When Matrescence Meets Midlife: Why This Season of Motherhood Can Feel Especially Intense

Matrescence, Motherhood and Maternal Mental Health

First and foremost - this blog is NOT clinical advice nor is it intended to minimize PMADS or maternal mental health. In fact, it is to strengthen this conversation, expand it and bring more attention to it, from all disciplines and providers who work with Mothers.

There is a pattern I have been noticing among many millennial mothers that I don't think we've fully explored.

Increasingly, I meet women who are raising young children, or navigating the emotional complexity of adolescence, while simultaneously entering midlife. These experiences are often discussed independently. We talk about motherhood. We talk about burnout. We talk about perimenopause. We talk about the mental load. We talk about the "midlife crisis."

But I wonder if separating these conversations causes us to miss something important.

Perhaps what many mothers are experiencing is the convergence of developmental processes that are each asking something profound of them at the same time.

Matrescence Is a Lifelong Process

One of the greatest misconceptions about matrescence is that it belongs exclusively to pregnancy and the postpartum period.

It doesn't.

As psychologist Dr. Aurélie Athan has posited, matrescence is a lifelong developmental process. Like adolescence, it is not a single event but an ongoing unfolding that ebbs and flows alongside our children's development and our own.

Some seasons are quieter than others and some invite more reflection, while others ask us to reorganize how we understand ourselves and the lives we are building.

This is one reason I often describe matrescence as an awakening.

Becoming and being a mother changes how we understand ourselves. Our relationships. Our values. Our priorities. Our purpose.

Throughout motherhood, we return again and again to questions such as:

Who am I becoming?

What matters most?

How do I want to live?

These questions often re-emerge as our children reach new developmental milestones, as our relationships evolve, and as we ourselves continue to grow.

The Developmental Context of Motherhood Has Changed

Over the past several decades, the developmental context in which many women become mothers has changed.

The average age at first birth has steadily increased in the United States. According to a Pew Research Center analysis, when Generation X women were between the ages of 20 and 35, 57% were already mothers. Among Millennial women at those same ages, that number had fallen to 48%. Importantly, this shift does not reflect a lack of interest in parenthood. The same Pew research found that millennials ranked becoming a good parent among their highest life priorities. Rather, the change reflects broader cultural shifts, including later marriage, increased educational attainment, women's expanded participation in the workforce, and changing economic realities.

The developmental context has changed for many women as they become mothers.

Many millennial women are now raising young children during the very years another significant developmental season often begins to emerge.

Midlife.

Midlife Amplifies the Questions of Matrescence

Matrescence awakens the question of who we're becoming (and who we have been).

Midlife awakens our relationship with time.

Matrescence and midlife ask many of the same questions but midlife simply amplifies them.

Developmental psychologists have long described midlife as a season of life review, meaning-making, and an increasing awareness that time is finite. We begin taking stock of the lives we've built. We reconsider what feels aligned. We become increasingly aware that time is precious…not in a way that invites fear, but in a way that invites clarity.

The questions themselves don't necessarily change.

But our relationship to them does.

Time has a way of clarifying what matters.

For many millennial mothers, that clarification arrives while they are simultaneously raising children, navigating demanding careers, caring for aging parents, moving through perimenopause, renegotiating long-term partnerships, and carrying the invisible labor that so often accompanies family life.

It is not difficult to understand why this season can feel profoundly intense…the developmental work itself has become extraordinarily rich and layered.

A Different Way of Understanding This Season

For many mothers, it may be increasingly essential that we learn to pay attention to each developmental push as it stands on its own—honoring the weight, the reflection, and the existential questions that any single season can bring, be it a push in matrescence or midlife.

And at the same time, we must also begin to recognize the complexity that emerges when multiple developmental processes are unfolding at once.

Any one developmental shift—whether within matrescence or midlife—can invite profound reflection.

But when they layer, they can amplify vulnerability, intensify emotional rawness, and deepen the sense of being undone.

This is one reason why context matters.

And it is also a reason to continue expanding the conversation around maternal mental health.

These additional frameworks do not diminish the reality of what mothers are experiencing; they help us understand it more fully.

They allow clinicians and professionals that support mothers to better support mothers while also helping to depathologize experiences that may, in fact, be deeply developmental.

And perhaps most importantly, they offer mothers themselves the context needed to understand why this season can feel so consuming.

Why so many feel exhausted. Why so many feel undone.

Because for many, this is not simply one awakening.

It is two.

Matrescence continuing to unfold.

Midlife beginning to emerge.

Two developmental awakenings, happening at the same time.

Perhaps it is the understandable experience of living through an especially active season of matrescence while midlife gently asks us to consider not only who we are becoming, but how we want to spend the time we have becoming her.

Learn More and Get Involved

Professionally: The Matricentric Way is leading this paradigm shift - it truly is expanding the conversation on maternal mental health. If you are a professional that supports Mothers, I invite you to enroll in The Matricentric Way, either LIVE or self-paced. Join this movement today so that we can transform not only the lives of the individual Mothers we support, but the greater collective of Mothers.

Additionally, Matrescence, Motherhood and Maternal Mental Health Clinical Consultation is offered monthly for therapists seeking to expand their understanding of this unique intersection. Learn more here.

Personally: The Becoming Mama course is available self-paced for any Mother within her first 7 or so years postpartum, interested in learning more about her matrescence AND the impact of Patriarchal Motherhood on her experience of being a Mother. (NOTE: this is NOT a substitute for clinical therapy NOR is it recommended to treat maternal mental health challenges. Consult your therapist for any mental health concerns.)

Download the CARE Model – Start the shift with our free introduction guide to dismantling the mental load and re-imagining your caregiving identity.

Purchase The CARE and HOLD Model for Professionals here. And if you are interested in this model personally, you can purchase the Guide here.