March 25, 2026 • 54 mins
Becoming a parent is a biological, psychological, and social transformation. Priyanka and Hari talk with science journalist Lucy Jones, author of Matrescence: On the Metamorphosis of Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Motherhood, about the concept of matrescence and why the transition into motherhood can feel so destabilizing, emotional, and overwhelming, even for people who deeply want children. From dramatic hormonal shifts to structural changes in the brain, science shows that becoming a parent reshapes us in profound ways. The conversation also explores how modern society has made raising children more isolating than ever and what we can do to better support our communities.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This podcast is for information purposes only and should not
be considered professional medical advice. We can change our society
to become more inclusive and kinder and working together.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
I'd always wanted to be a mom and have kids,
and she was a much longed for child, and yet
I think I was completely unprepared.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
What is your favorite piece of parenting advice to share?
Speaker 2 (00:32):
I would say that I have no parenting advice.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
I'm Hurrycandibolu, I'm doctor pre uncle Wally, and this is
health stuff. Hey, buddy, Hello.
Speaker 4 (00:49):
Hello, Hi, So good to see you.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
Good to see you as well. I'm excited about our topic.
It's about, let me pronounce it, matrescence.
Speaker 4 (00:59):
Matrescence, yes, trust the process of motherhood.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
But before we get into that, I want to ask you, Harry,
because you transitioned into fatherhood, which is a huge, huge
life transition. There's actually published studies that show that when
a person becomes a father or a parent, there are
actually changes in their brain, parts of their brain, change
(01:22):
that don't happen if you aren't a parent. And so
I'm curious when you became a father, did you experience
emotional changes that were different for you that you never
experienced before.
Speaker 3 (01:40):
It's definitely a kind of love I've never experienced before.
Oh wow, It's like it's not like the love that
you have for your parents or partners or siblings. It's
a completely new love. And I thought I knew enough
about love, you know, being at that point thirty eight
years old. But I didn't like because there's this new
love that enters your life, that is that can be
(02:00):
very obsessive and very constantly.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
You know.
Speaker 3 (02:03):
That was one thing, Like the first time I held
that kid and put him to my chest, you know,
like skin to skin, I felt so connected to another
living thing in a way that I've never felt before.
I don't know if there was immediately a rewiring, but
you know, the idea that I wasn't number one hit
me really quick, like this is number one. This is
the most important thing that is happening in this moment
(02:26):
and will be the only thing that not the only thing,
but it will be the thing that I center my
life around. It was pretty like immediate to me.
Speaker 4 (02:34):
Wow, that feeling, Yeah, that is beautiful.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
I mean I got chills just hearing that. But then
so your life changes because you suddenly become obsessed with
this other person.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
Yeah, after years of being obsessed with myself, and not
just in the normal way that people you know have
egos and stuff, but like in the like live performer
kind of way of stand up comedy being your existence,
Like standardcompts are obsessed with their stuff because they're they're
the product, they're the business, they're they're everything, and they're there.
Does require a certain degree of ego to feel like
(03:12):
you can go up on a stage and say I
have something you should listen to. And so having the kid,
like some of those feelings like they're still there, but
they don't. It feels different because the kid has to eat.
There's still like the practical parts of I need to
make money, and but you know, all of a sudden
that becomes so much more of a driving force in
(03:33):
the work. What do I need to do to support
my kid? What do I do I need to do
to feed my kid? What do I need to do
to shelter my kid? Like there's a certain part of
me that's a precious artist that won't do this or
won't do that, that had to die because like ultimately,
like I know, I'm going to be there for my
kid and I'm going to do what I need to
do for for him. But I know that I'm happiest
(03:56):
when I'm with my kid, Like there's no there's no question.
It's a very straight but like, regardless of how the
days going, when I'm with him, I feel more secure
in my life. I just feel like, Okay, he's with me,
so that means he's okay, And it's just an incredible feeling.
Speaker 4 (04:11):
Do you feel like.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
You've become better at understanding other people since the birth
of your son? And the reason I asked this question
is because the actual structural changes that happen in the
male brain occur in parts of the default mode network
that are involved in understanding others.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
And empathy definitely empathy for my parents. I mean, this
is why they're out of their minds, Like, this is
why they're so even at forty three now, they still
are obsessed with me as if I'm a child, are
constantly worried, And I get it more now than I
ever have. So I get that, and I definitely can
sympathize with other parents certainly, just I understand why my
(04:56):
friends seem to disappear once they have kids, like what
processes like, Like you're so I mean, it's consuming. I
also sympathize with those who have to go to work
and have to get childcare so early in their kid's life,
because it's this delicate balance between how can I be
the best parent I can be? But under like a
(05:16):
system of capitalism, where you have to work, you have
to produce, you have to make money. I don't think
you wanted to get a babysitter or a nanny, but
what were you supposed to do? You know, your salary
is probably paying for the childcare.
Speaker 4 (05:27):
Right exactly.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
Yeah, did you identify as someone who was a very
like caregiving personality prior to becoming a father?
Speaker 3 (05:37):
Yeah, I've always had elements of that. I get that
from my mom certainly, and I've had that with friends,
with family.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
And after you had your kid, do you feel like
it deepened or it was like you just continued like
what was innately part of you?
Speaker 3 (05:52):
It felt like all the things that were innately part
of me made more sense. Oh wow, like, oh, this
is all these things I learned, like learning how to
love something, learning how to take care of something, learning
how to value another human being, Like all those things
get totally applied to this child. And it also teaches
(06:14):
me how important parenting is and like how delicate we
all are because people are traumatized by different things, and
you know, you see that play out for the rest
of their lives in different ways. And hopefully people are
getting the therapy they need to decode it and deconstruct
it and realize that they can get past the trauma.
(06:35):
But like you start to think that I don't want
to be a cause of trauma for this child, Like
what do I have to do to, you know, to
keep this kid as secure as possible while still not
like blinding him to the realities of the world. That's
such a delicate balance. It's so hard.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
So much of society sort of paints this idea that,
at least when it comes to matrescence, that motherhood is
this sort of glorious natural process that happened seamlessly, and
some of the heavier emotions, the guilt, the inadequacy, the shame.
(07:16):
No one really talks about that, and we'll talk about
that with our guest today. But I'm curious, did you
experience some of those darker feelings, and if yes, how
did you navigate that into your life?
Speaker 4 (07:30):
Like was their depression, was their guild.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
I didn't, but you know, I had a partner at
the time who was experiencing things I didn't understand, and
I don't want to go too deeply into it because
it's not my life experience. You know. My life experience
was trying to be supportive of a person and not
understanding what was going on, and that was really frustrating.
I don't know what I'm doing right and what I'm
(07:57):
doing wrong, and I don't know how I can help
and be more supportive, and that's hard. That's an uncomfortable feeling,
more so for them. But like you know that that
was my experience.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
Mainly, my hope is with meeting Lucy Jones today, we
can share with the public so much that there is
to learn about the process of matrescence, so that you know,
we can't change what we don't see. And matrescence as
a term, it's not even actually a word in the
dictionary that you can look up. It's literally not part
(08:32):
of ours geis is not part of our consciousness. So
my hope is that this episode will help people to
at least put some terminology around a huge, huge transition
with a huge, huge range of emotions that people are
experiencing and in doing so, perhaps we can be a
little bit more understanding, be a little bit kinder, and
(08:56):
recognize that what people are going through these major life
transitions is something that we can support as a society.
Speaker 3 (09:05):
Yeah. I think this episode is going to reveal a
lot and I have a lot of questions, Like, I'm
just I'm fascinated by the research.
Speaker 4 (09:13):
Cool. Let's get to our guest.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
We will see you right after this break. Our guest
today is a science journalist and author. Her latest book
is called Matrescence On the Metamorphosis of Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Motherhood,
and in it she focuses on the complicated and life
changing process of becoming a mother. She's a mother herself
(09:40):
with personal experience with how surprising and mysterious that transition
can be.
Speaker 4 (09:45):
Welcome to the show, Lucy, Welcome, Lucy, thank you.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
I'm really glad to be here.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
For listeners who are new to the concept, what is matrescence?
Speaker 2 (09:53):
So, matressence is actually quite a simple concept. It simply
means the process of becoming a so it's a little
like adolescence, and it was coined in the nineteen seventies
by the late American anthropologist Dana Raphael, and it has
grown in kind of use in the last five to
(10:14):
ten years or so. Let me go back a bit
and made me tell you a bit about why I
think this word is so important and so transformative. I
had my first kid in twenty sixteen, and the experience
of becoming a mother was so much wilder and more
dramatic and hard and ecstatic and euphoric and difficult and
(10:40):
disturbing than I had ever realized. And for quite a
long time, I thought there was something quite wrong with
me to be finding it like such a big deal
and to be struggling really to adapt to it. And
then I read an article in The New York Times
by the reproductive psychiatrist Alexander Sachs called the Birth of
a Mother, and she was right about this concept of
(11:02):
matrescence and about how when a person becomes a mother
it's one of the biggest kind of psychological, emotional, hormonal,
social cultural experiences in life. And I read this word matrescence,
and I had been diagnosed with personal depression and I
was really struggling with it, and that just seeing that
(11:22):
word made my shoulders drop and I felt like I
could breathe and I was like, oh, okay, so this
is actually a transition period. This is not what I've
been told it should be, which is like, you know,
have a baby, bodies like a flower pot, bounce back,
(11:43):
look normal a few weeks later, go back to work,
be the same as you were before. And I just
found that word and the concept just incredibly helpful in
my own mattrescence and really soothing. I mean, it's not
it's not my word. I didn't coin it, and lots
of people are studying it, and I think it's a
really useful framing for thinking about this transition to parenthood
(12:07):
and for father's it's patressance and a way of drawing
attention to a really neglected, underacknowledged, underwritten time which for
many surprisingly large numbers, is very difficult. And I'm sure
we'll go into why.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
With your experience. What made it so destabilizing and disorienting.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
So I'd always wanted to be a mum and have kids,
and she was a much longed for child, and yet
I think I was completely unprepared and unaware of what
the realities of the high needs of an infant are
and also the impact bodily and mentally, so I'd kind
(12:53):
of grown up in I guess classic kind of dualist,
kind of liberal feminist culture, and I'm massively privileged in
lots of different ways, and I'd kind of been raised
to be like a man, I suppose, you know, given
like you know, it was all about my career and
my work and my job and stuff, and really enjoyed
(13:14):
the independence that came with that. I was really like
brought into the myth of independence and autonomy. And I
never really needed anyone, and I think for me, there's
probably a complicated trauma response from there as well, not
wanted to need anyone or finding it hard to ask
for help, that kind of thing. And I had really
(13:35):
internalized and absorbed these very basic, like naive shadow ideas
of motherhood, so like maternal ideals that were very romanticized.
