Peanut and Tommee Tippee Redefine Maternal Health Storytelling

If you haven’t heard about the latest Peanut App and Tomee Tippee PK Ad that was placed in the New York Times as a full page-ad, you are missing out! The Ad has been making a splash online this week and for good reason! It is a milestone for maternal health. The bolded headline on the Ad read “IDGAF is in the Dictionary, matrescence isn’t.” Below the meaning of the word matrescence, the Ad said, “It’s time to GAF about mothers.” It also included a QR code to sign a petition.

Language matters and visibility matters. How can we expect action when the language necessary to even begin to describe the full physical, mental, neurological transformation of motherhood isn’t even a mainstream term yet? As the campaign shared, “When we don't name what happens to mothers, we don't study it. We don't fund it. We don't support it.”

But if you aren’t familiar with this term, you are not alone. According to the petition site linked to the Ad, “67% of mothers have never heard the term matrescence. They go through one of the most destabilizing experiences of their lives thinking they're broken, alone, or something is wrong with them.”

What is wild is that motherhood is the largest neurological reorganization of the adult human brain ever observed but we’ve downplayed and minimized it with cute but dismissive terms like “mommy brain”- often used to describe the sleep deprivation and mental overwhelm and stimulation that comes with feeding and changing a newborn every few hours for days, weeks, and months on end.

The campaign shared, “Matrescence, the complete biological, psychological, and emotional transformation of becoming a mother.”

On their LinkedIn, the Peanut App made a post a few days ago announcing the Ad’s arrival.
“WE JUST PUT A FULL PAGE AD IN THE NEW YORK TIMES🗽

If you’ve ever felt unseen, misunderstood, or erased as a mother, this campaign is for you.

50 years since it was first coined by anthropologist Dana Raphael, Matrescence (the emotional, physical, psychological and neurological process of becoming a mother) is still missing from major dictionaries.

It’s time to define these experiences on our own terms.
It’s time to GAF about mothers.
Sign the petition and join us and Tommee Tippee PK in the movement to #MakeMatrescenceMainstream”

For some background, the Peanut App is like a dating app, but for making friends, but for moms in all stages of pregnancy and motherhood, the app was voted Apple’s best in 2021. Tommee Tippee is a global baby care brand founded in 1965. They are well known for their feeding products like bottles, breastpumps and more. The Ad also featured a QR code linking to a petition to get Matresence in the dictionary. You can sign the petition here. It has received over 5,000 signatures already. 

Thank you to the Peanut App and Tommee Tippee teams for bringing awareness to the permanent, life long transformation that is motherhood that so many women have not had the language to even begin to describe! I only recently learned of this term myself in the past few years. It would have been a lifesaver and total gamechanger to know this word as a first time mom, or even the second time around when I was dealing with delayed on-set postpartum depression while caring for a toddler and a newborn and going back to school.

The validation and solidarity and acknowledgment is something that has been missing from many motherhood journeys. We need to educate society and future generations of mothers. Hopefully the next viral petition will hopefully be to have a federally mandated paid maternity leave in the U.S. or to allocate more funding to women’s health period. But this is a start!

Article By Hannah Lacy
Hannah Lacy is a digital content strategist with over seven years of experience in marketing and social media, and more than a decade of experience as a freelance writer contributing to various publications. A working mother of two school-aged children, she writes at the intersection of ambition and parenthood, with a passion for storytelling, advocating for working moms, and partnering with mission-driven brands and organizations.

Connect with her on LinkedIn or at hannahlacymedia@gmail.com.
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