What Is Matrescence? Understanding the Identity Shift Into Motherhood
Matrescence is the physical, hormonal, and identity shift a person goes through in becoming a parent. It's a normal developmental transition, not a disorder, and it can start well before a baby arrives.
You may have felt it already: the questions about who you'll be on the other side of pregnancy, what you'll have to let go of, whether the person you are now will still be there once you're someone's parent. That's matrescence. It has a name now, and understanding it changes how you move through it, especially as a couple.
What does "matrescence" mean?
Matrescence means the process of becoming a mother, or a parent. The term was coined in 1975 by anthropologist Dana Raphael, who argued that giving birth doesn't automatically make someone a mother. Becoming one takes time.
The word is built to echo adolescence, and that's intentional. Researchers like Aurélie Athan point out that we already understand adolescence as a multi-year transition full of big emotions and physical change, one that reshapes a person permanently. We give teenagers that grace. Matrescence asks us to give new parents the same grace.
Why it's compared to adolescence
Like adolescence, matrescence involves hormonal shifts, brain changes, and a reorganizing sense of self. And like adolescence, nobody expects you to "bounce back" to who you were before. You're not supposed to. You're becoming someone new.
When does matrescence start?
Matrescence often starts well before birth, sometimes at the moment you decide to try for a child, not after.
In my practice, I see this constantly. Clients start asking who they'll be on the other side of pregnancy long before there's a pregnancy. What will they have to let go of? What parts of their current life won't survive the shift into parenthood? That anticipatory identity work is matrescence too. It doesn't wait for a due date.
What does the "push and pull" of matrescence actually feel like?
Matrescence is often described as a push and a pull happening at once: the pull toward the baby, and the push to hold on to who you were.
The pull is partly biological. Oxytocin and other hormonal shifts draw a birthing parent toward the baby, reorganizing what feels urgent and what feels distant. The push is the part that doesn't get talked about enough: the very real desire to keep the parts of yourself that matter to you, your career, your friendships, your sense of humor, your autonomy.
Both are true at once. That's not a contradiction. That's the whole experience.
Is matrescence the same as postpartum depression?
No. Matrescence is a developmental transition; postpartum depression is a clinical condition. But they can and do overlap.
Psychiatrist Alexandra Sacks has written that matrescence "is not a disease," and that confusing it with postpartum depression does a disservice to both experiences: the normal transition and the clinical condition each deserve to be understood on their own terms. Researcher Allison Davis puts it simply: the question isn't matrescence or postpartum depression. It can be both.
How to tell the difference
Matrescence tends to feel like disorientation, grief for an old identity, and ambivalence that comes and goes. Postpartum depression tends to feel more pervasive: a loss of joy that doesn't lift, or a level of despair that interferes with daily functioning. If you're not sure which you're experiencing, that uncertainty is worth bringing to a therapist. You don't have to diagnose yourself first.
How does matrescence change a relationship, not just a person?
Matrescence isn't something one partner goes through alone. Even in couples where only one partner is pregnant or giving birth, the relationship itself changes.
This is the piece I think gets missed most in couples work. I've seen partners go quiet with each other during this stage, not out of disconnection, but out of fear: afraid that naming their own worry will add weight to a partner who's already carrying so much. That withdrawal often looks like distance, but it's really protection.
I've also seen the opposite. Small disagreements that would have been nothing a year ago become enormous, because one or both partners are trying to hold onto autonomy while everything else is shifting, or because the fear underneath is showing up as a demand for more closeness than usual. Neither response is wrong. Both are matrescence showing up between two people instead of inside one.
Your identity is changing. On some level, that means you're changing. And even if only one partner is the one experiencing the biological shift, the relationship has changed too, because a relationship is made of two people, and one of them is becoming someone new.
If you're the partner watching this happen rather than the one carrying it, Supporting a Partner Through Matrescence goes deeper into what that role actually requires.
Does a non-birthing partner go through their own version of this shift?
Yes. It's sometimes called patrescence, though that term assumes a heterosexual couple, and the research doesn't actually support that limitation.
The identity shift of becoming a parent isn't bound to giving birth yourself. Partners who are raising a child or supporting a pregnant partner, including partners in same-sex relationships, can experience their own significant identity shift and their own version of postpartum mood changes. The hormonal piece may look different depending on who gave birth. The identity piece doesn't require it.
This is part of why Metaphor doesn't frame matrescence as a heterosexual, one-partner experience. If you want to see this explored in context of queer relationships, blended, and polyamorous families specifically, Matrescence in Queer, Poly, and Blended Families is next in this series.
Why does naming matrescence actually help?
Naming matrescence helps because it turns a private, confusing experience into a shared, recognizable one.
Some people already know the word and just want to be seen using it. Others have never heard it before, and once they have it, they go looking: for research, for community, for other people going through the same thing. Having language for an experience is often the first step out of isolation. You stop wondering what's wrong with you and start recognizing what's happening to you.
How does couples therapy support someone through matrescence?
Couples therapy supports matrescence through psychoeducation and through deeper emotional work, most often using Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFCT).
Psychoeducation matters more than people expect. Most couples have no real information about what happens to a birthing parent's body and mind during and after pregnancy, and even less about what happens to the non-birthing partner. I make a point of normalizing things clients rarely hear anywhere else: that the non-birthing partner can experience their own version of postpartum depression or a major identity shift that catches them off guard, and that not feeling instantly bonded to a new baby is common, not a warning sign.
Because we don't talk about this as a couple's experience, not just an individual one, shame and fear tend to fill that silence. EFCT is well suited to working through that. Over time, it helps a couple move past the outward performance, whether that's stoicism, forced positivity, or anxiety, and down to the more vulnerable feelings underneath. That's often where couples actually reconnect: not by fixing the transition, but by letting each other see it.
If this is where you are right now, Matrescence Therapy: What It Is and How It Can Help walks through what that support looks like in practice. If you're expecting or newly parenting with a partner, our Couples Group for Perinatal and Postnatal Partners is built specifically for this stage.
About the therapist
Jasmine McMeeking, LMFT, REAT is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and Registered Expressive Arts Therapist (REAT) specializing in couples therapy, relational healing, and expressive arts supervision for licensed clinicians. Jasmine works with queer partnerships, interracial couples, and non-traditional relationship structures navigating major life transitions, and with therapists who are ready to bring more of the whole person into their clinical work.
At Stanza, Jae offers individual and couples therapy grounded in Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFCT) and expressive arts approaches, alongside REAT supervision for licensed therapists integrating creative modalities into their practice.
Jasmine's work is liberation-focused, deliberately unpolished, and built on the belief that healing happens through genuine human connection.