I grew up in very kind of conservative evangelical Christianity,
so the kind of ideas of Mary, and we had
these icons of Mary on the wall when I was
(13:56):
growing up, and she was, you know, beholding Jesus and
she just always looks so chill, but she kind of
has like the chill vibe of someone who might be
actually a bit depressed, but like she just looks like
blissed out, and you know, Jesus is like never crying,
like never biting her, you know, which is not my
(14:16):
experience of having young children. You know, It's like went
into it, I think, you know, and I'd studied like literature,
and I don't think I'd ever read a account of childbirth.
You know, we have no songs about birth or any motherhood.
It's such an underwritten, unrecorded and ignored and a kind
of invisibilized experience in our in our culture and our arts,
(14:39):
and of course our politics. So I think I went
into it knave, And in short, the experience for me was,
you know, such a paradox, one of you know, total
joy and gratitude and like adoration of our spectac baby,
(15:01):
but also like a sense that everything I thought I
knew was kind of like the ground had fallen away
beneath my feet. And some of that was really hard.
So I had postnatal anxiety and depression, but thankfully I
responded really quickly to treatment and had really good care.
But it was not that abnormal rates of postnatal depression
(15:24):
in parents are very high, and rates of stress and
burnout and loneliness, but even with my significant privilege. There
was something about the way my society, my cultures were
organized which I started to feel that there was something
really wrong with it. It's classic neoliberal, independent lack of community,
(15:48):
really really loving family and friends, but everyone's working, and
everyone's got their own stuff and really craved like older
female relatives or I just really craved people. I was
on my own a lot. My husband would work, you know,
quite long hours and totally normal stuff for parenthood at
this dawn age. But I think that it's actually really
(16:12):
weird and abnormal that we expect, particularly new mothers to
spend up to like twelve hours alone with the baby
every day and we're not evolved for that. That's just crazy.
So yeah, there was hard stuff, but the experience for
me was also one of like like a kind of awakening,
I guess, or apocalyptic in a sense of like a
(16:34):
political radicalizing or a realization of how much more ecological
we are and how connected we are, realizing the myth
of the kind of dominant cultural messages that I'd grown
up in, and that was actually very thrilling in ways
I mean depressing and obviously bittersweet, but if we look
at how societies treat vulnerable the vulnerable, and there are
(16:58):
obviously different vulnerabilities across different lines. In this transition to parentnhood,
I think we can learn quite a lot about our values.
And yeah, I found that very politicizing. It was from
the most socio political experience of my life.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
So you're describing so articulately this background of being culturally
adapted to survive in a almost hyper independent state, not
being able to ask for help, you know, being able
to do everything by yourself. And yet our biology is
(17:35):
something completely different. Like we know biologically, when a person
becomes a mother, there are significant changes.
Speaker 4 (17:44):
In the brain.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
The gray matter of the brain becomes smaller, white matter
becomes more organized. The whole purpose of that is to
actually become more connected to your child, your baby. The
hormone owns are literally designed to improve mother infant bonding.
Your sense of self changes so that you will be
(18:08):
more connected, the opposite of this hyperindependence. So our biology
is literally fighting against the cultural adaptations that we have
created for decades. So why do you think society has
basically failed to prepare people for a parenthood in this way?
Speaker 2 (18:30):
Yeah, that's such a good point about the mismatch, the
brain changes happening at this time of real disconnection and
loneliness and not a historian, but when industrialization started to
happen in the eighteenth century, there was this split, and
this idea of a kind of femininity and the maternal
(18:50):
and the family being in the private sphere was created
in contrast to the public sphere. I'm sorry, but I
am talking. I guess uk centric these homes which were intergenerational,
and there was a household economy where everyone was working
out of But then with industrialization, everyone's leaving the land
(19:13):
and going into the cities, and you have this real split.
And at that point you have this naturalizing and romanticizing
of mother and child. And I don't think that we've
really ever integrated the two spheres. I think we still
you know, it's that classic thing of mothers often phil
you have to work as if you do not have children,
(19:35):
but have children as if you have you don't work,
And these, you know, these two realms are necessarily so split.
One of the dominant reasons for that is because of
the way we organize our economy and the way that
growth and profit is the dominant value system. Caregiving doesn't
really fit into that. And apart from the fact we're
(19:57):
raising workers, it's this kind of just unintegrated situation. What
do you guys think I'd be interested to know what
you think.
Speaker 1 (20:06):
I think we're reaching a very interesting point where we've
just created a society that isn't incongruence with our biology
and we're running this This is what happens when you
go out of sync with that process. So from my perspective,
at some point we made the wrong decision. And for
(20:30):
what caused that. Was it inherently a trauma response? Was
it inherently a distrust of our own natural processes?
Speaker 4 (20:38):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (20:39):
I think it is like an existential issue. We need
to come to Jesus about this issue and like really
just acknowledge that if we don't recognize what's going on
biologically and actually change our society to reflect that, we're
going to just continue to suffer. And I think as
a medical professional, for me, you know, matressence isn't even
(21:02):
recognized right now by medical professionals. Like we have obg
Yns that are the doctors that specialize in the female body,
But do we have a specialization like adolescent medicine, like
there are physicians that specialize in adolescent medicine. I do
think it would be beneficial if we had physicians that
specialized in matrescence medicine. So I think unless the medical
(21:28):
professional community can recognize that this is a phenomenon and
it needs care and understanding, we still have a long
ways to go in terms of how we're actually going
to repair our societies and structures.
Speaker 3 (21:45):
I mean what resonated with me is how you talked
about raising a generation of workers, right, because that is
how people are viewed under capitalism, and I think, you know,
we see examples of how mothers are and their hood
is seen as a detriment to capitalism. It slows things down.
It means that women aren't promoted because they're going to
(22:08):
have kids. And to me, it's like, so much of
this is built on how modern capitalism looks, and so
with that being kind of the push for everything that
we do. Of course, matrescens isn't valued. Of course motherhood
isn't valued. It's in conflict with these end goals exactly.
Speaker 2 (22:26):
And you know, even in how we calculate GDP for countries,
you know, kind of anything to do with children, childcare,
child raising, you know, the kind of raising of you know,
the workforce isn't even in it, so it's kind of
a fiction, you know, this kind of mythic idea. To
go back to your point, I think that that's one
(22:48):
of the reasons why this like emerging area of the
maternal brain and the parental brain is so exciting. So
one of the reasons why I wrote this book is
because in twenty six, when my first child was born,
the first really major study in the maternal brain was published,
which showed that pregnancy renders pronounced and significant changes in
(23:12):
the brain. And that was something I kind of intuitively
felt like. My daughter was born and I felt so
different to who I was before. It wasn't just that
my every day it was different. I just felt like
on a very cellular, existential nervous system level, like where
have I gone? I feel my attention, the way my
(23:34):
brain is working feels so different, and so it was
such a relief to start reading these studies I'm really
excited about. There's so many scientists across the world, a
lot of North America who are spending time trying to
really understand what happens to the brain when people have
(23:54):
kids and we're already finding out incredible stuff. I had
no idea that the changes that pregnancy renders in the
brain are as dramatic as those in adolescents. And we
all know that adolescence is this kind of insanely destabilizing
time where the person is vulnerable and probably need some
(24:17):
more care or you know, but we've neglected that this
is what happens to the majority of women, and it
happens for men as well. Like, so this brain research
is showing that fathers with hands on affectionate care giving
their brains changed too, and of course nongestational mothers and
adoptive parents will know that. I think that really speaks
(24:39):
to your point that our biology is so odds with
our society. And it's this work as well, which is
kind of something which I think is starting to erode,
that that the brain science shows us that everyone is
born with the neural circuitry to care. So it's not
just women who can give care, and that oppressive idea
(25:00):
that just women should be doing the caring, like science
is just showing that men concurred too. We can all care.
Many women would have died in childbirth, you know, like
we're all evolved to have that circuitry to care for
our babies, So I'm excited about where that's going.
Speaker 3 (25:19):
More to come on health stuff. I mean, you touched
on this earlier, but what does evolutionary and anthropological research
tell us about how humans were actually meant to raise children?
Speaker 2 (25:35):
Yeah? Okay, So I really loved reading about this and
learning a bit about this, and most of this work
comes from this legendary anthropologist, Sarah Blaffer Herdie. So I
came to this a bit late in the writing of
my book, actually, but I started to think. I think
probably when my baby started to move around a bit more,
(25:58):
and for sure when our second child arrived, I started
to think, how on earth did my ancestors or the
older women in my family do this. It just seems
practically impossible to look after two infants on your own,
you know. And of course different children have different temperaments
and different needs. My elder two children needed a lot
(26:21):
of attention and carrying and holding, and at times I thought,
I don't think I'm involved for this. I don't believe
that I have a nervous system that can cope with this.
