More Than Postpartum: Tracking Differences in the Arc of Maternal Depression Across Liberal Welfare Regimes 

A brief report prepared for the Council on Contemporary Families by Shannon Cavanagh, Department of Sociology, University of Texas at Austin, and Asya Saydam, Department of Sociology, University of Texas at Austin.

Across the world, mothers consistently report depressive symptoms in their child’s first year. While some of this is due to hormonal and mood shifts after birth, the depth and length of the depression mothers experience may also be tied to increases in household and emotional labor, difficulty in balancing work-life demands, and lack of sleep. Social expectations around being a “good” mother add to the strain, as do economic pressures and the challenges of maintaining a sense of personal control and autonomy.

Maternal depression often lingers beyond the postpartum window, and there are differences in recovery over time. Our research suggests that while maternal depressive symptoms are common around the world, national policies as well as personal resources play a role in women’s recovery from depressive symptoms during the early years of their child’s life. Here, we consider maternal depressive symptoms in three countries: the United Kingdom, Australia, and the United States. These low-fertility countries have similar economic and political histories but differ in terms of income inequality, gender equality, and family policy. For instance, in the UK, parents have access to 18 weeks of paid maternity leave and subsidized childcare. In Australia, targeted supports like the Childcare Benefit are available to low-income families. In the US, family support policies are more limited and are means-tested, and hence not universally available to middle- and upper-income persons unless they can purchase such services.

In our new study, published in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior, we leverage data from three nationally representative birth cohort studies in the US, the UK, and Australia. Each study began in the early 2000s and followed focal children and their mothers from infancy through early childhood, allowing us to track how maternal reports of depressive symptoms change over time, and how these changes differed by mothers’ own resources, like education and union status, as well as by each country’s distinctive social policies.

Maternal depression isn’t fixed, and it doesn’t end after infancy

One of our most striking findings is the difference in the long-range trajectories of women who initially experienced maternal depressive symptoms, with the US showing the least improvement over time. Mothers in the UK began with higher depressive symptoms than mothers in the US and Australia when their child was 9 months old, but over time, they experienced the steepest drop in symptoms. US mothers, by contrast, started out with lower symptoms but saw almost no improvement over time. Indeed, by their children’s 6^th birthdays, US mothers reported higher depressive symptoms than mothers in the UK. Mothers in Australia fell in between.

Individual resources like marriage and education also matter – but not in simple ways – and they interact with social resources, such as supportive family policies

Having established these differences in patterns, we then looked at how individual resources, like being married or having a college degree, shaped mothers’ depressive symptoms over time, and whether these factors played out differently across policy settings. Starting with union effects, married mothers in the UK experienced steeper declines in their depressive symptoms than single mothers, suggesting that where public supports are available to all citizens, regardless of their personal resources, this amplifies the advantages of personal resources, such as having a partner or a college degree. In the US, however, the pattern was reversed: Single mothers who started with higher levels of depressive symptoms showed some modest improvements over time, whereas married mothers saw no change. Turning to higher education, a college degree only made a difference in Australia, where mothers with a college degree experienced significant declines in depressive symptoms over time. In the US, college educated mothers, like married mothers, saw no improvement over time. This highlights the limits of individual resources in the absence of broader structural support.

Taken together, these findings show that maternal mental health is not static and is affected by other factors than simple biology. Structural supports can ease the burden of early parenting. But in places where support is lacking, even well-resourced mothers can struggle. While mothers in the US without a partner or college degree are especially vulnerable to prolonged depressive symptoms, it is striking that even married and well-educated mothers in the US took longer to recover from their depressive symptoms than their counterparts in the UK and Australia. Addressing maternal mental health means looking beyond biology and the postpartum period and paying closer attention to how family policy can support the recovery of mothers who experience maternal depression.

 

FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT:

Shannon Cavanagh, Department of Sociology, University of Texas at Austin

scavanagh@austin.utexas.edu 

Asya Saydam, Department of Sociology, University of Texas at Austin

asyasaydam@utexas.edu 

 

LINKS:

Press Release: New From CCF! Recovery From Maternal Depression Varies Around the World