Matrescence

March 15, 2024
A deep dive into the radical transformation of becoming a mother. British journalist Jones, author of Foxes Unearthed and Losing Eden, combines memoir, reportage, and social critique in a wide-ranging inquiry into the physical, emotional, and intellectual metamorphoses that women experience during pregnancy and early motherhood. Her first pregnancy, she reveals, was nothing like what she expected. Instead of morning sickness, she had constant nausea; her sense of smell became heightened; she craved salty, fatty foods; and her hair "came loose." Furthermore, being "inhabited by another person" made her feel psychologically destabilized. The birth was also far different from what she imagined. Undergoing more than 41 hours of labor, she admits, was "the most dramatic and frightening experience of my life." Her exhaustion intensified after her daughter was born. Breastfeeding constantly to meet the infant's demands, she never slept more than a few hours at a time. She was frustrated because her baby kept losing weight, felt guilty for supplementing breast milk with formula, and was confused by conflicting advice about how to handle a baby's sleeping and feeding. Alone with her daughter, who often cried inconsolably, she felt isolated; although she had visits from a health worker, she found herself unable to ask for help. Causes for postnatal depression, she discovered, include profound biochemical changes, lack of support networks for new mothers, and a flawed model of intensive motherhood, which overemphasizes a mother's responsibility for her child's health and development and leaves mothers feeling "stress, burnout, and guilt." Now a mother of three, Jones feels that she is emerging from "matrescent angst." Motherhood, she writes, "tested my empathy to the limit, it challenged me intellectually, it required me to answer and ask questions constantly, to consider metaphysics and the origins of matter." Complex and "breathtakingly challenging," it changed her forever. An intimate, insightful memoir.

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March 25, 2024
In this probing meditation, journalist Jones (The Nature Seed) reflects on how becoming a mother physically and mentally transforms women. Jones emphasizes the beauty and volatility of maternity, juxtaposing the deep love she feels for her three young children with the crushing exhaustion she endured as their primary caregiver. Discussing her postpartum depression, Jones observes that though probiotics and neurosteroids have shown promise in curbing symptoms, they should be paired with more robust social support for new mothers (namely, “affordable childcare and investment in perinatal healthcare”). Unconventional stylistic decisions punctuate the narrative, as when Jones underscores the agony of labor (“so awful and so full of power”) by arranging the phrase “this is how big it needs to be” in a large circle meant to represent a dilated cervix. Seamlessly weaving personal recollections with broader social analysis, Jones describes how she was once “attracted to the idea of a ‘natural birth’ without pain relief” but later discovered that the “fetishization” of natural birth was largely invented by 20th-century obstetrician Grantly Dick-Read, who claimed “modern women” only experienced pain during childbirth because they had lost touch with their natural instincts. Elevated by inventive formal flourishes and searching reflection, this will resonate with mothers of all stripes. Agent: Jessica Woollard, David Higham Assoc.

May 1, 2024

Award-winning journalist Jones (Losing Eden: Why Our Minds Need the Wild) pens a scientific and poetic ode to motherhood. Equating volcanic eruption to birth and exploring the bond that mother trees have with son and daughter trees through chemical signs, Jones shows how the natural world is full of beauty and contains many parallels to human motherhood. She encourages readers to shed their "good mother" assumptions as a snake does its skin. Raw and real, she details her depression in the months after her baby was born, exposes the pressure on mothers to provide constant and exclusive nurture, and shares the emotions, including feelings of guilt, that she had about breastfeeding. She also explores the stigma and shame surrounding decisions about breastfeeding and natural childbirth, the embarrassment involved in seeking help, and the lack of honest discussion about risks. Jone also asks why celebrations exist for other rites of passage but not for the emotional transition to parenthood. Her lyrical prose is celebratory while acknowledging the challenges that can arise during pregnancy and throughout motherhood. VERDICT A fascinating and worthwhile read, this book for mothers is steeped in research that is both validating and illuminating.

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