If I quanko to the louh, I can't feed myself,
you know, que a load of stress. And I was
so naive. I really thought that like the traditional family
(26:44):
was a nuclear family, and you know, that was my idea,
and I thought, what is wrong with me? I'm finding
this so difficult, but this is how people have always
done it. And then of course that is absolutely not true.
And we spend ninety nine percent of our evolutionary history
as humans in collective caregiving networks, where as groups we
(27:10):
would have raised young. I didn't put this in my
book Mtrescence, because this work came out just after. But
I think there's some really interesting and important work being
done by a guy called Nikhil Chowdhury at the University
of Cambridge. So he's been studying modern hunter gatherer groups
for many years and one of the studies that he published,
(27:31):
he's an evolutionary anthropologist, found that in modern groups, and
obviously you can't completely directly, you know, say that this
is what happened, but it suggests something about how we've evolved.
So between I think ten and twenty people would hold
the baby and every day as well as the mother.
(27:51):
So this is called alo mothers or alo mothering. And
then the mother would hold a baby for kind of
maybe like fifty percent of the day time so that
she could rest and recover from birth and have that
collective attachment as well to the child. Twentieth century psychoanalysis
and psychology and touch child development near this kind of
(28:13):
boom of it all with Bowlby and Winnicott and this
kind of attachment theory all really great, Like, yes, you know,
that has really improved things. But I think, and this
is what Herdie argues, that it has been done through
a lens of the kind of nuclear family, particularly the mother,
(28:34):
or thinking that it's the mother who has to provide
this really intense attachment. That is not how we have
lived and how we've evolved. So yeah, I found that
incredibly useful. And I also think so many new parents
feel so much shame and they struggle, and they just
think that there's something so wrong with me because I'm
not like baking apple pie every day and not like
(28:56):
super happy every day. And it just it was the village.
It's how he evoldes and it's how it's meant to.
Speaker 1 (29:02):
Be if you think about it, just from a logical perspective,
that's too much pressure on a single person to be
responsible for all of the emotional needs and to run
the household and to do it by yourself, and then
also to give your body for the feeding and all
(29:23):
of that. I mean, it's just it doesn't make rational
sense to put all of those responsibilities on one human being.
I wonder in these studies that you're referring to, like,
what were the rates of postpartum depression in these types
of settings. We know in the Western studies up to
(29:43):
eighty percent of mother's experience what we call the baby blues.
One in eight new mother's experience postpartum depression, and that's
postpartum and there's also perinatal depression, which is where while
you're pregnant and even up to a year after childbirth,
one in seven people can have perinatal depression. It makes
me wonder, is this an illness that is situational because
(30:08):
there's so much pressure on one person to basically be
this ideal human being, which is unreasonable. Could we bring
these rates down if we were having ten to twenty
to fifteen people caring for us while we're raising our child.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
I think that is exactly the question that we should
be asking, and it's one of the questions. That was
kind of driving my writing of kind of how much
maternal mental illness is inevitable and biological and intrinsic, you know,
because there is this enormous hormone drop like nothing else
in human life that happens after birth, certain people are
(30:51):
susceptible at that point to mental illness. And about that,
like the hormone stuff that happens in pregnancy, I had
no idea, no hormone to changing two hundred by three
hundred times. Some are changing by a thousand times. Some
hormones are there that have ever been in your body before.
It is the most kind of seismic endochronological experience that
(31:14):
you can have in adult life. There is obviously a
biological fragility, and we know there are accounts of what
seems to be like postpartum psychosism meant to onness hundreds
and hundreds of years old. But I believe that, like
you say, it's irrational to think that levels of chronic loneliness,
(31:39):
the studies suggest that most parents feel chronically lonely, like
a level of loneliness and stress and burnout. I heard
on your podcast. Actually these are what happens in life
affects our health, and I think we live in a
healthcare system still where it's not just mind and body
that are set, but it's like life, stuff and health,
(32:03):
which are also seen as separate. Additionally, you have still
a lot of stigma around maternal mental illness. And now
I was really scared to write my book, and I
felt it took a lot out of me because I
think there's still this idea that if you criticize the
institution of motherhood or the institution of family, the kind
(32:25):
of default need reaction is, oh, you mustn't love your children.
There's something like wrong with you if you don't love
your children. I adore my children. I love being a mother.
Brought me the greatest joy of my life. But I
think the institution of motherhood is cruel and oppressive, and
it's sad it doesn't and it doesn't need to be
(32:45):
that way. But like you say, it's so connected to
capitalism and the economy. There's a lot of grassroots work happening,
of people creating villages and networks of care. I think
a couple of years ago I might have thought, you
really need government to invest more and research and childcast centers,
and I feel a little less optimistic that that's ever
(33:07):
going to happen in our current climate and structure.
Speaker 1 (33:11):
I just want to say I can imagine that it
took a tremendous amount of courage to write your book.
I mean I read it and there were moments throughout
reading it where I had to stop and put it down,
and I even shed a tear or two around some
of the things that you wrote. I mean, it really
was so powerful from my experience of just especially listening
(33:37):
to over the years, like patients that have come in
and you see them change, like you take care of
them before they get pregnant, and then you see them
after they get pregnant, and it's clear this person has
gone through a significant transformation. And your book actually allowed
me the vocabulary in terms of like really caring for
other people. So I really want to thank you for that.
(34:01):
What comes up for me around so much of what
you're unpacking is these unnatural expectations. And as you wrote
this book and you were dealing with your own postpartum,
when you learn the science behind what is going on
and how common it was, how did that change your
experience of what you were going through.
Speaker 2 (34:24):
It's such a good question, and thank you for saying that.
It's incredibly moving to here. So in the early months
of my first child's life, the kind of discombobulation and
destabilization that I felt in my sense of self and identity,
and I'm sure so much of that was simply just
(34:45):
being alone in not really seeing anyone for a long time,
I did what I think many people do. I felt
so ashamed of not loving every minute and finding it
really hard. I withdrew and I kind of isolated myself
for a while, found classic depression really And then when
(35:06):
I saw these diagrams of the brain in el Selina
Hooksman's study that I mentioned about the seismic changes that
happened in pregnancy, just seeing those brains on the screen
which had this kind of yellow areas of where things
had changed in multiple areas of the brain that had
(35:27):
the kind of similar like powerful effect to me as
reading the word matrescence, because I kind of realized, Oh,
this isn't all in my head, This isn't me just
being wrong or something faulty in me or something like that,
you know, like this is actually a huge transition that
(35:48):
as a society we've neglected and we've kind of forgotten about,
and so the science and then you know, I found
it really fascinating as well. So I love learning about microchirism,
which is this this area of science particularly driven by
someone called Diane Bayankei in North America. And one of
(36:09):
the things I felt after my daughter had been born
was that she'd never fully left my body. I felt
still attached to her. Or if I was trying to
have a conversation with someone, I couldn't like not look
at her. Or if she would cry in the night,
it would what be like my body would wake up
even before it. Microchimerism is this science which has found
that when we are in our were in our mother's wombs,
(36:33):
our cells crossed the center and the cells of the
fetus remain in the maternal body in multiple areas. Scientists
anial exactly how long, but possibly even forever. So they've
been found in various different organs, breast tissue, the brain,
and any body who's an evolutionary scientist has worked on
(36:58):
this area a lot. The theories are those cells might
remain in the maternal body just as a simple byproduct.
They might be there doing negative things because they've been
found in areas of disease, but they might be there
to do something to do with the attachment and bonding
and lactation. Even they've been fantacesarean scars, so even possibly repair.
(37:21):
I loved the science because it was it was telling
a story that, you know, I felt was far truer
than the kind of dominant cultural myths. I always feel
safe in science. The maternal experience has a lot of ideology,
and particularly around the idea of the natural, natural birth,
natural motherhood, this idea of nature, it becomes a kind
(37:45):
of sight where people project kind of fantasies and ideals,
and I mean I was very sucked in by that. Actually,
you know that if you do your natural childbirth classes
that you'll never you won't feel any pain, or breastfeeding
will just happen. And that was not my experience at all.
It was much more complicated. So I think, yeah, science
(38:05):
can sort of the myth from the reality, for all
its faults.
Speaker 3 (38:10):
I wanted to shift gears just a little bit, you know,
because we were talking about how the external factors of
the world like affect your health, and with that in mind,
you know, how does racism, classism, and inequality directly enter
the womb and shape outcomes for babies and mothers.
Speaker 2 (38:27):
Yeah, great question and a big question. I'll mentioned first.
I think the work of Pill Young Kim, who has
done a lot of studies and work on how severe
stress affects the transition to parenthood. The transition to parenthood
is a time of neuroplasticity, so the brain is kind
(38:50):
of open, as it were, and changing, and that makes
it more vulnerable to severe stress. And she's found that
if a person has kind of socio economic disadvantage, so
living in poverty, experiencing racism, domestic violence, child loss, the
brain will be more affected by the severe stress. This
(39:14):
is an area of society where discrimination and inequality is
very laid bare in lots of different ways. So I
think in the States, women of color are four times
more likely to die in childbirth. In England it's around
the same. That's sustain on our society, and I know
(39:37):
the UK in the US is a slightly different, but
you know, how is that not the number one priority
for our healthcare in terms of class The way society
is structured, transport routes, bus routes. We in the UK,
we used to have these things called shore Start centers,
which were children's centers where you could go and do
(39:57):
a playgroup or get assistance and help. But they are
more likely to be more accessible to people who can
drive or you don't have to go back to work
after a couple of weeks. This is an area where
we can see the kind of horrific inequalities in our society,
and in terms of stress, burnout, illness, also death and survival.
