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I was challenged, comforted, educated and nourished by this book ... It is the single most powerful, life-changing, heartachingly healing thing I have been given ... The kind of book we must ensure every one of us reads Kerri ní Dochartaigh This book should be a must-read for pretty much everyone. We don't talk about the hidden realities of the biological, social and psychological effects of matrescence nearly enough. Thank you, Lucy Jones, for changing that -- Dr Jodi Pawluski A vital, hopeful book ... to read Matrescence is to emerge chastened and ready for change Marianne Levy, i News Both these books remind us, as we look out of the window at the budding spring, or listen to birds on our daily socially distanced walks, just how very individual, and how personally precious, these experiences can be.A vital, hopeful book ... to read Matrescence is to emerge chastened and ready for change -- Marianne Levy ― i Paper But as the book went on I found I enjoyed reading about vampire bats and aurora borealis and spiders that eat their own mothers, and found her desire to place matrescence within the context of a wider ecology, and her emphasis on “the psychic and corporeal reality of our interdependence and interconnectedness with other species”, admirable. I also respect her absolute refusal to pander to the “enjoy every minute” brigade. As she writes in the introduction, “my children (she has three, all born close together) have brought me joy, contentment, fulfilment, wonder, and delight in staggering abundance. But that’s just part of the story. This is the rest.” Like many women, Jones describes feeling 'hoodwinked' by the norms of motherhood

In the UK, as many as 20% of women develop a mental health problem in pregnancy or the first year of motherhood; these include mild and moderate to severe depression, anxiety, PTSD and psychosis. Part memoir, part scientific and health reporting, part social critique, ecological philosophy, eco-feminism and nature writing, Matrescence is a kind of whodunnit, ferreting out with the most nuanced, searing and honest observations, why mothers throughout this heightened transition are at a breaking point, and what the institution of intensive, isolated motherhood can tell us about our still-dominant social and cultural myths. During pregnancy, childbirth, and early motherhood, women undergo a far-reaching physiological, psychological and social metamorphosis.This synaptic reorganisation and fine-tuning, it is thought, make the brain more efficient and streamlined in what it needs to do to care for a baby. Or as the neuroscientist Jodi Pawluski puts it, “to make sure we, and our child, survive parenthood”.