When I had children I expected my body to change…
This is because, as you may just possibly have noticed if you live on Earth and have ever come into contact with other human parents – or any parenting magazines, books or discussions, ever – there’s a whole lot of talk about the effect on a woman’s body after having children.
This obsession with post-baby bodies is pretty understandable, seeing as most babies thoughtfully cause their mothers’ bodies to transform from ‘Woman’ into a ‘Heavily Loaded Transit Van’ within a few months. Leaving a trail of wobbly and veined destruction in their wake, which we spend most of the next twenty years trying to correct.
Having children has a massive impact on our physical appearance, and it’s very well documented. I also expected my mind to change for a while, because I’ve seen pregnant and post-natal women in films, and they all look bonkers. And films are obviously a true reflection of real life. So up to this point I was pretty well prepared.
But I didn’t expect becoming a mother to change my mind even a billionth as much as it did, or in so many ways, or for so long. Even now, eighteen years into the job, I often don’t know who I am or why I’m feeling the way I am, or what my brain is DOING half the time. (Apart from when I’ve had quarter of a glass of wine. Then my brain is doing an impression of a trapeze artist on laughing gas. I’m a cheap date.)
More ‘issues’ than Vogue
Given that I know many other parents in my stage of life who have some kind of psychological ‘issue’ that they don’t really understand. This causes them real problems in their everyday lives, which started after they had children – not even necessarily their first child, but certainly things that they feel they can attribute in some way to having become parents. It amazes and saddens me how little care and attention is given to the psychological effects of parenthood.
Bar the now frequent accounts of post-natal depression, which is at last accepted as something we can have without being forced to have our ovaries removed! The wider subject of psychological imbalance is still so shrouded in mystery and parental secrecy that it’s almost a taboo. You’ll notice I wrote parenthood above, not motherhood. This is very important. Because these things can affect men as well as women. Yes, even post-natal depression. Again, that’s something that isn’t talked about or understood enough, so that we can help people who suffer with it.
The lack of talk
Education and support seems to me to be completely crazy, not to mention staggeringly unhelpful. Some studies have estimated that as many as 30% of women in Western cultures experience some form of psychological trauma after having a child. (The numbers are different in developing countries, for a wide variety of cultural and practical reasons that I’m not going to go into here, because we’d need another 50 pages!)
For men the numbers are lower, but still significant; some figures suggest 3-10% of men have post-natal depression, and to be honest I would think it’s probably much higher, but they either don’t recognise it for what it is or don’t want to come forward and tell anyone, because they are ashamed or afraid. Which is part of the reason I’m writing this!
From anxiety disorders to panic attacks, claustrophobia to depression, social phobia to the fear of flying, parenthood is responsible for a huge range of life-changing psychological conditions, in a huge number of otherwise totally ‘balanced’ people. And yet, when no aspects of our physical changes appear to be out of bounds over a cup of coffee (“Oh, I had the worst haemorrhoids! Bleeding ones too. Couldn’t sit down for weeks. Anyone for some cake?”) nobody wants to talk about these many, confusing, often terrifying psychological changes.
Why is this?
Well, quite simply because most mental ‘wobbles’, however small, are still shrouded in fear and social stigma in our culture. Many of us are still frightened of mental illnesses and psychological conditions because we can’t see them, we don’t fully understand them, and we think that if we have one we’re a short mental hop from dribbling, or stuffing pigeons with sawdust.
For parents the fear is doubled because if we have psychological ‘issues’ we feel there’s a very real chance we’ll be labelled a Bad Parent Who Must Have Their Children Taken Away And Their Supermarket Points Card Chopped up. And there’s nothing more terrifying than the idea of losing a supermarket points card. So we all keep schtumm, and pretend we’re fine.
Everybody, that is… except me.
I want to talk about it. I DO talk about it. Because we need to.
I set up a mental health website recently to completely change the face of mental health. To re-brand it. To lift the lid on something that has affected 1 in 4 people in the world, and yet we still treat as strange or shameful. The response I’ve had since I started has been phenomenal. A very big proportion of the people getting in touch with me are parents. Men, women, old, young, new parents, seasoned mums and dads – even grandparents. The most common post-parenting problems seem to be anxiety, and depression.
Sometimes together, sometimes just the one. These disorders can last from as little as a few months to many years. Some lives were relatively unchanged, others totally blown apart. But what links them all is change. A change of mental state, of emotional resilience, and of psychological state. Very normal, settled people going about their daily lives, and then, quite suddenly, not coping with things any more, to varying degrees.
I am writing this for you because I really hope that as people read about these things, symptoms can be recognised and people feel able to talk about how they are feeling. And most importantly, know where to go to get help. Sometimes it can be just a call to a friend. Or a couple of hours of childcare a week to give you some time to be YOU, not a parent all the time. And if needs be, then a trip to talk to your doctor is a very good idea. The time has come to recognise what a huge effect parenthood can have on our minds, that this applies to men too, and that we need to understand it much more and fear it much less.
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