Speaker 1 (40:20):
Yeah, And just to sort of piggyback off that, because
you write about this in the book about how our
societal priorities seem really off when it comes to maternal care.
You have this part in the book where you're like, Okay,
when you're pregnant, you're told don't eat soft cheese because
(40:41):
that's really bad. But then what about air pollution and
toxins and microplastics and all these other things that we
know affect maternal outcomes as well, And so I'm curious,
how do you sort of wrap your mind around that
about like what this says about our society's already use.
Speaker 2 (41:01):
I guess it's kind of fundamentally very individualistic, isn't it.
And I suppose it goes back a bit to what
we're saying, and how under a late capitalist organization of society,
mothers and the maternal body are periphery kind of places
(41:22):
where the harms of capitalism show up but inevitably need
to be concealed because it doesn't really you know, who's
gonna regulate or tax companies about air pollution. It's much
easier to say, don't eat soft cheese, isn't it. I
think we all forget how dependent we were on our mothers,
(41:44):
and particularly Western culture of hyper independence, and really kind
of forgetting that you were ever in someone's body or
totally dependent on someone. A bit uncomfortable about it, but
I think there are like reds avoirs of like anger
(42:05):
and I've really noticed this, and since my book came out,
my sense is that there is this kind of untapped
like anger and revolt, and like real appetite and thirst
for networks of care and village and doing things differently
(42:25):
and valuing care and valuing time with loved ones and
art and spending time in restorative spaces and outside the
marketplace that I love buying and the marketplace too. I'm
not some virtuous hippie or anything, but you know, like
there still is a real undercurrent of wanting things to
(42:48):
be different.
Speaker 4 (42:51):
We're going to take a short break.
Speaker 2 (42:52):
Stay with us.
Speaker 3 (42:58):
How can partners best support the parent giving birth?
Speaker 2 (43:02):
It's a good question. I think probably asking first, asking
the partner what they think they need or what they
might need so the birthing person can receive what they need.
I think probably boning up on the science of matrescence
and patrescence and you know, and getting a bit aware
(43:22):
of what happens and you know, actually what kind of
different issues that might happen can look like. I think
recognizing that this is a time of transition. Matresses can
go on for years, and you know, it can be
a really up and down experience. So yeah, that's what
(43:44):
That's what i'd say.
Speaker 1 (43:47):
And I know your book focuses on your experience of
pregnancy and birth, but do you have any comment on
what people who might become parents in other ways, like
let's say, through adoption. How do you think matrescence sort
of shows up for single fathers or adoptive parents who
(44:08):
are adjusting to their new life, new identity, new responsibilities.
Speaker 2 (44:14):
I mean, I would really love to read books by
by people in that experience. I don't feel like I
can speak to that or for that. You know, my
book is very much kind of subjective and from our
own experience. But I've met so many people in the
last couple of years, and you know, this kind of
(44:35):
matrescence protressns per intessence. I think that we'll find out
a lot more about how it happens. The main thing
is the connection of the two beings. You know, pregnancy
obviously rend gives this kind of quite unique neural experience,
but everyone can attach and your new nervous systems wired
(44:57):
together your you know, your brains are constantly changing, and
we know that men who are more active fathers and
have presumably those brain changes, are more at risk of
postingtal depression. That's just recently come out by work by
Darby Saxby, who's really great. So I don't feel that
I can talk with much depth about those experiences, but
(45:21):
I imagine everyone will have a transitional experience where they
need some care and support.
Speaker 3 (45:28):
This is a big question, but what would a world
look like where matrescence was visible, honored, studied, and supported.
Speaker 2 (45:39):
So I think it would look like a world where
it was just normal to people would know that when
you become a parent, it's a transitional stage and a
time where they will need possibly more support that they
are going through something which is a big deal. And
then it would like investment in anti care. So I
(46:01):
think an understanding of mtrescent's having the time to kind
of talk about the psychological and emotional transition to motherhood
in more depth would be really great. And then birth,
like I say, there are really big issues in the
UK and I don't know enough about the US to
really comment on it, but it's crazy to me that
(46:24):
this moment which can have such effects on both mother
and baby family, there's such high levels of birth trauma
that should be so invested in and prioritized as you know,
a woman centered, mother, pregnent, person centered place. In the UK,
(46:45):
we have what's called baby friendly hospitals and it's very
you know, it needs to be mother and baby centered.
And then the first few years of motherhood and parenthood. Again,
what a world do we live in when we tell
mothers and we tell new parents that the first years
are like the most important in a person's life and
(47:08):
anything you do is going to have these repercussions. And
I in my voice you could probably hear my frustration
with that. And it's not that those views aren't important.
Of course they are, we know that, But why is
this a time of such like social cruelty. One of
the things that I I learned from Danna Raphael's research
(47:30):
on Mtressens, who coined the bird, was this idea of
a kind of newborn mother basically allowing her to heal
from the of trauma whichever way it happens of birth
and pregnancy, so that she can feed the baby but
also be looked after. You get on with it and
you're enjoying your privacy and your autonomy and your independence.
But I think we need a ritual or right or
(47:52):
a way of holding the newborn mother and father. I
think we've lost like a sense of ritual. Hmm.
Speaker 4 (48:01):
That's great.
Speaker 1 (48:02):
So before we wrap up, is there anything else that
you feel is important to share to our listeners about
what you understand?
Speaker 2 (48:12):
I'd probably share that if you are in early motherhood
and you're finding it really difficult and psychologically challenging, and
you think you're alone and it's just you, you're really not,
and there is help out there. There is medical help,
there are groups and support groups and ways of finding
(48:35):
other people who are feeling exactly the same. You don't
need to suffer alone. Maybe that's a bit lithe or.
Speaker 1 (48:43):
No, no, that's beautiful. I think it's so apt and
I agree, I strongly agree.
Speaker 3 (48:50):
What is your favorite piece of parenting advice to share?
Speaker 2 (48:54):
I would say that I have no parenting advice because
because I actually hate it. I think we're in this
kind of culture of like intensive parenting and like intensive motherhood,
as sociologists call it. I'm totally seduced by it. I
(49:16):
like read all the books and I watch all the
instagrams about how to talk to my children. And it's
great that we are kinder to our kids. Come from
a generation when we were all smacked all the time,
and you know, I'm really glad that that's not how
we do it now. But at the same time, I
think there is an industry of parenting and an industry
(49:38):
of training mothers, and I don't have any parenting advice
at all. The thing that works for me is to
find something that I can do with the kids that
I don't find too stressful. So that's for me is
going to the woods or being outside or maybe doing
(49:59):
some drawing. But then I cannot do soft play I
can't really do imagine to play, so just working out
things which are tolerable and fun. But know, no advice
from me. I'm afraid the.
Speaker 4 (50:12):
Best advice is no advice. I love that. That's great.
Speaker 1 (50:16):
Thank you so much, Lucy for coming here and educating
us about matrescans. We really appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (50:23):
Thank you for having me.
Speaker 3 (50:24):
Yeah, absolutely, thanks so much.
Speaker 1 (50:30):
Wow, I'm so glad we had her on to talk
to us about, clearly an area that isn't talked about enough.
Speaker 3 (50:39):
No, there's so many things that kind of made me think.
But when she said that there was a time where
ten to fifteen people would touch a child in a day,
like the idea that you had that much support, that
there were that many people, whether it's neighbors or extended family,
I mean, just that's that's incredible.
Speaker 1 (50:59):
It's impossis but imagine. I mean it's almost like a fantasy.
Motherhood would almost seem kind of easy if you had
twenty people that could hold the baby while you're like
recovering and.
Speaker 4 (51:10):
Chilling, and fatherhood as well.
Speaker 1 (51:12):
I mean it just I believe, and this is part
of the reason we're doing this show. But like this
is I really believe at some point Harrey, like, we
can change our society to become more inclusive and kinder
and working together. Like I agreed with the things she
(51:33):
was saying about how damaging hyperindividualism can be to our
health and our biology. And I do hope that when
we have conversations like this, we can be more receptive
to the idea of working together, working in community, so
that we can raise kids in a better way and
(51:54):
make it easier not just for the kids, but for
everybody involved.
Speaker 3 (51:59):
I'm in complete agreement, and we touched on this too,
but just the role capitalism plays this thing that is
in every part of our lives, but it certainly is
been uh parenting as well. And when you're already dealing
with so much as a new mother, and you have
(52:19):
all these expectations to be a supermom and also to
be a worker, how do you contribute to the economy.
The idea of bouncing back after four weeks and a
way to work is absurd. I mean even the fact
that when the mother takes off to have the child,
she has to file for disability. Yeah, like it's considered
a disability, like which is absurd. Like the foundation of
(52:41):
life is considered a disability, but under like when you
look at capitalism, Yeah, of course it's a disability. Like
it doesn't doesn't lead to work, It slows down, you know,
the machine, and that's so unfortunate. So I think she
really humanizes the process for people and also shows you
how how many obstacles are truly in the way and
(53:03):
that are institutional.
Speaker 4 (53:05):
Yeah, and environmental.
Speaker 3 (53:07):
Right.
Speaker 1 (53:07):
Part of why we're doing this show is not just
talking about health from an individual perspective, but a collective
perspective and how societal processes impact our health. And so again,
we cannot change what we do not name. This is
at least the start of a conversation.
Speaker 3 (53:24):
I agree. I thought that was a great episode. Thanks
to everyone for listening to the show. We're taking next
week off, but we'll be back the following week, April eighth,
with new episodes and new guests. Until then, catch up
on any episodes you may have missed, and we'll see
you real soon. Health Stuff is a production of iHeart Podcasts.
