Lucy Jones: Matrescence In Conversation at Bookmarks Bookshop

I sat down with acclaimed science journalist and award-winning author Lucy Jones to discuss her book Matrescence at Bookmarks Bookshop in London.

 

In Matrescence, Jones examines the emerging concept of matrescence; the idea that the transition to motherhood is as physically and mentally transformative as adolescence - and yet this transformation is sidelined and neglected by capitalist society.

 

Jones draws on deeply personal experience as well as a diverse range of disciplines - neuroscience and evolutionary biology; psychoanalysis and existential therapy; sociology, economics and ecology. Jones shows how the changes in the maternal mind, brain and body are far more profound, wild and enduring than we have been led to believe.

 

This groundbreaking work brings to the fore questions of biology, as well as historical materialism in how motherhood has evolved through the ages, and has been conceptualised - even weaponised - under patriarchal capitalism. A blindness to biological shifts women experience through and beyond childbirth can be situated in an alienation from women’s experience, and from the natural world; and fits with a pattern of women’s oppression in an age of wider polycrisis.

 

This live event was recorded on 11th October 2024 at Bookmarks bookshop in Bloomsbury, London. 

 

For more information on Lucy Jones, for books, merchandise and more, visit www.lucyfjones.com or find her @lucyfjones on Instagram.

 

Special thanks to Ursla and the team at Bookmarks. For more information on upcoming events, and to buy all good books, visit Bookmarks at www.bookmarksbookshop.co.uk 

 

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Sound engineering: Nathan Pettefar

Special thanks to Jo Ellis Holland for event photography, and to Sarah Bates, Jan Nielsen, Moyra Samuels, Sheila McGregor, and Chloe Vasseghi