What does matricentric mean? To center the Mother.
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.
Matricentric means mother-centered.
In care and practice, it means taking a mother’s health, development, relationships, and circumstances seriously in their own right. Her experience is a starting point for deciding how to support her.
Consider how often a conversation with a mother begins with questions about the people she cares for. How is the baby sleeping? How are the kids adjusting? How are things going with your partner?
Those questions can tell us a great deal. So can asking: What has changed for you? What do you need right now? What has become harder to ask for?
The answers can change how we understand what a mother is going through. They can also change what we do next.
What is matricentric feminism?
Motherhood Studies scholar Andrea O’Reilly developed matricentric feminism, a mother-centered feminist framework that takes mothers’ needs and concerns as its starting point. Her work draws attention to the inequalities people encounter specifically as mothers, including how their carework is valued and how the expectations of Motherhood shape their choices.
O’Reilly’s scholarship informs how I use the term matricentric-informed at The Matricentric Way. In my work, it describes a way of supporting mothers that brings three lenses into the same conversation: maternal mental health, matrescence, and Motherhood.
What is matrescence?
Matrescence is the ongoing process of becoming and developing as a mother and I conceptualize it based off of the work and scholarship of Dr. Aurelie Athan. It includes changes in identity, relationships, values, and how a mother understands herself and her place in the world.
The transition into motherhood can be an especially intense period of matrescence. So can returning to paid work, raising an adolescent, or entering midlife while caring for both children and aging parents. At different points, a mother may find herself reconsidering who she is, what she wants, or how she wants to care.
In The Matricentric Way, I use two questions to make the relationship between matrescence and Motherhood clearer:
Matrescence often asks: Who am I (un)becoming?
Motherhood asks: What is shaping who I can become?
Two mothers returning to paid work may both be asking what they want work to mean in their lives now. One has paid leave, predictable hours, and someone who can reliably handle pickup. The other returns before she feels ready and spends her lunch break trying to cover a gap in childcare. Both are developing as mothers. The conditions of their lives give them different room to consider what they want and act on it.
We can recognize a shared developmental process without assuming a shared developmental reality.
What does it mean to be matricentric-informed?
To be matricentric-informed is to center mothers as whole people and understand their experiences within the developmental, relational, cultural, and material conditions of their lives.
At The Matricentric Way, that means making several commitments in practice:
Take the mother’s well-being seriously in its own right. Her health, desires, grief, relationships, work, and future belong in the conversation, even when everyone she cares for is doing well.
Recognize mothers as experts on their own lives. A practitioner brings training. A mother brings knowledge of her history, family, culture, and what her choices may cost her. That knowledge should shape the support she receives.
Distinguish the mother, mothering, and Motherhood. The mother is the person. Mothering is the practice and work of care. Motherhood, as I use it here, refers to the social, cultural, political, and economic conditions in which that care happens. A mother may need support in one, two, or all three areas.
Make room for ambivalence and many ways of mothering. A mother can love caring for her children and miss the freedom she had before. She can value being dependable and want someone else to take responsibility. Those feelings can help her understand what matters to her and what is becoming difficult to sustain.
Treat care as a shared responsibility. If a mother has to notice the need, ask for help, explain what to do, and make sure it gets done, she’s still managing the care. Supporting her can mean changing who takes responsibility at home and asking what workplaces, healthcare systems, and communities can do to make care more sustainable.
What does matricentric-informed care look like in practice?
Imagine a mother says, “I love my kids. I’m angry all the time. And I miss the person I was before.”
She may have waited a long time to say those three things in the same room. Each of the three lenses changes what we hear and what we ask next.
Maternal mental health. How long has she been feeling this way? How is it affecting her sleep, her relationships, or her ability to get through the day? What care does she need right now?
Matrescence. What does she miss about the person she was before? Which parts of that life does she want to reclaim? What is she beginning to want that she hasn’t had room to consider?
Motherhood. Who can step in when she needs time to herself? Who arranges that care? How do her work schedule, income, childcare options, family expectations, or experiences of discrimination shape what she can realistically ask for and expect to receive?
She may need mental health care. She may need space to grieve a part of her life she valued and explore what she wants now. She may need someone else to take full responsibility for a piece of the carework so she has an hour she doesn’t have to arrange herself.
Those needs can coexist. Treat what needs treating, support what needs development, and name what is systemic.
Free December workshop for professionals who support mothers
I’m planning a free December workshop, What Does It Mean to Be Matricentric-Informed? From Concept to Practice, for therapists, social workers, doulas, coaches, educators, and other professionals who support mothers. If you are a Mother interested in stepping into this space professionally, as well, this workshop is for you too.
We’ll work through a case together and practice using the three lenses to decide what to ask, what support to offer, and where the conditions of a mother’s life may need to change.
Where Do You Begin?
Perhaps you're a mother reading this and thinking, This is it. This is the work I want to be part of.
Maybe you're imagining a new professional direction, exploring work alongside your current career, or simply wanting to deepen your understanding before deciding what comes next.
Foundations offers an entry point into matrescence, Motherhood Studies, and mother-centered practice.
Or perhaps you're already supporting mothers professionally and recognizing that your existing education has left important questions unanswered.
Frameworks in Practice offers an opportunity to deepen your understanding and explore how to bring these perspectives into your professional work.
Wherever you're beginning, the invitation is the same:
To move beyond simply understanding motherhood as it is, and begin imagining what it could become.
Explore The Matricentric Way's professional training pathways.
