Andrew Solomon did an incredible service to women, mothers and families with his latest piece in the New York Times Magazine, "The Secret Sadness of Pregnancy With Depression." Solomon offered a compassionate, nuanced and well-researched look at the reality of depression in pregnancy. The transition to motherhood is a tremendous physical and emotional challenge that, as a society, we refuse to see in its entirety. As Solomon so eloquently explains:
Something sentimental in us likes the notion that the physical discomfort of pregnancy is outweighed by the thrill of nurturing a new life within your own body. At a time of opening social mores, when mental illness is more readily acknowledged, when feminism has won women a wider range of career options, when some women's choice not to have children is validated, when the right of gay men and lesbians to be parents has pushed the frontiers of fatherhood and motherhood, this monolithic perception of pregnancy persists.
Pregnant women are pinned down by that monolithic perception. The idea that women should be happy during pregnancy is so pernicious that the women we see at the Seleni Institute are often shocked (and so often ashamed) when they are not. And yet, their suffering and struggle is common.
[For more of this story, written by Christiane Manzella, go to http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...nancy_b_7472058.html]
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