American Motherhood and the Problem of Postpartum Depression

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How did postpartum depression come to be understood as an illness, both in medicine and in culture? Historian Rachel Moran traces the emergence of postpartum depression as a diagnostic and cultural concept from the mid-twentieth century to the present. She argues that our contemporary understanding of postpartum depression is the product of decades of negotiation among feminist activists, psychiatric researchers, and advocates working within shifting political landscapes. With a focus on the 1960s-1980s, Moran discusses how postpartum distress was reframed from the “baby blues” to a feminist critique of motherhood, and then later to a medicalized and non-politics diagnosis. This history helps explain why postpartum depression today is widely recognized but unevenly treated, and why the condition is often understood as politically different from other women’s health issues like abortion or contraception.
Rachel Louise Moran is a Professor of History at Texas A&M University, where she teaches courses on modern US history, women’s history, and the history of medicine. Her research focuses on how political cultures and institutions have shaped Americans’ relationships with health and wellness in areas including nutrition and fitness, psychiatry, and reproductive and sexual health. She is the author of Blue: A History of Postpartum Depression in America (University of Chicago Press, 2024) among other titles. As part of writing Blue she also conducted oral histories that are now archived as the Maternal Mental Health collection with the University of North Texas’ Oral History Program.

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