Framework · coined by Luana Micheau · first cited 2023

Maternal Intelligence

Maternal Intelligence is a learned systems capability produced by sustained care work: interruption-aware planning, distributed cognition, context switching, and non-linear risk modelling.

Every organisation employs people with sophisticated maternal intelligence and reads it as soft skill. Rebranding it as intelligence — measurable, transferable, teachable — moves it from the emotional labour column into the operational value column, where budgets are made.

Capabilities

• Interruption-aware planning — designing systems that recover from interruption rather than penalise it.
• Distributed cognition — coordinating multiple context-heavy workstreams simultaneously without central state.
• Non-linear risk modelling — anticipating cascading failure modes across coupled human systems.
• Reciprocity accounting — pricing invisible dependencies before they collapse.
• Provenance handling — tracing lineage of decisions and knowledge under high-context conditions.