"I thought I could postpartum-proof my experience": Embodying, resisting, and negotiating medicalization online.

Résumé

Postpartum depression is often conceptualized as an individual health outcome. Less scholarship investigates the social and cultural meaning of postpartum depression. I propose a medicalization approach that accounts for how social factors shape new mothers' perceptions of health and wellbeing during the period following childbirth. This study shows how ideal motherhood and medicalization jointly shape how new mothers interpret and manage postpartum challenges. Through qualitative analysis of online reflections on postpartum depression posted on the social networking website Reddit, I explore how new mothers conceptualize postpartum depression and how they navigate medicalization during the postpartum period. I identify three dominant sensemaking strategies: new mothers (1) embodied, (2) resisted, or (3) negotiated medicalization depending on whether they viewed their postpartum experiences as inconsistent with ideal motherhood ideologies. By demonstrating how ideal motherhood shapes new mothers' perceptions of wellbeing, this work identifies medicalization as a key mechanism through which ideal motherhood is codified in women's reproductive lives. This work also underscores the postpartum period as a critical reproductive transition.