Writings by me

I’ve always wondered about postnatal depression; the official cause of which remains unclear, though it can often be considered just another part of the mothering experience, like breastfeeding and co-sleeping.

With postnatal depression affecting more than 1 in 10 women after the birth of their baby, it seems strange that the cause is still so unclear.

One source says it doesn’t seem to be linked to hormones, yet all mothers are prone to it. So if it’s not hormones, what is it? The same source suggests that a stressful life event can cause it. I’d like to make a third suggestion: the society we live in, and its structures, has created the conditions which allow postnatal depression to thrive. 

Because here’s the thing; I’d say so much of what we experience in mainstream mothering is negative; from the big picture level, to the minute level. How many of us are familiar with the following:

• Obsessive chats about every minute detail concerning our babies and our new mum life, ranging from how the birth went, birthweight, poo (not just our baby’s…), eating habits, tantrums, routines, discipline style…the list could go on and on. This isn’t wrong in itself, it’s the anxiety this might cause if our babies are behind/in front/different.
• Finding out on becoming a mother, just how difficult and lonely it can be and just how shocking that feels compared with our pre-motherhood expectations.
• The scrutiny from everyone and anyone as soon as you conceive. About every single decision we make about all those things mentioned before.
• The subsequent judgment from all parts of society about said decisions once we have made them. You can guarantee that no matter what you decide someone will have something to say and more often than not, will say it to you.
• The extent to which our lives totally change in ways that men’s lives still don’t to the same extent.
• The sadness we feel over our pre-mum lives and not being able to properly express that.
• How rubbish we feel when it all doesn’t come naturally, like society said it would.
• A childcare system that is failing and in desperate need of investment.
• Feeling like we must do motherhood with as little help as possible and then lie about how we’re coping when we’re not.

The sad thing? That’s the tip of the iceberg. Another sad thing? There could be another way.

What if the guilt, the struggle, the loneliness, the difficulties we all experience is not a default position but instead a product of the way motherhood and parenting is in Western society. It’s hugely telling that if you read up on suggested recovery, you’re met with suggestions that you should lean on your family and friends and ask for help. Yet I can’t help but wonder, if our society’s culture started from a position that when a woman becomes a mother, we gather round, we let her rest, we give her help without her needing to ask, postnatal depression might not be as prevalent as it is now.

There are huge implications here; if feeling guilty, depressed and anxious about motherhood is not a natural state but something which has, in part, been created by the structures in our society, I’d argue that those structures are no longer fit for purpose.

In a previous column Sarah talked about men who experience PND. Imagine a world where men were treated as equally important to women in the whole process, where they might be able to take longer paternity leave as standard rather than just the lucky few who can afford it. Where they might actually be given a bed in the maternity ward when you give birth to the child you created together, instead of having to make do with the chair/floor/questionable beanbag. Taking a systems approach with this would inevitably help men too; we are all in this together.

So this I guess might be a rallying call. My background is in social research and for a while now, I’ve been wanting to write my first book, based on a social research project about social causes of PND. My first step is to do a small-scale study where I interview those who have experienced PND and write up a synopsis of those interviews to gain funding for a larger scale study. What I am trying to ask in a rather long winded way is, would you like to be interviewed by me about your experiences with PND? If so, please reply to this newsletter and I look forward to hearing from you.