My understanding of what discourse analysis is: it is a way of looking at a social or medical condition beyond the behaviours exhibited or what the symptoms present. Instead, it focuses on the factors that could have led to the behaviours or worsened the disease. The ‘why’ and ‘how’ behind what we see, if you may.
The Myths of Motherhood: The Role of Culture in The Development of Postpartum Depression(Ambrosini and Stanghellini 2012) got my attention. In the opening paragraph, the authors had something rather interesting to say about a man’s view of motherhood and how it differs from a woman’s. For men, “motherhood is conceptualized as a necessary stage in the progress towards the attainment of feminity,” while women see it “as a conflicting situation.”
The authors’ analysed findings from the following sources:
1. a blog by Elasti (Claudia De Lillo), a thirty-eight years old financial journalist who defined herself as a “flexible mother of three horbits,” that “among “melancholic type” women, who tend to abide by social norms,
2. a comedy show by Florence Foresti, who was named Person of The Year 2009 by the women magazine, Marie Claire
3. first person statements by five women who shared a “hetero/hypernomia view of motherhood and show a drift into psychopathology
Their conclusion: among “melancholic type” women, who tend to abide by social norms, play established social roles and hide their inner conflicts, myths of motherhood contribute to suppress the contradiction which is intrinsic to motherhood itself making this contradiction uncontrollable and potentially devastating.
I enjoyed reading the literature in this study, however I’m not sure the authors had enough subjects to come to their conclusion. It certainly looked like they chose people who would agree to their opinion, simply for validation. Again, I would have expected that they would have interviewed some men, at least to establish that the statement above (which was not referenced, by the way) about men’s view of motherhood is in fact shared by the majority. While I initially found their argument appealing, being a mother who experienced some of the same frustrations their subjects did, it really isn’t convincing.
This study doesn’t enrich my understanding of the postpartum depression, nor what the myth of motherhood indeed is. I felt it was too sensationalized and didn’t add anything new to what is featured about on American talk shows.
Citation:
Ambrosini, A. & G. Stanghellini (2012) Myths of motherhood.The role of culture in the development of postpartum depression. Ann Ist Super Sanita, 48, 277-286.
