Self-Labeling and Women's Mental Health

Postpartum Illness and the Reconstruction of Motherhood

Bibliographic Data

ID10561865
AuthorsVerta Taylor (The Ohio State University, corresponding author)
Year1995
Volume28
Issue1
Pages23-47
Publication date1995-02-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueSociological Focus (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0038-0237 • E-ISSN: 2162-1128
PublisherTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/00380237.1995.10571037
OpenAlexW2317181523
LanguageEN
Citations received16
References cited60

The standard sociological approaches to women's mental health have tended to attribute women's higher rates of mental illness either to the objective structural conditions of gender inequality or the sexist treatment of women by psychiatry and the mostly male medical establishment. This paper draws from Thoits' self-labeling theory that conceptualizes mental illness as emotional deviance to offer an alternative to the victimization models that dominate studies of women's mental health. Using the debate over postpartum illness, I document the significance of women's agency as patients, medical providers, and self-help activists in the recognition and definition of women's mental health problems. I draw from interviews with women who have suffered emotional distress following the birth or adoption of a child, interviews with physicians and mental health providers, and the popular and medical discourse on pregnancy and childbirth to demonstrate that postpartum depression is a socially constructed emotion that women use to accept, negotiate, and resist norms and cultural ideals about gender, motherhood, and the female self

Agency (philosophy · Childbirth · Deviance (statistics · Mental distress · Mental health · Mental illness · Negotiation · Postpartum depression · Pregnancy · Psychiatry · Sociology · Child Abuse and Trauma · Gender, Feminism, and Media · Maternal Mental Health During Pregnancy and Postpartum · Psychology · Social Psychology