship, YOLO and amazeballs (God save us) not only into polite linguistic society but they also made it into the OED. We’ve even enshrined our collective spiral into screens with appropriate disappointment and efficiency.

But one of the most profound physical, emotional, psychological, neurological, hormonal, social, financial and existential shifts a human can experience...not even pencilled in the margins. It’s not a new word either. Like me, it’s been about since the 70s! 

Matrescence describes the developmental transition into motherhood. It is not a mood. It is not a phase. It is not “baby brain”. It is a restructuring. Of body. Of brain. Of priorities. Of ambition. Of identity. Of neurology. Of time itself.

It is as significant, if not more so in some ways, as adolescence and yet linguistically, it remains largely invisible.

I first encountered the word at 2am, breastfeeding and chatting to other mother’s online all doing the same. I was exhausted and elated. Flooded with love and threaded through with fear. I felt complete and yet unrecognisable and unseen. Certain and completely unmoored. I remember thinking: why does no one talk about the totality of this change? Why is there no common language for this tectonic internal shift?

Language validates reality. If we name something, we acknowledge it. We fund it. We research it. We design policy around it.

So perhaps it is not surprising that matrescence has not yet been formally recognised. In a world where female specific medical research remains disproportionately underfunded and bodies not understood.  Where caregiving labour is still economically side-lined. Where the gender pay gap persists. Where childcare costs feel not only crippling but architectural rather than accidental. Where women return from maternity leave to thinner roles or are swiftly edged out altogether. Talking to many women there is a worrying trend in the narrative: Punished for part time working, unsupported in the emotional and guilt ridden mental juggling, judged for wanting a gentle return to work, judged for jumping back in with determination and grit to perform and own their role and portfolio. Judged and unsupported either way. But I digress. 

Words do not exist in a vacuum. Their absence is also a story.

As we approach Mothering Sunday, can we stop pretending that becoming a mother is a small adjustment? It is a total and absolute transformation. Not something to “bounce back” from. Not something to squeeze around the edges of a system built for a different body and a different life cycle. A system that was stacked against women in the first place.

I do not want to bounce back. I am fundamentally changed. And I am deeply, fiercely happy about that. But it is not light work. It is all encompassing. It’s frightening, exhausting, wonderful, confusing, joyful and many other things. It deserves recognition, structure and support. Let’s name it. Let’s research it. Let’s design for it. And yes, let’s put it in the dictionary. Because when a culture has room for 'doomscrolling' but not 'matrescence', that tells us something!!

Calls to action:

Please sign the petition to include matrescence in the dictionary and, more importantly, to recognise what its absence has been quietly signalling. 

If you are in a position to influence policy within your place of work, perhaps do a education session on matrascence and check if your organisation really understands, acknowledges and supports mothers returning to work navigating matrascence, child care, lack of sleep, breastfeeding and all the other things that go with it.

There are many mothers out there who would be happy to input. Because I suspect there is a great deal of scope for improvement.

I can facilitate sessions on Gender Equality or I can provide a personal input on navigating maternity leave all the way from pre to post, with helpful tips for managers.