Motherhood Is a Political Category

And you’re not wrong to feel disenfranchised by it

Photo: William F. Campbell/Getty Images

There’s a word I love, “matrescence,” which describes the psychological process of becoming a mother. Psychologist Aurélie Athan brought it into the mainstream after discovering anthropologist Dana Raphael’s work; both women had seen the need for research about a mother’s interior state when functioning as a person…