American Motherhood and the Problem of Postpartum Depression

2026, Zverina lecture presented by Rachel Louise Moran, PhD. 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. --- Event Details: