Talking about early motherhood: Recognizing loss and reconstructing depression

Abstract

This paper identifies the ways in which the medical/clinical discourse on depression and postnatal depression in particular, regulate women's organization of subjective experience and perceptions of motherhood. The results of two studies are combined to demonstrate that women experience and socially construct the tension between motherhood and its contingent problems in the pre-defined context of ‘depression’ as a clinical disorder, while they themselves experience depression as a ‘normal’ part of their daily lives. The studies involve in-depth interviews. One involves repeated interviews over the transition to motherhood from pregnancy up to 6 months after the birth, while the other involves interviews with mothers talking about their lives and reflecting on their experiences of becoming and being mothers.