In a 2023 survey of 2,000 British mothers by Peanut and Tommee Tippee, 62% of mothers said they felt they had “lost part of their identity.”
Almost one in four moms say they have “lost touch with their identity outside of parenting,” according to a BabyCenter survey of 400 U.S. moms with children five years old or younger.
Based on the survey, “the further into motherhood moms g[e]t, the more likely they … feel like their role as a mom define[s] them.”
Oprah Daily recently published an article titled, “Nobody Warns You About the Identity Crisis of Motherhood.”
I was unaware of this, but we have a formal name for the transformation of becoming a mother: Matrescence. Anthropologist Dana Raphael coined this term in the 1970s, and clinical psychologist Aurelie Athan has revived it, according to a recent Bump article.
“The seismic shift happens in every slice of the human pie, biologically, psychologically, socially, economically, existentially, ecologically and spiritually,” Athan says in the article.
From my experience, we suddenly discover we’ve “turned into” a parent. We are overwhelmed in a period of warp change, and we adapt to meet the needs in front of us. For some of us, who we were before appears to have disappeared altogether.
For those who love God, his Word reminds us he has made so much remain the same.
You are the same person. You are God’s chosen child, heir, and friend. (Ephesians 1:4). In John 1:12, Jesus’ disciple John says, “[t]o all who did receive [Jesus] … he gave the right to become children of God.” In John 15:15, Jesus says, “I have called you friend[], for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.” In Galatians 4:7, Paul says, “you are … a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.”
Your God are the same God. “I the Lord do not change,” he says. (Malachi 3:6; see also James 1:17; Hebrews 13:8).
And you are still on the same path. The trees look different — but it’s the same path. You are still on the same path God set out for you. (Proverbs 16:9; Proverbs 19:21). You are in territory designed for you. Your path remains the same.
Psalm 139:16 says, in his “book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for [you], when as yet there was none of them.” “As I have planned,” the Lord says, “so shall it be, and as I have purposed, so shall it stand.” (Isaiah 14:24).
“[You] are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that [you] should walk in them.” (Ephesians 2:10). “[T]hough [you] fall, [you] shall not be cast headlong, for the Lord upholds [your] hand.” (Psalm 37:23-24).
And your Guide? He is also the same. (See Psalm 119:105).
Your God recognizes you, even if you don’t. He knows who you are. Remember who you are, and be encouraged. You are his person. You are his child.
