Postbirth Blues

Does society cause them ?

After giving birth, most women lapse into some sort of melancholy. Though no one knows precisely what causes post-partum depression, most theories focus on medical factors or psychological ones. British Sociologist Ann Oakley, after a five-year study of 55 first-time mothers in a London hospital, has a different idea: postpartum depression is mostly caused by society.

In her new book on the study. Women Confined, just published in Britain, Oakley presents what amounts to the first feminist theory of postnatal blues. The recipe for the depression, she says, is to create an unrealistic myth about motherhood, offer unfeeling medical care, and then set the new mother down in a social system that offers her little support for her new child and new role. Oakley, the mother of three, thinks childbirth is so oversold as woman's greatest achievement that women believe something is wrong with them if they have ambivalent feelings after giving birth. Says she: "The medical profession should see it not as a problem of individuals but of the structure."

Oakley opposes the use of pain-killing injections during birth, particularly the ones that numb the lower half of the mother's body and, according to the sociologist, make her feel more like a spectator than a participant. "It is a profoundly alienating experience," she says. "The mothers felt like it was someone else's child." Her advice: proper support from husband and hospital will eliminate anxiety, and thus reduce pain to a bearable limit without drugs.

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