(53:47):
The show is hosted by me Harikin Debolu and doctor
Prianco Wally. Producers are Rebecca Eisenberg, Jenna Cagel, Christina Loranger,
Maya Howard, and Katrina Norville. Our researcher is Maria Trenmark
and our intern is kakia is obl Deayala. To send
us a question, you can email us at voicemail at
health Stuff Podcast at gmail dot com. Thank you for listening.
This podcast is for information purposes only and should not
be considered professional medical advice. We can change our society
to become more inclusive and kinder and working together.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
I'd always wanted to be a mom and have kids,
and she was a much longed for child, and yet
I think I was completely unprepared.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
What is your favorite piece of parenting advice to share?
Speaker 2 (00:32):
I would say that I have no parenting advice.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
I'm Hurrycandibolu, I'm doctor pre uncle Wally, and this is
health stuff. Hey, buddy, Hello.
Speaker 4 (00:49):
Hello, Hi, So good to see you.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
Good to see you as well. I'm excited about our topic.
It's about, let me pronounce it, matrescence.
Speaker 4 (00:59):
Matrescence, yes, trust the process of motherhood.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
But before we get into that, I want to ask you, Harry,
because you transitioned into fatherhood, which is a huge, huge
life transition. There's actually published studies that show that when
a person becomes a father or a parent, there are
actually changes in their brain, parts of their brain, change
(01:22):
that don't happen if you aren't a parent. And so
I'm curious when you became a father, did you experience
emotional changes that were different for you that you never
experienced before.
Speaker 3 (01:40):
It's definitely a kind of love I've never experienced before.
Oh wow, It's like it's not like the love that
you have for your parents or partners or siblings. It's
a completely new love. And I thought I knew enough
about love, you know, being at that point thirty eight
years old. But I didn't like because there's this new
love that enters your life, that is that can be
(02:00):
very obsessive and very constantly.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
You know.
Speaker 3 (02:03):
That was one thing, Like the first time I held
that kid and put him to my chest, you know,
like skin to skin, I felt so connected to another
living thing in a way that I've never felt before.
I don't know if there was immediately a rewiring, but
you know, the idea that I wasn't number one hit
me really quick, like this is number one. This is
the most important thing that is happening in this moment
(02:26):
and will be the only thing that not the only thing,
but it will be the thing that I center my
life around. It was pretty like immediate to me.
Speaker 4 (02:34):
Wow, that feeling, Yeah, that is beautiful.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
I mean I got chills just hearing that. But then
so your life changes because you suddenly become obsessed with
this other person.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
Yeah, after years of being obsessed with myself, and not
just in the normal way that people you know have
egos and stuff, but like in the like live performer
kind of way of stand up comedy being your existence,
Like standardcompts are obsessed with their stuff because they're they're
the product, they're the business, they're they're everything, and they're there.
Does require a certain degree of ego to feel like
(03:12):
you can go up on a stage and say I
have something you should listen to. And so having the kid,
like some of those feelings like they're still there, but
they don't. It feels different because the kid has to eat.
There's still like the practical parts of I need to
make money, and but you know, all of a sudden
that becomes so much more of a driving force in
(03:33):
the work. What do I need to do to support
my kid? What do I do I need to do
to feed my kid? What do I need to do
to shelter my kid? Like there's a certain part of
me that's a precious artist that won't do this or
won't do that, that had to die because like ultimately,
like I know, I'm going to be there for my
kid and I'm going to do what I need to
do for for him. But I know that I'm happiest
(03:56):
when I'm with my kid, Like there's no there's no question.
It's a very straight but like, regardless of how the
days going, when I'm with him, I feel more secure
in my life. I just feel like, Okay, he's with me,
so that means he's okay, And it's just an incredible feeling.
Speaker 4 (04:11):
Do you feel like.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
You've become better at understanding other people since the birth
of your son? And the reason I asked this question
is because the actual structural changes that happen in the
male brain occur in parts of the default mode network
that are involved in understanding others.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
And empathy definitely empathy for my parents. I mean, this
is why they're out of their minds, Like, this is
why they're so even at forty three now, they still
are obsessed with me as if I'm a child, are
constantly worried, And I get it more now than I
ever have. So I get that, and I definitely can
sympathize with other parents certainly, just I understand why my
(04:56):
friends seem to disappear once they have kids, like what
processes like, Like you're so I mean, it's consuming. I
also sympathize with those who have to go to work
and have to get childcare so early in their kid's life,
because it's this delicate balance between how can I be
the best parent I can be? But under like a
(05:16):
system of capitalism, where you have to work, you have
to produce, you have to make money. I don't think
you wanted to get a babysitter or a nanny, but
what were you supposed to do? You know, your salary
is probably paying for the childcare.
Speaker 4 (05:27):
Right exactly.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
Yeah, did you identify as someone who was a very
like caregiving personality prior to becoming a father?
Speaker 3 (05:37):
Yeah, I've always had elements of that. I get that
from my mom certainly, and I've had that with friends,
with family.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
And after you had your kid, do you feel like
it deepened or it was like you just continued like
what was innately part of you?
Speaker 3 (05:52):
It felt like all the things that were innately part
of me made more sense. Oh wow, like, oh, this
is all these things I learned, like learning how to
love something, learning how to take care of something, learning
how to value another human being, Like all those things
get totally applied to this child. And it also teaches
(06:14):
me how important parenting is and like how delicate we
all are because people are traumatized by different things, and
you know, you see that play out for the rest
of their lives in different ways. And hopefully people are
getting the therapy they need to decode it and deconstruct
it and realize that they can get past the trauma.
(06:35):
But like you start to think that I don't want
to be a cause of trauma for this child, Like
what do I have to do to, you know, to
keep this kid as secure as possible while still not
like blinding him to the realities of the world. That's
such a delicate balance. It's so hard.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
So much of society sort of paints this idea that,
at least when it comes to matrescence, that motherhood is
this sort of glorious natural process that happened seamlessly, and
some of the heavier emotions, the guilt, the inadequacy, the shame.
(07:16):
No one really talks about that, and we'll talk about
that with our guest today. But I'm curious, did you
experience some of those darker feelings, and if yes, how
did you navigate that into your life?
Speaker 4 (07:30):
Like was their depression, was their guild.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
I didn't, but you know, I had a partner at
the time who was experiencing things I didn't understand, and
I don't want to go too deeply into it because
it's not my life experience. You know. My life experience
was trying to be supportive of a person and not
understanding what was going on, and that was really frustrating.
I don't know what I'm doing right and what I'm
(07:57):
doing wrong, and I don't know how I can help
and be more supportive, and that's hard. That's an uncomfortable feeling,
more so for them. But like you know that that
was my experience.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
Mainly, my hope is with meeting Lucy Jones today, we
can share with the public so much that there is
to learn about the process of matrescence, so that you know,
we can't change what we don't see. And matrescence as
a term, it's not even actually a word in the
dictionary that you can look up. It's literally not part
(08:32):
of ours geis is not part of our consciousness. So
my hope is that this episode will help people to
at least put some terminology around a huge, huge transition
with a huge, huge range of emotions that people are
experiencing and in doing so, perhaps we can be a
little bit more understanding, be a little bit kinder, and
(08:56):
recognize that what people are going through these major life
transitions is something that we can support as a society.
Speaker 3 (09:05):
Yeah. I think this episode is going to reveal a
lot and I have a lot of questions, Like, I'm
just I'm fascinated by the research.
Speaker 4 (09:13):
Cool. Let's get to our guest.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
We will see you right after this break. Our guest
today is a science journalist and author. Her latest book
is called Matrescence On the Metamorphosis of Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Motherhood,
and in it she focuses on the complicated and life
changing process of becoming a mother. She's a mother herself
(09:40):
with personal experience with how surprising and mysterious that transition
can be.
Speaker 4 (09:45):
Welcome to the show, Lucy, Welcome, Lucy, thank you.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
I'm really glad to be here.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
For listeners who are new to the concept, what is matrescence?
Speaker 2 (09:53):
So, matressence is actually quite a simple concept. It simply
means the process of becoming a so it's a little
like adolescence, and it was coined in the nineteen seventies
by the late American anthropologist Dana Raphael, and it has
grown in kind of use in the last five to
(10:14):
ten years or so. Let me go back a bit
and made me tell you a bit about why I
think this word is so important and so transformative. I
had my first kid in twenty sixteen, and the experience
of becoming a mother was so much wilder and more
dramatic and hard and ecstatic and euphoric and difficult and
(10:40):
disturbing than I had ever realized. And for quite a
long time, I thought there was something quite wrong with
me to be finding it like such a big deal
and to be struggling really to adapt to it. And
then I read an article in The New York Times
by the reproductive psychiatrist Alexander Sachs called the Birth of
a Mother, and she was right about this concept of
(11:02):
matrescence and about how when a person becomes a mother
it's one of the biggest kind of psychological, emotional, hormonal,
social cultural experiences in life. And I read this word matrescence,
and I had been diagnosed with personal depression and I
was really struggling with it, and that just seeing that
(11:22):
word made my shoulders drop and I felt like I
could breathe and I was like, oh, okay, so this
is actually a transition period. This is not what I've
been told it should be, which is like, you know,
have a baby, bodies like a flower pot, bounce back,
(11:43):
look normal a few weeks later, go back to work,
be the same as you were before. And I just
found that word and the concept just incredibly helpful in
my own mattrescence and really soothing. I mean, it's not
it's not my word. I didn't coin it, and lots
of people are studying it, and I think it's a
really useful framing for thinking about this transition to parenthood
(12:07):
and for father's it's patressance and a way of drawing
attention to a really neglected, underacknowledged, underwritten time which for
many surprisingly large numbers, is very difficult. And I'm sure
we'll go into why.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
With your experience. What made it so destabilizing and disorienting.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
So I'd always wanted to be a mum and have kids,
and she was a much longed for child, and yet
I think I was completely unprepared and unaware of what
the realities of the high needs of an infant are
and also the impact bodily and mentally, so I'd kind
(12:53):
of grown up in I guess classic kind of dualist,
kind of liberal feminist culture, and I'm massively privileged in
lots of different ways, and I'd kind of been raised
to be like a man, I suppose, you know, given
like you know, it was all about my career and
my work and my job and stuff, and really enjoyed
(13:14):
the independence that came with that. I was really like
brought into the myth of independence and autonomy. And I
never really needed anyone, and I think for me, there's
probably a complicated trauma response from there as well, not
wanted to need anyone or finding it hard to ask
for help, that kind of thing. And I had really
(13:35):
internalized and absorbed these very basic, like naive shadow ideas
of motherhood, so like maternal ideals that were very romanticized.
