“Matrescence like Adolescence”
Mother of Mothers
Origin Story
Dana Louise Raphael (1926–2016) began her doctoral studies in anthropology at Columbia University under the mentorship of Margaret Mead. For her dissertation, completed in 1966 and later published as The Tender Gift: Breastfeeding (1973), she researched how cultures around the world perceived breastfeeding compared to the United States. Carrying a notebook with her everywhere, she asked strangers their opinions, gathering responses that ranged from approval to disgust.
In this work, Raphael introduced the term doula—from the Greek word for “woman servant”—to describe a supportive companion during childbirth. But tucked within the pages of The Tender Gift was perhaps an even more powerful word: matrescence, which she coined to describe the developmental transition to motherhood, akin to adolescence. Both terms reflected her conviction that women’s reproductive experiences deserved cultural, social, and emotional recognition, not only medical attention.
Throughout her career, Raphael co-founded the Human Lactation Center (1975) with Margaret Mead which had consultive status in the United Nations, wore an IUD necklace as a symbol of reproductive empowerment, and later expanded her advocacy into global issues such as climate change. Always ahead of her time, she challenged cultural blind spots and planted the seeds for concepts—like matrescence—that would only gain momentum decades later.
Reviving Matrescence
About this Effort
Matrescence, the developmental transition to motherhood, was first introduced in the 1970s by anthropologist Dana Raphael, Ph.D., who sought to give language to this profound life change. Yet the concept never fully entered mainstream and for decades it remained largely unknown.
I am Dr. Aurélie Athan, Ph.D. a clinical psychologist and faculty member at Teachers College, Columbia University. My research, teaching, and writing build on Raphael’s work to revive matrescence—a stage of development as significant as adolescence—bringing it back into focus for the 21st century. This framework complements clinical models of maternal mental health by recognizing mothers holistically, holding both resilience and distress as integral parts of becoming a mother.
Reviving the word matrescence is only the beginning. Beyond providing language, the deeper work lies in advancing the science of matrescence and embedding this framework into health care, research, and policy.
To carry matrescence forward means moving beyond a conceptual idea and into measurable frameworks, educational programs, and public health applications. It requires rigorous research and collaborative partnerships across the biomedical, social, and political sciences.
By grounding matrescence in evidence and practice, we not only validate women’s lived experiences but also create sustainable pathways for improving their lives across diverse contexts and cultures.
I invite you to join me in this effort.
History
A missing Framework
It all began with a gap. During my clinical psychology training in the 2000s, I was struck by the absence of explanatory models for the psychological transition to motherhood beyond diagnostic categories. None captured the full range of experiences voiced by the mothers I was interviewing about their spirituality. Determined, I began looking beyond my own field for answers.
Fast forward: as a new faculty researcher with a background in positive psychology, I worked with my students to systematically review decades of research on the transition to motherhood. What we found was telling—mothers themselves were largely neglected, framed mainly in terms of risk, illness, or their impact on children, and rarely in terms of strength, growth, or thriving.
Finding Matrescence
I drew on the intellectual lineage of maternal developmental theorists, but it was Dana Raphael—another Columbia-trained scholar —who offered the conceptual key to what had been missing.
Recognizing the power of her idea, my contribution was to apply this existing concept of matrescence from anthropology to psychology, challenging the narrow diagnostic models of maternal mental health in which I had been trained. Knowledge advances when we bridge fields— quiet, behind-the-scenes work in academia, yet essential.
A Holistic transition
Raphael framed motherhood as a biosocial transition and observed that its psychological dimensions remained understudied. I expanded her view by suggesting a more comprehensive bio-psycho-social-and-beyond framework, one that touches every domain of human experience.
By 2010, I revived her term with the succinct and sticky public health mantra “matrescence, like adolescence.” It quickly became a teaching tool inside and outside the classroom, promoting a model of motherhood that normalizes—rather than pathologizes—the transition.
for the Next Generation
In 2015, I joined scholars critiquing the field of developmental psychology for marginalizing mothers in its theories. I published Maternal Psychology: Reflections on the 20th Anniversary of Deconstructing Developmental Psychology in a special issue of Feminism & Psychology.
Building on Erica Burman’s landmark work, I argued that introducing the term matrescence—and positioning it as a distinct phase of the human lifespan—could legitimize motherhood within the scientific community and provide a framework for the next generation of scholars to reimagine their research questions.
I envisioned a future where specialists—from neuroscientists and physicians to counselors and educators—would gather at a common roundtable, united by matrescence, to form an allied discipline with a shared purpose much like adolescence.
AcademiA to the World Stage
In October of 2016, I presented my argument at a pivotal NYC conference of the Women’s Mental Health Consortium. Only a few months later, on Mother’s Day 2017, my talking points entered the popular imagination through Alexandra Sacks’s widely read New York Times article: The Birth of a Mother and later TED talk. This marked a turning point, as mothers responded overwhelmingly positively to finally having language to describe their experience!
Continuing the Legacy
Since beginning this revival effort, matrescence has spread globally, taken up and amplified by many voices across disciplines and cultures. Every day, matrescence is reaching more people—as a concept that helps to recognize and destigmatize the full spectrum of maternal experience, from stress to wellbeing.
The term now circulates widely—from social media conversations to community initiatives, and even, for better or worse, into costly products marketed to mothers promising to enlighten their lives.
My hope is that the true promise of matrescence extends beyond a feel-good movement to catalyze real, tangible improvements in maternal health literacy. May we never again hear the refrain, “Why didn’t anyone tell me?”
Matrescence Education
At the Khora Lab, our mission is to improve maternal health literacy through matrescence education and to develop new theories such as reproductive identity wellbeing as a foundational for public health. As a socail impact lab, we aim to equip both mothers and the professionals who care for them with the knowledge and tools to recognize, prepare for, and support matrescence—so that no woman has to face motherhood without language or compassion.
Most of all, as a public health community, we affirm an ethical commitment to improving mothers’ wellbeing, to treating them as a vulnerable and protected class, and to never profit from their distress or hope for growth.
We Stand On The Shoulders of Maternal ScholarS
