The best parenting books for the early years: my top 5 (and one more)
Mags Salton's top five parenting books for the early years, in the order your child grows into them, plus one more for when they start talking.
The Essence of Matrescence
Articles by Mags Salton
Mother of three, writing on matrescence, postpartum recovery, identity and work.
Who is Mags Salton?
Mags Salton is a matrescence mentor and a Montessori-trained educator. For over ten years she has worked with more than 3,000 mothers and their young families. She founded The Matrescence Mentor to give ambitious women the language, evidence and support to understand what becoming a mother does to them.
Language
Mags holds an MA in Applied Linguistics and Education from the University of Warsaw. It taught her that naming a transition changes how you live through it. Matrescence is a word most mothers are never given.
Development
Her AMI Montessori training covers the first three years of life. Its core idea is that growth needs the right conditions, not pressure. She applies the same idea to mothers.
Families
In 2016 she founded Academicus in Zürich, a centre for international families with young children. Years of baby classes and playgroups showed her the same pattern again and again: mothers hiding how they felt.
“My aim is to make matrescence as universally understood as adolescence.”
“I want ‘she is going through her matrescence’ to be a sentence a partner, a manager, a doctor can say and mean something by it.”
In her Phoenix Report research with over 100 professional mothers, 84% concealed their real struggles when asked how they were doing. Read the Phoenix Report
Newest first.
The best books on matrescence and becoming a mother
Mags Salton's own reading list for becoming a mother: Lucy Jones's Matrescence and eight more books, with who each suits and when to read it.
Depleted mother syndrome and mum burnout: signs, causes and recovery
Depleted mother syndrome is not a diagnosis, but the exhaustion is real. The signs, how it differs from postnatal depression, and what actually helps.
How matrescence is like adolescence, and how it isn't
Matrescence is often compared to adolescence. What brain scans of mothers and teens show, where the comparison breaks, and does pregnancy shrink your brain?
Mum guilt: where it comes from and how to let go
Mum guilt (or mom guilt) is not a verdict on you. Where it comes from, how it differs from shame, the research on working mums, and how to let go.
Postpartum rage: why it happens and how long it lasts
Sudden, intense anger after a baby is not a character flaw. Why postpartum rage happens, how long it lasts and when to speak to your doctor or midwife.
Going back to work after maternity leave: the full guide
Returning to work after maternity leave: the questions most mothers face in the weeks before going back, answered in full rather than with platitudes.
Is it normal not to enjoy motherhood?
Yes, it is common. 84 per cent of mothers hide their real struggles when asked how they are. What that number says about what you are going through.
How to not lose yourself in motherhood
You have not lost yourself. You are in the biggest identity change of your life, and nobody told you it was coming. Here is what comes next.
Patrescence, and why it matters for your relationship after a baby
Patrescence is a man becoming a father, as matrescence is a woman becoming a mother. What it is, and why it matters for your relationship after a baby.
The way Western culture treats new mothers is not normal
The overwhelm, the guilt, the pull between baby and career are not just how motherhood is. Why the way Western culture treats new mothers is not normal.
How capitalism rewired the way mothers feed
Before we can talk about why breastfeeding is hard, we need to talk about who made it that way, and why. The guilt was never yours to carry.
The word that should have changed everything in 1973
Matrescence was named in 1973 by an American anthropologist who studied 250 cultures. Nobody listened. How it took fifty years for the word to reach you.
Maternal ambivalence: why you feel conflicting emotions after birth
Maternal ambivalence is feeling that motherhood is hard and extraordinary at once. Why both are true, and how where you point your attention changes it.
Understanding what happens with your hormones after birth
What your hormones do after birth: the brain changes, the mood swings that have a name, the identity shift that has a reason. Explained properly, finally.
Your identity transformation and the butterfly study
Do butterflies remember being caterpillars? Scientists asked. The answer is extraordinary, and it changes how you understand what is happening to you.
From inner critic to inner coach
Scientists now frame mum brain as cognitive enhancement. Why that changes what you say to yourself, and how to turn your inner critic into a coach.
Mum brain: is it real, how long does it last, and what actually happens
Mum brain is real, and it is not damage. The science of what happens to your brain after birth, why you lose your words, and why you are not broken.