I grew up in very kind of conservative evangelical Christianity,
so the kind of ideas of Mary, and we had
these icons of Mary on the wall when I was
(13:56):
growing up, and she was, you know, beholding Jesus and
she just always looks so chill, but she kind of
has like the chill vibe of someone who might be
actually a bit depressed, but like she just looks like
blissed out, and you know, Jesus is like never crying,
like never biting her, you know, which is not my
(14:16):
experience of having young children. You know, It's like went
into it, I think, you know, and I'd studied like literature,
and I don't think I'd ever read a account of childbirth.
You know, we have no songs about birth or any motherhood.
It's such an underwritten, unrecorded and ignored and a kind
of invisibilized experience in our in our culture and our arts,
(14:39):
and of course our politics. So I think I went
into it knave, And in short, the experience for me was,
you know, such a paradox, one of you know, total
joy and gratitude and like adoration of our spectac baby,
(15:01):
but also like a sense that everything I thought I
knew was kind of like the ground had fallen away
beneath my feet. And some of that was really hard.
So I had postnatal anxiety and depression, but thankfully I
responded really quickly to treatment and had really good care.
But it was not that abnormal rates of postnatal depression
(15:24):
in parents are very high, and rates of stress and
burnout and loneliness, but even with my significant privilege. There
was something about the way my society, my cultures were
organized which I started to feel that there was something
really wrong with it. It's classic neoliberal, independent lack of community,
(15:48):
really really loving family and friends, but everyone's working, and
everyone's got their own stuff and really craved like older
female relatives or I just really craved people. I was
on my own a lot. My husband would work, you know,
quite long hours and totally normal stuff for parenthood at
this dawn age. But I think that it's actually really
(16:12):
weird and abnormal that we expect, particularly new mothers to
spend up to like twelve hours alone with the baby
every day and we're not evolved for that. That's just crazy.
So yeah, there was hard stuff, but the experience for
me was also one of like like a kind of awakening,
I guess, or apocalyptic in a sense of like a
(16:34):
political radicalizing or a realization of how much more ecological
we are and how connected we are, realizing the myth
of the kind of dominant cultural messages that I'd grown
up in, and that was actually very thrilling in ways
I mean depressing and obviously bittersweet, but if we look
at how societies treat vulnerable the vulnerable, and there are
(16:58):
obviously different vulnerabilities across different lines. In this transition to parentnhood,
I think we can learn quite a lot about our values.
And yeah, I found that very politicizing. It was from
the most socio political experience of my life.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
So you're describing so articulately this background of being culturally
adapted to survive in a almost hyper independent state, not
being able to ask for help, you know, being able
to do everything by yourself. And yet our biology is
(17:35):
something completely different. Like we know biologically, when a person
becomes a mother, there are significant changes.
Speaker 4 (17:44):
In the brain.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
The gray matter of the brain becomes smaller, white matter
becomes more organized. The whole purpose of that is to
actually become more connected to your child, your baby. The
hormone owns are literally designed to improve mother infant bonding.
Your sense of self changes so that you will be
(18:08):
more connected, the opposite of this hyperindependence. So our biology
is literally fighting against the cultural adaptations that we have
created for decades. So why do you think society has
basically failed to prepare people for a parenthood in this way?
Speaker 2 (18:30):
Yeah, that's such a good point about the mismatch, the
brain changes happening at this time of real disconnection and
loneliness and not a historian, but when industrialization started to
happen in the eighteenth century, there was this split, and
this idea of a kind of femininity and the maternal
(18:50):
and the family being in the private sphere was created
in contrast to the public sphere. I'm sorry, but I
am talking. I guess uk centric these homes which were intergenerational,
and there was a household economy where everyone was working
out of But then with industrialization, everyone's leaving the land
(19:13):
and going into the cities, and you have this real split.
And at that point you have this naturalizing and romanticizing
of mother and child. And I don't think that we've
really ever integrated the two spheres. I think we still
you know, it's that classic thing of mothers often phil
you have to work as if you do not have children,
(19:35):
but have children as if you have you don't work,
And these, you know, these two realms are necessarily so split.
One of the dominant reasons for that is because of
the way we organize our economy and the way that
growth and profit is the dominant value system. Caregiving doesn't
really fit into that. And apart from the fact we're
(19:57):
raising workers, it's this kind of just unintegrated situation. What
do you guys think I'd be interested to know what
you think.
Speaker 1 (20:06):
I think we're reaching a very interesting point where we've
just created a society that isn't incongruence with our biology
and we're running this This is what happens when you
go out of sync with that process. So from my perspective,
at some point we made the wrong decision. And for
(20:30):
what caused that. Was it inherently a trauma response? Was
it inherently a distrust of our own natural processes?
Speaker 4 (20:38):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (20:39):
I think it is like an existential issue. We need
to come to Jesus about this issue and like really
just acknowledge that if we don't recognize what's going on
biologically and actually change our society to reflect that, we're
going to just continue to suffer. And I think as
a medical professional, for me, you know, matressence isn't even
(21:02):
recognized right now by medical professionals. Like we have obg
Yns that are the doctors that specialize in the female body,
But do we have a specialization like adolescent medicine, like
there are physicians that specialize in adolescent medicine. I do
think it would be beneficial if we had physicians that
specialized in matrescence medicine. So I think unless the medical
(21:28):
professional community can recognize that this is a phenomenon and
it needs care and understanding, we still have a long
ways to go in terms of how we're actually going
to repair our societies and structures.
Speaker 3 (21:45):
I mean what resonated with me is how you talked
about raising a generation of workers, right, because that is
how people are viewed under capitalism, and I think, you know,
we see examples of how mothers are and their hood
is seen as a detriment to capitalism. It slows things down.
It means that women aren't promoted because they're going to
(22:08):
have kids. And to me, it's like, so much of
this is built on how modern capitalism looks, and so
with that being kind of the push for everything that
we do. Of course, matrescens isn't valued. Of course motherhood
isn't valued. It's in conflict with these end goals exactly.
Speaker 2 (22:26):
And you know, even in how we calculate GDP for countries,
you know, kind of anything to do with children, childcare,
child raising, you know, the kind of raising of you know,
the workforce isn't even in it, so it's kind of
a fiction, you know, this kind of mythic idea. To
go back to your point, I think that that's one
(22:48):
of the reasons why this like emerging area of the
maternal brain and the parental brain is so exciting. So
one of the reasons why I wrote this book is
because in twenty six, when my first child was born,
the first really major study in the maternal brain was published,
which showed that pregnancy renders pronounced and significant changes in
(23:12):
the brain. And that was something I kind of intuitively
felt like. My daughter was born and I felt so
different to who I was before. It wasn't just that
my every day it was different. I just felt like
on a very cellular, existential nervous system level, like where
have I gone? I feel my attention, the way my
(23:34):
brain is working feels so different, and so it was
such a relief to start reading these studies I'm really
excited about. There's so many scientists across the world, a
lot of North America who are spending time trying to
really understand what happens to the brain when people have
(23:54):
kids and we're already finding out incredible stuff. I had
no idea that the changes that pregnancy renders in the
brain are as dramatic as those in adolescents. And we
all know that adolescence is this kind of insanely destabilizing
time where the person is vulnerable and probably need some
(24:17):
more care or you know, but we've neglected that this
is what happens to the majority of women, and it
happens for men as well. Like, so this brain research
is showing that fathers with hands on affectionate care giving
their brains changed too, and of course nongestational mothers and
adoptive parents will know that. I think that really speaks
(24:39):
to your point that our biology is so odds with
our society. And it's this work as well, which is
kind of something which I think is starting to erode,
that that the brain science shows us that everyone is
born with the neural circuitry to care. So it's not
just women who can give care, and that oppressive idea
(25:00):
that just women should be doing the caring, like science
is just showing that men concurred too. We can all care.
Many women would have died in childbirth, you know, like
we're all evolved to have that circuitry to care for
our babies, So I'm excited about where that's going.
Speaker 3 (25:19):
More to come on health stuff. I mean, you touched
on this earlier, but what does evolutionary and anthropological research
tell us about how humans were actually meant to raise children?
Speaker 2 (25:35):
Yeah? Okay, So I really loved reading about this and
learning a bit about this, and most of this work
comes from this legendary anthropologist, Sarah Blaffer Herdie. So I
came to this a bit late in the writing of
my book, actually, but I started to think. I think
probably when my baby started to move around a bit more,
(25:58):
and for sure when our second child arrived, I started
to think, how on earth did my ancestors or the
older women in my family do this. It just seems
practically impossible to look after two infants on your own,
you know. And of course different children have different temperaments
and different needs. My elder two children needed a lot
(26:21):
of attention and carrying and holding, and at times I thought,
I don't think I'm involved for this. I don't believe
that I have a nervous system that can cope with this.
If I quanko to the louh, I can't feed myself,
you know, que a load of stress. And I was
so naive. I really thought that like the traditional family
(26:44):
was a nuclear family, and you know, that was my idea,
and I thought, what is wrong with me? I'm finding
this so difficult, but this is how people have always
done it. And then of course that is absolutely not true.
