You go back to work after maternity leave.
Your job is the same. Your colleagues are the same. You still know how to do the things you've always done.
But something feels different.
Maybe you're questioning decisions you used to make without thinking twice.
Maybe things that once felt important don't seem quite as important anymore.
Or perhaps you're sitting in a meeting, wondering why you suddenly feel less confident speaking up when this is something you've done hundreds of times before.
And somewhere underneath it all is this question:
What's happened to me?
There's a word that can help explain some of these changes.
Matrescence.
And understanding it might change how you think about yourself, your confidence and your career after becoming a mother.
What is matrescence?
Matrescence is the process of becoming a mother.
Not just physically, but psychologically, emotionally and socially.
The term was introduced by anthropologist Dana Raphael in the 1970s and has since been brought to wider attention by reproductive psychiatrist Dr Alexandra Sacks.
Sacks describes matrescence as a developmental transition, drawing comparisons with adolescence.
Think about how much changes during adolescence.
Your body changes. Your relationships change. Your sense of identity changes. You start questioning who you are and where you fit in the world.
We generally accept that adolescence is a significant period of adjustment.
But when women become mothers, we don't always acknowledge that a similarly profound transition may be happening.
Instead, much of the attention goes towards the baby.
How they're feeding. How they're sleeping. How they're developing.
And while all of that is happening, the mother is changing too.
Not necessarily in ways she expected.
And not always in ways she immediately understands.
Why can returning to work after maternity leave feel so strange?
Before you have a baby, you might have a fairly settled understanding of yourself at work.
You know what you're good at.
You know how you operate.
You have a sense of your ambitions, your capabilities and where you're heading.
Then you become a mother.
And suddenly, there's another enormous part of your identity to accommodate.
Your priorities might shift.
Your relationship with time might change.
You may feel more conscious of the trade-offs you're making.
You might still love your career, but find yourself questioning what you want from it.
Or you might want exactly the same things as before, but feel less certain about how to make them happen.
And then you return to work.
An environment that often expects you to pick up where you left off.
Except you haven't necessarily picked up where you left off. You've been through a significant life transition.
This is something I explore in Your First Day Back After Maternity Leave.
The practical return might happen on a Monday morning.
The psychological adjustment can take much longer.
Does matrescence affect your confidence at work?
It can.
But not necessarily because you've become less capable.
Imagine you've spent years building confidence in your professional identity.
You understand your role. You know your strengths. You feel relatively comfortable with who you are at work.
Then motherhood introduces new responsibilities, experiences and questions about what matters to you.
You may find yourself reconsidering things you previously took for granted.
And when your sense of identity is changing, it's understandable that your confidence might feel less settled too.
You might start questioning yourself in meetings.
Comparing yourself with colleagues who haven't taken time away.
Wondering whether you're still as ambitious.
Or worrying that other people see you differently now that you're a mother.
Some of those feelings may be connected to matrescence. Others may reflect sleep deprivation, workplace culture, discrimination, inadequate support or the very real pressures of combining paid work and caring responsibilities.
It's important not to explain everything away as a natural part of motherhood.
Sometimes the difficulty isn't that you've changed. It's that the environment around you hasn't adapted to your changing circumstances.
And sometimes it's a combination of both.
What happens when your ambitions change after having a baby?
This is one of the questions I find particularly interesting.
We're often encouraged to think about ambition as something fixed.
You're either ambitious or you're not.
You either want to progress or you've taken your foot off the pedal.
But ambition isn't necessarily that simple.
Before having children, career progression might have meant promotion, increased responsibility or earning more money.
After becoming a mother, those things might still matter enormously.
Or you might find yourself wanting something different.
More autonomy.
More flexibility.
More meaningful work.
More control over how you spend your time.
Perhaps you still want the senior role, but you're questioning whether the way your organisation expects you to get there is compatible with the life you want.
Changing what you want doesn't automatically mean becoming less ambitious.
It might mean you're becoming clearer about what matters to you.
Equally, you don't have to redefine your ambitions simply because you've become a mother.
The important thing is having the space to work out what you want, rather than what you think you're supposed to want.
What can help you navigate matrescence and returning to work?
Understanding matrescence won't suddenly make the nursery logistics easier or give you an extra three hours in the day.
But it can offer a different way of understanding what you're experiencing.
Rather than immediately assuming something is wrong with you, it creates space to explore what's changed.
Here are three questions worth sitting with.
1. What feels different about me now?
Try to be specific.
Is it your confidence?
Your priorities?
Your relationship with work?
Your capacity?
Your expectations of yourself?
You might find that some things have changed significantly, while others haven't changed at all.
And that's useful information.
2. What am I trying to get back to?
I hear versions of this question a lot.
I just want to feel like my old self again.
But what does that actually mean?
Is it the confidence you used to have?
The freedom?
The sense of control?
The feeling that you knew where you were heading?
Sometimes, identifying what you're missing helps you understand what you actually need.
And sometimes you realise that you don't want everything to go back to how it was.
3. What would support look like for me now?
It's easy to focus entirely on what you need to do differently.
Be more organised. Manage your time better. Build your confidence. Work harder to keep up.
But what about the support around you?
Would a conversation with your manager help?
Do you need clearer expectations?
More flexibility?
Time to think through your career direction?
Or simply somewhere to talk openly about what you're experiencing without feeling that you need to have everything figured out?
You don't have to navigate every part of this transition alone.
You don't have to become your old self again
One of the things I wish more women heard before returning to work is that the goal doesn't have to be getting back to exactly who you were before.
You can still be capable.
Still be ambitious.
Still care about your career.
And also be different.
You might discover new strengths, different priorities or a clearer understanding of what you want.
You might also miss parts of your old life and feel uncertain about the changes.
Those experiences can exist together.
Matrescence gives us a way to recognise that becoming a mother involves change for the mother too.
And perhaps that's a more helpful place to start than asking why you haven't bounced back yet.
Finding your feet at work after becoming a mother
If you've been questioning your confidence, identity or what you want from your career since becoming a mum, these are exactly the kinds of things we explore at The Parent Shift.
I'm Laura, a coach and mum of two, and I support women navigating the transition back to work and the changes motherhood can bring to their working lives.
Through one-to-one coaching, we create space to understand what's changed, work out what matters to you now and find a way forward that feels right for you.
You can explore one-to-one coaching, or start with my free guide if you'd prefer to explore these questions in your own time.
Further reading
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Dana Raphael, The Tender Gift: Breastfeeding (1973), which introduced the term matrescence.
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Dr Alexandra Sacks, A New Way to Think About the Transition to Motherhood, TED Talk.
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The Transition Doesn't End When You Return to Work, The Parent Shift.