1st Edition
Rock-a-by Baby Feminism, Self-Help and Postpartum Depression
Although self-help has been an integral strategy of the women's movement, the burgeoning self-help publishing industry and growing popularity of talk shows encouraging personal confession have provoked vicious attacks on self-help from many feminists. Rock-a-By Baby examines the postpartum depression support group movement and exploring the relationship between gender, the ideas and strategies of women's self-help groups and feminism. Taylor uses interviews and personal letters, talk show transcripts, organizational newsletters and a survey of postpartum group leaders to illuminate conflicts played out in the arena of women's self-help.
Biography
Verta Taylor is Associate Professor of Sociology at Ohio State University. She is the co-author of Survival in the Doldrums: The American Women's Rights Movement, 1945 to the 1960s, and co-editor of Feminist Frontiers.
"succeeds beautifully...provides an intriguing look at group dynamics and gender politics." -- Wendy Simonds, Signs
"Rock-a-by-Baby is a moving story grounded in women's experience of postpartum depression. It is also an insightful analysis of new social movements and feminism in late-twentieth-century America. Verta Taylor links the personal and the political in rich sociological and feminist tradition. And she does so wonderfully." -- Political Processes
"Rock-a-by Baby is feminist sociology at its best." -- Barrie Thorne, University of California, Berkeley
"Taylor skillfully combines the concept of women's culture from feminist gender studies and the social construction of postpartum depression by patients, physicians, and psychiatrists. She traces the complexities and contradictions in this ultimately political discourse in an original and widely applicable framework that expands social movement theory and feminist theory." -- Judith Lorber, CUNY
"Framed against the background of her own experience with depression, the author uses survivor narratives in order to elucidate poignant aspects of her study. . . Taylor wants us to look at the disparity between what we believe should be the feelings of new mothers and the actual feelings expressed by women suffering from postpartum depression. . . Overall, this is an informative look at postpartum depression self-help groups." -- Kathleen Sorenson, Assoc. for Research on Mothering, York University, Canada
"Rock-a-by-Baby is a moving story grounded in women's experience of postpartum depression. It is also an insightful analysis of new social movements and feminism in late-twentieth-century America. Verta Taylor links the personal and the political in rich sociological and feminist tradition. And she does so wonderfully." -- Political Processes
