qotd, every last word of it
May 29, 2015
"The myth of the pregnant mother who is high on hormones has had considerable staying power. Something sentimental in us likes the notion that the physical discomfort of pregnancy is outweighed by the thrill of nurturing a new life within your own body. At a time of opening social mores, when mental illness is more readily acknowledged, when feminism has won women a wider range of career options, when some women’s choice not to have children is validated, when the right of gay men and lesbians to be parents has pushed the frontiers of fatherhood and motherhood, this monolithic perception of pregnancy persists. We have not acknowledged how appropriately anxiety-ridden pregnancy is, how traumatic the change in identity that accompanies prospective motherhood can be."
-- From Andrew Solomon's thorough (and resonant, for me, at least) piece on The Secret Sadness of Pregnancy with Depression in the Sunday NYT Magazine.