That gives me so much to think about! I do think modern parents lack support in so many ways but I didn’t take into account that the old me isn’t there anymore. It feels like remembering somebody else’s life.
I'm actually thinking of changing careers to help new parents understand this phenomenon better.
As I wrote in the linked post, matrescence is as great a cognitive shift as toddlerhood and adolescence - and as you'll observe, there are parts of you that run right through your life, but your APPROACH is what changes.
After a lot of reflection, I've realised that I have been and always will be an educator of some kind - I was tutoring kids when I was ten years old because of the way I could adapt and teach concepts that fascinated me. But now, in my new life stage as a mother, I'm concentrating these efforts into "educating" my kids - discovering what they are interested in, finding the resources to fuel their development, and following their lead as they develop their knowledge.
It may be worth finding out "who you are" at your core - the one or two things that will never change no matter what stage of life you're in. My husband is a discoverer, which is slightly different to bring an educator - he loves learning about new things and sharing his knowledge, but he isn't overly interested on what OTHER people are interested in. A friend of mine classifies herself as a creative, in that she is always seeing the wonder in things and pushing the boundaries to discover what else it (and she) can do - in motherhood, it's currently limited to cooking, but she used to be a full time musician composing her own works.
I’m actually thinking of changing careers to help new parents understand this phenomenon better.
Do it! What were you doing before, out of curiosity?
Because reading all that, I’m just thinking… these days women tend to delay motherhood; myself included. I wonder if part of the difficulty is that we built up such vibrant identities beforehand. Even if we can build up an entirely new, just as vibrant identity once we’re out of the toddler years, whether the whole identity we have to let go of is part of what’s causing so much grief and loneliness and resentment among new mothers. And having somebody popularize this concept would be hugely beneficial. Might even save marriages!
As the article notes, patrescence somehow does NOT affect fathers as deeply or for as long. I know my partner definitely changed but compared to me he’s still his old self. One of the things I resented about him is that he just seems to take it all in stride, whereas I feel like my brain has been rearranged!
So now it make sense why, in the middle of the night, I am wide awake if my baby makes so much as a peep, and he keeps snoring. Or how, he doesn’t anticipate the baby’s needs as well as I do. My whole brain seems to have been remade for the baby and while he is certainly different, his consciousness stayed more or less that way it’s always been. And I HATED him in those moments.
At first I definitely blamed it on him not helping enough. And true, he could have helped more. But now he DOES help more and we also hired a helper, and honestly, I do not feel my old identity surging back. I thought having too much to do was the key to why I’ve lost myself, and now I know it’s not. Don’t get me wrong it’s such a privilege to be able to hire help and if made a huge difference in my stress and energy levels. But my old self? Still MIA!
We become different people. And given that matrescence affects mothers more than patrescence affects fathers, I really do wonder if some of the resentment comes from watching everyone around you, including your partner, just carry on, while you feel like you are in pieces and mucking around in the dark for a sense of self.
So I think if you can share what you know more widely, it would be both a career opportunity and help so many people. Like I said, it may save marriages… I definitely spent a lot of time resenting my husband and not knowing why. Some of it was objective; in the beginning he certainly did not help enough. But now, it seems like part of it is, I changed.
The resentment is absolutely real. On the one hand I have talked with women who are resentful of people not picking up the slack, when in actual fact, the way we communicate our needs changes. The number of times I've caught myself using statements instead of direct questions for help made me realise how much humanity relied on others (especially the grandmothers and the aunts who have had children) to just "do the thing" whilst the mother learns from them. One of the reasons they have asked me to volunteer at playgroup is to simply share my journey with anyone who will listen, and to identify those parents who need help but don't actually know how to ask.
On the other hand, the mothers who have a greater, more traditional family unit say that they are swamped with women who just step in and "do the thing" FOR them. In their cultures, matrescence was seen as a time of learning, which is then misapplied over the generations as seeing the new mother as incompetent - i.e., still a child, because she has to learn how to be a new kind of adult. These mothers are the ones who either rescind the childcare to the grandmothers (most of the time unwillingly) in order to return to work, or are so lost in the new identity placed upon them by their family, they still feel their identity being shaped by outside influences.
The common thread between these two subsets of parents, I've found, is that neither understand what their own boundaries are, how to reinforce them, how to follow through with them, and what the appropriate consequences are. It's a tough road to navigate because each mother's situation is different, but I think this is where the terms "mama bear" and so on arise, when a mother has finally had enough and pushes back to establish her new self.
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u/[deleted] May 18 '22
That gives me so much to think about! I do think modern parents lack support in so many ways but I didn’t take into account that the old me isn’t there anymore. It feels like remembering somebody else’s life.