And we spend ninety nine percent of our evolutionary history
as humans in collective caregiving networks, where as groups we
(27:10):
would have raised young. I didn't put this in my
book Mtrescence, because this work came out just after. But
I think there's some really interesting and important work being
done by a guy called Nikhil Chowdhury at the University
of Cambridge. So he's been studying modern hunter gatherer groups
for many years and one of the studies that he published,
(27:31):
he's an evolutionary anthropologist, found that in modern groups, and
obviously you can't completely directly, you know, say that this
is what happened, but it suggests something about how we've evolved.
So between I think ten and twenty people would hold
the baby and every day as well as the mother.
(27:51):
So this is called alo mothers or alo mothering. And
then the mother would hold a baby for kind of
maybe like fifty percent of the day time so that
she could rest and recover from birth and have that
collective attachment as well to the child. Twentieth century psychoanalysis
and psychology and touch child development near this kind of
(28:13):
boom of it all with Bowlby and Winnicott and this
kind of attachment theory all really great, Like, yes, you know,
that has really improved things. But I think, and this
is what Herdie argues, that it has been done through
a lens of the kind of nuclear family, particularly the mother,
(28:34):
or thinking that it's the mother who has to provide
this really intense attachment. That is not how we have
lived and how we've evolved. So yeah, I found that
incredibly useful. And I also think so many new parents
feel so much shame and they struggle, and they just
think that there's something so wrong with me because I'm
not like baking apple pie every day and not like
(28:56):
super happy every day. And it just it was the village.
It's how he evoldes and it's how it's meant to.
Speaker 1 (29:02):
Be if you think about it, just from a logical perspective,
that's too much pressure on a single person to be
responsible for all of the emotional needs and to run
the household and to do it by yourself, and then
also to give your body for the feeding and all
(29:23):
of that. I mean, it's just it doesn't make rational
sense to put all of those responsibilities on one human being.
I wonder in these studies that you're referring to, like,
what were the rates of postpartum depression in these types
of settings. We know in the Western studies up to
(29:43):
eighty percent of mother's experience what we call the baby blues.
One in eight new mother's experience postpartum depression, and that's
postpartum and there's also perinatal depression, which is where while
you're pregnant and even up to a year after childbirth,
one in seven people can have perinatal depression. It makes
me wonder, is this an illness that is situational because
(30:08):
there's so much pressure on one person to basically be
this ideal human being, which is unreasonable. Could we bring
these rates down if we were having ten to twenty
to fifteen people caring for us while we're raising our child.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
I think that is exactly the question that we should
be asking, and it's one of the questions. That was
kind of driving my writing of kind of how much
maternal mental illness is inevitable and biological and intrinsic, you know,
because there is this enormous hormone drop like nothing else
in human life that happens after birth, certain people are
(30:51):
susceptible at that point to mental illness. And about that,
like the hormone stuff that happens in pregnancy, I had
no idea, no hormone to changing two hundred by three
hundred times. Some are changing by a thousand times. Some
hormones are there that have ever been in your body before.
It is the most kind of seismic endochronological experience that
(31:14):
you can have in adult life. There is obviously a
biological fragility, and we know there are accounts of what
seems to be like postpartum psychosism meant to onness hundreds
and hundreds of years old. But I believe that, like
you say, it's irrational to think that levels of chronic loneliness,
(31:39):
the studies suggest that most parents feel chronically lonely, like
a level of loneliness and stress and burnout. I heard
on your podcast. Actually these are what happens in life
affects our health, and I think we live in a
healthcare system still where it's not just mind and body
that are set, but it's like life, stuff and health,
(32:03):
which are also seen as separate. Additionally, you have still
a lot of stigma around maternal mental illness. And now
I was really scared to write my book, and I
felt it took a lot out of me because I
think there's still this idea that if you criticize the
institution of motherhood or the institution of family, the kind
(32:25):
of default need reaction is, oh, you mustn't love your children.
There's something like wrong with you if you don't love
your children. I adore my children. I love being a mother.
Brought me the greatest joy of my life. But I
think the institution of motherhood is cruel and oppressive, and
it's sad it doesn't and it doesn't need to be
(32:45):
that way. But like you say, it's so connected to
capitalism and the economy. There's a lot of grassroots work happening,
of people creating villages and networks of care. I think
a couple of years ago I might have thought, you
really need government to invest more and research and childcast centers,
and I feel a little less optimistic that that's ever
(33:07):
going to happen in our current climate and structure.
Speaker 1 (33:11):
I just want to say I can imagine that it
took a tremendous amount of courage to write your book.
I mean I read it and there were moments throughout
reading it where I had to stop and put it down,
and I even shed a tear or two around some
of the things that you wrote. I mean, it really
was so powerful from my experience of just especially listening
(33:37):
to over the years, like patients that have come in
and you see them change, like you take care of
them before they get pregnant, and then you see them
after they get pregnant, and it's clear this person has
gone through a significant transformation. And your book actually allowed
me the vocabulary in terms of like really caring for
other people. So I really want to thank you for that.
(34:01):
What comes up for me around so much of what
you're unpacking is these unnatural expectations. And as you wrote
this book and you were dealing with your own postpartum,
when you learn the science behind what is going on
and how common it was, how did that change your
experience of what you were going through.
Speaker 2 (34:24):
It's such a good question, and thank you for saying that.
It's incredibly moving to here. So in the early months
of my first child's life, the kind of discombobulation and
destabilization that I felt in my sense of self and identity,
and I'm sure so much of that was simply just
(34:45):
being alone in not really seeing anyone for a long time,
I did what I think many people do. I felt
so ashamed of not loving every minute and finding it
really hard. I withdrew and I kind of isolated myself
for a while, found classic depression really And then when
(35:06):
I saw these diagrams of the brain in el Selina
Hooksman's study that I mentioned about the seismic changes that
happened in pregnancy, just seeing those brains on the screen
which had this kind of yellow areas of where things
had changed in multiple areas of the brain that had
(35:27):
the kind of similar like powerful effect to me as
reading the word matrescence, because I kind of realized, Oh,
this isn't all in my head, This isn't me just
being wrong or something faulty in me or something like that,
you know, like this is actually a huge transition that
(35:48):
as a society we've neglected and we've kind of forgotten about,
and so the science and then you know, I found
it really fascinating as well. So I love learning about microchirism,
which is this this area of science particularly driven by
someone called Diane Bayankei in North America. And one of
(36:09):
the things I felt after my daughter had been born
was that she'd never fully left my body. I felt
still attached to her. Or if I was trying to
have a conversation with someone, I couldn't like not look
at her. Or if she would cry in the night,
it would what be like my body would wake up
even before it. Microchimerism is this science which has found
that when we are in our were in our mother's wombs,
(36:33):
our cells crossed the center and the cells of the
fetus remain in the maternal body in multiple areas. Scientists
anial exactly how long, but possibly even forever. So they've
been found in various different organs, breast tissue, the brain,
and any body who's an evolutionary scientist has worked on
(36:58):
this area a lot. The theories are those cells might
remain in the maternal body just as a simple byproduct.
They might be there doing negative things because they've been
found in areas of disease, but they might be there
to do something to do with the attachment and bonding
and lactation. Even they've been fantacesarean scars, so even possibly repair.
(37:21):
I loved the science because it was it was telling
a story that, you know, I felt was far truer
than the kind of dominant cultural myths. I always feel
safe in science. The maternal experience has a lot of ideology,
and particularly around the idea of the natural, natural birth,
natural motherhood, this idea of nature, it becomes a kind
(37:45):
of sight where people project kind of fantasies and ideals,
and I mean I was very sucked in by that. Actually,
you know that if you do your natural childbirth classes
that you'll never you won't feel any pain, or breastfeeding
will just happen. And that was not my experience at all.
It was much more complicated. So I think, yeah, science
(38:05):
can sort of the myth from the reality, for all
its faults.
Speaker 3 (38:10):
I wanted to shift gears just a little bit, you know,
because we were talking about how the external factors of
the world like affect your health, and with that in mind,
you know, how does racism, classism, and inequality directly enter
the womb and shape outcomes for babies and mothers.
Speaker 2 (38:27):
Yeah, great question and a big question. I'll mentioned first.
I think the work of Pill Young Kim, who has
done a lot of studies and work on how severe
stress affects the transition to parenthood. The transition to parenthood
is a time of neuroplasticity, so the brain is kind
(38:50):
of open, as it were, and changing, and that makes
it more vulnerable to severe stress. And she's found that
if a person has kind of socio economic disadvantage, so
living in poverty, experiencing racism, domestic violence, child loss, the
brain will be more affected by the severe stress. This
(39:14):
is an area of society where discrimination and inequality is
very laid bare in lots of different ways. So I
think in the States, women of color are four times
more likely to die in childbirth. In England it's around
the same. That's sustain on our society, and I know
(39:37):
the UK in the US is a slightly different, but
you know, how is that not the number one priority
for our healthcare in terms of class The way society
is structured, transport routes, bus routes. We in the UK,
we used to have these things called shore Start centers,
which were children's centers where you could go and do
(39:57):
a playgroup or get assistance and help. But they are
more likely to be more accessible to people who can
drive or you don't have to go back to work
after a couple of weeks. This is an area where
we can see the kind of horrific inequalities in our society,
and in terms of stress, burnout, illness, also death and survival.
Speaker 1 (40:20):
Yeah, And just to sort of piggyback off that, because
you write about this in the book about how our
societal priorities seem really off when it comes to maternal care.
