Pregnancy Blues

Chapter One

1

Great Expectations

CULTURAL MYTHS, CUSTOMS, AMBIGUITIES, AND MISCONCEPTIONS OF WOMANHOOD, PREGNANCY, AND MOTHERHOOD

If some enterprising salesperson were to create a pregnant woman’s coloring book aimed at the North American market, it would surely come packaged with a box containing nothing but pastel crayons with names like Blissful Blue, Perfect Pink, and Mother’s Mauve. No Black Cloud, Blue Funk, or Red Rage in that crayon box! And the mothers outlined in the book for coloring would all be smiling serenely, gazing lovingly into the eyes of their partner—an equally blissed-out expectant father—and, of course, looking nothing less than beautiful.

If that sounds like the Hollywood image of pregnancy, it is certainly the one that’s been sold to Western women, and that Western culture has naively bought into. For the majority of women, it is probably even a fair approximation of the truth. It is not, however, the image of pregnancy that I see every day. And if we look a little more closely at the myths and mixed messages that have historically surrounded fertility, family, and femininity not only in our society but i ... read full excerpt from Pregnancy Blues ebook