Reviews

Rock-A-By Baby: Feminism, Self-Help and Postpartum Depression by Verta Taylor

ovenbird_reads's review against another edition

2.0

Okay for a historical perspective on the self-help movement in relation to postpartum depression. But this book really falls down in its excessive focus on postpartum psychosis. There is a lot of attention paid to mothers who commit infanticide in the midst of a postpartum psychosis. This contributes to a major misrepresentation of postpartum depression, which is a completely different thing, and also far more common than psychosis. I wish that this book had talked more about women suffering from the more moderate forms of postpartum illness, which are far more rampant and representative of a more "typical" experience.

I think there are some very interesting things here about the role of feminism in self help movements though and about how postpartum illness is framed in the medical profession and elsewhere.