Taking Motherhood Seriously - TC Alumni Magazine
Ask most passersby the phases of life, and you’ll get the usual suspects: childhood, adolescence, adulthood. But matrescence? Not so much.
That, says Aurélie Athan (Ph.D. ’10), is because the transition to motherhood — and its accompanying biological, psychological, social, cultural and spiritual complexities — is “the biggest story never told in academia.”
Athan has helped put matrescence — a term coined by the late medical anthropologist Dana Raphael — front and center in the larger discourse and has created TC’s new curriculum in Reproductive & Maternal Well-being.
““The act of parenting changes you. In a world of competition, parenting sometimes teaches us collaboration. In a world of violence, we know our kids respond better to understanding. In a world of distraction, parenthood demands our presence.”
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