You have this part in the book where you're like, Okay,
when you're pregnant, you're told don't eat soft cheese because
(40:41):
that's really bad. But then what about air pollution and
toxins and microplastics and all these other things that we
know affect maternal outcomes as well, And so I'm curious,
how do you sort of wrap your mind around that
about like what this says about our society's already use.
Speaker 2 (41:01):
I guess it's kind of fundamentally very individualistic, isn't it.
And I suppose it goes back a bit to what
we're saying, and how under a late capitalist organization of society,
mothers and the maternal body are periphery kind of places
(41:22):
where the harms of capitalism show up but inevitably need
to be concealed because it doesn't really you know, who's
gonna regulate or tax companies about air pollution. It's much
easier to say, don't eat soft cheese, isn't it. I
think we all forget how dependent we were on our mothers,
(41:44):
and particularly Western culture of hyper independence, and really kind
of forgetting that you were ever in someone's body or
totally dependent on someone. A bit uncomfortable about it, but
I think there are like reds avoirs of like anger
(42:05):
and I've really noticed this, and since my book came out,
my sense is that there is this kind of untapped
like anger and revolt, and like real appetite and thirst
for networks of care and village and doing things differently
(42:25):
and valuing care and valuing time with loved ones and
art and spending time in restorative spaces and outside the
marketplace that I love buying and the marketplace too. I'm
not some virtuous hippie or anything, but you know, like
there still is a real undercurrent of wanting things to
(42:48):
be different.
Speaker 4 (42:51):
We're going to take a short break.
Speaker 2 (42:52):
Stay with us.
Speaker 3 (42:58):
How can partners best support the parent giving birth?
Speaker 2 (43:02):
It's a good question. I think probably asking first, asking
the partner what they think they need or what they
might need so the birthing person can receive what they need.
I think probably boning up on the science of matrescence
and patrescence and you know, and getting a bit aware
(43:22):
of what happens and you know, actually what kind of
different issues that might happen can look like. I think
recognizing that this is a time of transition. Matresses can
go on for years, and you know, it can be
a really up and down experience. So yeah, that's what
(43:44):
That's what i'd say.
Speaker 1 (43:47):
And I know your book focuses on your experience of
pregnancy and birth, but do you have any comment on
what people who might become parents in other ways, like
let's say, through adoption. How do you think matrescence sort
of shows up for single fathers or adoptive parents who
(44:08):
are adjusting to their new life, new identity, new responsibilities.
Speaker 2 (44:14):
I mean, I would really love to read books by
by people in that experience. I don't feel like I
can speak to that or for that. You know, my
book is very much kind of subjective and from our
own experience. But I've met so many people in the
last couple of years, and you know, this kind of
(44:35):
matrescence protressns per intessence. I think that we'll find out
a lot more about how it happens. The main thing
is the connection of the two beings. You know, pregnancy
obviously rend gives this kind of quite unique neural experience,
but everyone can attach and your new nervous systems wired
(44:57):
together your you know, your brains are constantly changing, and
we know that men who are more active fathers and
have presumably those brain changes, are more at risk of
postingtal depression. That's just recently come out by work by
Darby Saxby, who's really great. So I don't feel that
I can talk with much depth about those experiences, but
(45:21):
I imagine everyone will have a transitional experience where they
need some care and support.
Speaker 3 (45:28):
This is a big question, but what would a world
look like where matrescence was visible, honored, studied, and supported.
Speaker 2 (45:39):
So I think it would look like a world where
it was just normal to people would know that when
you become a parent, it's a transitional stage and a
time where they will need possibly more support that they
are going through something which is a big deal. And
then it would like investment in anti care. So I
(46:01):
think an understanding of mtrescent's having the time to kind
of talk about the psychological and emotional transition to motherhood
in more depth would be really great. And then birth,
like I say, there are really big issues in the
UK and I don't know enough about the US to
really comment on it, but it's crazy to me that
(46:24):
this moment which can have such effects on both mother
and baby family, there's such high levels of birth trauma
that should be so invested in and prioritized as you know,
a woman centered, mother, pregnent, person centered place. In the UK,
(46:45):
we have what's called baby friendly hospitals and it's very
you know, it needs to be mother and baby centered.
And then the first few years of motherhood and parenthood. Again,
what a world do we live in when we tell
mothers and we tell new parents that the first years
are like the most important in a person's life and
(47:08):
anything you do is going to have these repercussions. And
I in my voice you could probably hear my frustration
with that. And it's not that those views aren't important.
Of course they are, we know that, But why is
this a time of such like social cruelty. One of
the things that I I learned from Danna Raphael's research
(47:30):
on Mtressens, who coined the bird, was this idea of
a kind of newborn mother basically allowing her to heal
from the of trauma whichever way it happens of birth
and pregnancy, so that she can feed the baby but
also be looked after. You get on with it and
you're enjoying your privacy and your autonomy and your independence.
But I think we need a ritual or right or
(47:52):
a way of holding the newborn mother and father. I
think we've lost like a sense of ritual. Hmm.
Speaker 4 (48:01):
That's great.
Speaker 1 (48:02):
So before we wrap up, is there anything else that
you feel is important to share to our listeners about
what you understand?
Speaker 2 (48:12):
I'd probably share that if you are in early motherhood
and you're finding it really difficult and psychologically challenging, and
you think you're alone and it's just you, you're really not,
and there is help out there. There is medical help,
there are groups and support groups and ways of finding
(48:35):
other people who are feeling exactly the same. You don't
need to suffer alone. Maybe that's a bit lithe or.
Speaker 1 (48:43):
No, no, that's beautiful. I think it's so apt and
I agree, I strongly agree.
Speaker 3 (48:50):
What is your favorite piece of parenting advice to share?
Speaker 2 (48:54):
I would say that I have no parenting advice because
because I actually hate it. I think we're in this
kind of culture of like intensive parenting and like intensive motherhood,
as sociologists call it. I'm totally seduced by it. I
(49:16):
like read all the books and I watch all the
instagrams about how to talk to my children. And it's
great that we are kinder to our kids. Come from
a generation when we were all smacked all the time,
and you know, I'm really glad that that's not how
we do it now. But at the same time, I
think there is an industry of parenting and an industry
(49:38):
of training mothers, and I don't have any parenting advice
at all. The thing that works for me is to
find something that I can do with the kids that
I don't find too stressful. So that's for me is
going to the woods or being outside or maybe doing
(49:59):
some drawing. But then I cannot do soft play I
can't really do imagine to play, so just working out
things which are tolerable and fun. But know, no advice
from me. I'm afraid the.
Speaker 4 (50:12):
Best advice is no advice. I love that. That's great.
Speaker 1 (50:16):
Thank you so much, Lucy for coming here and educating
us about matrescans. We really appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (50:23):
Thank you for having me.
Speaker 3 (50:24):
Yeah, absolutely, thanks so much.
Speaker 1 (50:30):
Wow, I'm so glad we had her on to talk
to us about, clearly an area that isn't talked about enough.
Speaker 3 (50:39):
No, there's so many things that kind of made me think.
But when she said that there was a time where
ten to fifteen people would touch a child in a day,
like the idea that you had that much support, that
there were that many people, whether it's neighbors or extended family,
I mean, just that's that's incredible.
Speaker 1 (50:59):
It's impossis but imagine. I mean it's almost like a fantasy.
Motherhood would almost seem kind of easy if you had
twenty people that could hold the baby while you're like
recovering and.
Speaker 4 (51:10):
Chilling, and fatherhood as well.
Speaker 1 (51:12):
I mean it just I believe, and this is part
of the reason we're doing this show. But like this
is I really believe at some point Harrey, like, we
can change our society to become more inclusive and kinder
and working together. Like I agreed with the things she
(51:33):
was saying about how damaging hyperindividualism can be to our
health and our biology. And I do hope that when
we have conversations like this, we can be more receptive
to the idea of working together, working in community, so
that we can raise kids in a better way and
(51:54):
make it easier not just for the kids, but for
everybody involved.
Speaker 3 (51:59):
I'm in complete agreement, and we touched on this too,
but just the role capitalism plays this thing that is
in every part of our lives, but it certainly is
been uh parenting as well. And when you're already dealing
with so much as a new mother, and you have
(52:19):
all these expectations to be a supermom and also to
be a worker, how do you contribute to the economy.
The idea of bouncing back after four weeks and a
way to work is absurd. I mean even the fact
that when the mother takes off to have the child,
she has to file for disability. Yeah, like it's considered
a disability, like which is absurd. Like the foundation of
(52:41):
life is considered a disability, but under like when you
look at capitalism, Yeah, of course it's a disability. Like
it doesn't doesn't lead to work, It slows down, you know,
the machine, and that's so unfortunate. So I think she
really humanizes the process for people and also shows you
how how many obstacles are truly in the way and
(53:03):
that are institutional.
Speaker 4 (53:05):
Yeah, and environmental.
Speaker 3 (53:07):
Right.
Speaker 1 (53:07):
Part of why we're doing this show is not just
talking about health from an individual perspective, but a collective
perspective and how societal processes impact our health. And so again,
we cannot change what we do not name. This is
at least the start of a conversation.
Speaker 3 (53:24):
I agree. I thought that was a great episode. Thanks
to everyone for listening to the show. We're taking next
week off, but we'll be back the following week, April eighth,
with new episodes and new guests. Until then, catch up
on any episodes you may have missed, and we'll see
you real soon. Health Stuff is a production of iHeart Podcasts.
(53:47):
The show is hosted by me Harikin Debolu and doctor
Prianco Wally. Producers are Rebecca Eisenberg, Jenna Cagel, Christina Loranger,
Maya Howard, and Katrina Norville. Our researcher is Maria Trenmark
and our intern is kakia is obl Deayala. To send
us a question, you can email us at voicemail at
health Stuff Podcast at gmail dot com. Thank you for listening.
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