This theme highlights the way that women tend to form expectations of
motherhood ahead of birth and how women then compare the reality of their mothering experience with their predictions. Its significance for stigma and help-seeking is that it helps to demonstrate the processes of public and self-stigma that may be contributing to the experience of postpartum emotional difficulties due to the existence of assumptions,
stereotypes and the process of social comparison.
4.4.1 Anticipating the role of motherhood and how they expected to handle it.
Most of the women formed expectations about what motherhood would be like and how they expected or hoped to be as a mother before they gave birth. Although some women seemed to find it difficult to think how they had formed their expectations, most cited numerous sources of information which helped them to construct these ideas, such as their own mother, friends with children, books, television programmes, lifestyle
magazines, the internet and newspapers. The awareness of forming expectations appeared to be subtle and often unconscious.
49 4.4.1.1 Expectations of motherhood.
Forecasting that motherhood would be a positive experience, participants used words such as “perfect” and “amazing”, tempered with a certain degree of apprehension to describe how they had predicted motherhood to be. Ideas of how their time as mothers would be spent were recounted, with one woman imagining that she would spend the summer gardening while her babies sat in their bouncy chairs.
Chloe: (L15201) I think a lot of people have that kind of, you’re a bit, of course you’re a bit scared of it all. It’s just kind of this ‘rosy-glow’ thinking: “It’s all going to be perfect!”
For the participants who had spent several years attempting to become pregnant or carry a baby to full-term, there was an added element of excitement about reaching a long, awaited destination. However, the positive expectations were not universal, with one participant describing how she had been able to imagine all the potential negatives about having a child but struggled to find any positives, which she said was typical of her thinking style.
4.4.1.2 Expectations of self.
Alongside the positive predictions of what motherhood would be like, the women also tended to have an optimistic view of how they would cope. They expected to draw on the skills they employed as successful career women. In particular, they cited examples of how they were in control at work, that people complied with requests and how they were adept at solving problems.
Ava: (L34) So I’ll literally feed them, change them and then they’ll fall asleep. (L278) I’m very pragmatic and very logical and there’s a process to everything.
Only one participant reported having concerns in the antenatal period about how she would cope with a baby, describing intense anxiety about the weight of impending responsibility of looking after a child.
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4.4.2 Constructing meaning from the comparison between expectations and reality.
Although this was not a quantitative study, it was observed that the women who admitted to having had postpartum emotional difficulties described experiencing the variation between the reality of their early mothering experiences and how they expected things to be as more problematic than the women who did not express emotional
difficulties.
4.4.2.1 Recognising the magnitude of change.
United in their view that life had changed significantly since delivering their babies, participants agreed that the experience could sometimes be overwhelming. Some women commented on just how different the reality was from what they had expected.
Dana: (L12) It was not at all what I expected. Umm, I did expect that it would be hard. And that I might find it a tricky new skill, but not that it would be such a huge, ummm (…) change of, of everything. Absolutely everything.
Dana, in particular, expressed a view that she had been ‘sold’ one image of motherhood which the reality did not match and this had made her angry. In contrast, other women, whilst recognising how their lives had transformed beyond recognition, experienced this change in line with their expectations.
Dana: (L17) There wasn’t, there wasn’t any of this joy, there wasn’t any joy, this “it’s amazing”. None of that. And also, I was a bit sort of angry about that as well.
Eleanor: (L150) People say it’s about sleepless nights, changing nappies and feeding and endless laundry, and that’s basically what it is!
So whilst all women experienced a change, it seems that the women who disclosed emotional difficulties experienced the change more acutely than their peers and described a bigger difference between expectations and reality.
51 4.4.2.2 Making sense of the reality
As indicated above, there was a general sense that mothering was in stark contrast to the women’s previous lives and also, that it was challenging and at times, quite hard work.
The women who did not disclose emotional difficulties tended to explain the change as expectedly hard and therefore, by taking a more compassionate and forgiving appraisal of unyielding demands, were not distressed by the difficulties that they
experienced. Furthermore, they did not appear to be fixated by the scale or nature of the change, instead demonstrating acceptance and a degree of flexibility in their approach to dealing with the current situation.
Eleanor: (L54) It’s too late now, he’s here. I have to, I have to get used to that.
Eleanor described herself as having been quite stressed in a career and concluded that she was exactly the kind of mother she expected to be, so her anxiety was familiar to her and therefore, perhaps, not something that caused her concern. In contrast, the women who disclosed emotional difficulties seemed to dwell on trying to explain the problem. Dana queried whether everyone had lied to her about motherhood and wondered why no one had prepared her better. It is possible that this way of thinking might have led to her forming a slight distrust of other people and contributed to her feelings of isolation and loneliness. Her anger was evident in the energetic manner in which she talked about her experience and ruminating about these stories appeared to perpetuate her mood. When interviewed a second time, Dana was keen to emphasise her perception that the public messages about motherhood and postpartum depression had changed and that public portrayals were more open and honest. It is is not the purpose of this research to determine whether her beliefs were objectively true, but one might hypothesise that as her emotional well-being had improved, she might have been more able to notice other stories, compared with a potential attributional bias that she held whilst depressed.
Typically, the greater the disparity between expectations and reality experienced, the more inclined the women appeared to be to talk about having experienced emotional difficulties. It appeared that experiencing motherhood as different to what was expected and the process of social comparison to perceived norms contributed to negative cognitive appraisal of the change and assaults on one’s self-concept.
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