You may have encountered the recent push to recognise the term ‘matrescence’, which encompasses the physical, psychological, social and identity changes that a woman undergoes when she becomes a mother. Similar to ‘adolescence’ but a largely unrecognised word despite being first documented in the early seventies.
In fact, Peanut, a women’s social networking app, spearheaded a global awareness campaign to have the term listed in all mainstream dictionaries to help validate and normalise the seismic shifts women experience when they enter motherhood. A full-page advertisement in the New York Times noted that IDGAF was in the dictionary but a term to help women understand what can be a bewildering process for women, was not.
While this recognition is shockingly overdue, thankfully the concept of ‘the perfect mother’ has been abandoned over the past generation, with mothers now openly sharing the challenges of parenting.
My self-declared legacy project is having shared my maternal shortcomings through a Mum Fail Monday radio segment, which used to prompt almost as many phone calls as an Ed Sheeran concert ticket giveaway.
There was the time I left my toddler in her sister’s classroom. I was on my way to the car with a nagging feeling I had forgotten something when I received a phone call from the teacher. With a cheery patience particular to Reception teachers, she said that while my youngest was happily participating with her big sister and clearly gifted, she wasn’t quite up to the reading task.
Then there was the time I forgot parent-teacher night. The thought of the teacher sitting alone in the classroom with my child’s folder of work open in front of her watching the door for 15 minutes before closing it with a sigh haunts me to this day.
Another time I sent my middle child to dress-up day as an astronaut, with a cardboard box covered in aluminium foil on her head and a photocopy of the NASA logo crookedly Clag-glued to the side. A Kmart t-shirt with stars emblazoned across it completed the embarrassing ensemble. Katherine Bennell-Pegg she was not.
And the time I forgot I had abandoned my car in the city after Friday night drinks, and since my husband was working, I took my daughter to the school netball game in an Uber. I asked the driver to drop us off around the block so the other parents wouldn’t see our walk of shame, both of us clutching our water bottles on arrival, mine with added Hydralyte and regret.
Most recently, I purchased one of the Off Campus books to send my reading-reluctant 14-year-old off to school camp with, only to find that it was highly inappropriate. I read it cover to cover just to be sure.
Despite this evidence that I suck at it a bit, I love being a mother. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done, and the required qualifications keep changing.
My daughters are 14, 17 and 23, and I’m still learning how to parent them every day.
Every age and stage serves up its unique challenges. Long gone are the sleepless nights from breastfeeding and teething; now I’m losing sleep waiting for them to get home and those teeth are costing thousands in orthodontist bills.
The gap between being terrified driving them home from the hospital and being terrified that they’re now driving themselves feels heartbreakingly short.
I’m navigating teenage hormones at the same time I’m experiencing my own perimenopausal hormonal hormonal battlefield.
And another identity shift in this lifelong journey of matrescence, is the shift into redundancy. When you feel like your kids don’t need you so much anymore. When you’re constantly calling to ask them where they are, when they’ll be home and whether they need a mediocre dinner.
But then I think of my own mother. Who does not in any way suck at it. Whose concept of a Mum Fail would have been letting me have a lunch order. I still need her to pick up the slack in my home even now.
Part of the push towards having a widely understood word that encompasses the changes of motherhood is so that women understand that we are not actually failing; we are all just doing our best to navigate this monumental shift.
So let’s mainstream matrescence.
You can hear more from Bec Morse and her daughter Gracie on their podcast In the Genes, available on all major podcast apps.
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