Are Pregnancy Magazines To Blame For The Baby Blues?
It’s a fact of life that almost every aspect of human behavior is blamed on something else, no matter how far fetched the link might seem. Well you can judge this one for yourself, but according to the latest reports, researchers are claiming that pregnancy magazines are to be blamed for the baby blues.
I am sure that the publishers of these magazines may be more than a little upset at this charge, but let’s see what the researchers had to say. In their opinion, these magazines offer pregnant women a somewhat unrealistic view of pregnancy and giving birth. They claim that it is treated as a ‘beautiful, big adventure’, giving the impression that everything related to pregnancy such as getting the nursery ready or going back to work, is easy.
The researchers say that when women find that things are not as portrayed by these magazines, it causes them to slip into depression. In their opinion, many new mothers are at risk of post-natal depression when they can’t be pampered the way some of the women in the magazines are.
The study titled ‘The Making of Modern Motherhoods‘ was done by the Open University through funding provided the Economic and Social Research Council. Women were reportedly interview during the later part of their pregnancies, and twelve of them were interviewed again after they gave birth. The study also looked at eight pregnancy magazines.
I do feel that like everything else in this world, motherhood and pregnancy have become highly commercialized. The idea behind a magazine after all is to gain revenue through advertising. But I can’t help but wonder if this research is being fair, not only to the publishers, but also to pregnant women and new mothers everywhere.
Postpartum depression is a serious issue. I am not sure that human beings, even considering our susceptibility to clever marketing campaigns, can be so easily misled. I feel that the majority of pregnant women have few illusions if any, about what pregnancy entails, and what happens afterwards. In all honesty, you simply can’t plan for everything. You might want to have a natural birth and end up having a c-section. You may be planning around your due date and the baby may come two weeks early or two weeks later.
Don’t take this as harsh, but maybe women who are led to believing that it is all easy going after reading a few magazines should share some of the blame, not just the publications themselves. This research seems to suggest that pregnant women might be as easily led as children seeing ads during Saturday morning cartoons. In other words they simply don’t give women enough credit.
I am not by any means discounting what the women interview for the study may have been going through. But we can’t be sure if they covered enough women for the study to really come to that conclusion. So what do you think? Are pregnancy magazines really to blame for the depression some women feel after giving birth?
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Secret Mommy says...
I agree. Without being cavalier about the issue of PPD and without discounting what the women in the study have gone through, this is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard. For several reasons. Not only is it highly unbelievable that women are so easily led by magazines, but I read MANY MANY pregnancy magazines when preggo and don’t remember any glamorous “this-will-be-so-easy” stories. I read stories about how to stay sane on almost no sleep. Stories about how to overlook your filthy house because you have other things to focus on. And important stories that pre-warned that there might be stressful moments in even the happiest and most solid marriage. I’m not now trying to endorse pregnancy magazines, but this study sounds ridiculous to me.