Tired sad woman sits near the cradle with a newborn baby. The young mother is on the floor and hugs her knees
Key Points
Rationale
The transition to motherhood is profoundly difficult for working women in ways that organizational research has overlooked (Ladge & Greenberg, 2015).
Up to 20% of new mothers experience postpartum depression (O’Hara & McCabe, 2013), a work-life shock event with significant symptoms. However, research on PPD in organizations is limited despite its critical implications for working mothers.
The goal is to elucidate PPD’s role in shaping sensemaking processes regarding identities and personal narratives around working mothers’ professional and personal lives.
Method
The researchers conducted 41interviewswith working mothers diagnosed with PPD in the past five years. This included stay-at-home mothers and mothers working part-time or full-time. They also interviewed medical experts like obstetricians to provide additional perspectives on PPD.
The semi-structured interviews lasted 45-90 minutes and covered personal history, work history, PPD diagnosis and treatment, and the intersection of PPD with work and family. The researchers analyzed data in batches using open coding techniques from grounded theory methodology (Glaser & Strauss, 1967).
They assessed patterns in the data, refined ideas, and incorporated insights from identity and sensemaking theories to develop a process model explaining how PPD shapes working mothers’ identities.
Sample
The sample included 41 working mothers from diverse racial backgrounds who were formally diagnosed with PPD in the past five years. Most were White (30 women), married (36 women), working full-time (36 women), and had 1-3 children.
The average age was 35 years old. Most worked in salaried jobs (27 women) across industries like healthcare, engineering, education, business, and the military.
The sample also included 5 medical/health experts like an obstetrician who had experience treating PPD.
Results
The key themes capture PPD as a disruptive yet potentially transformational experience that drives intense sensemaking and identity work around the intersection of working mothers’ personal and professional roles.
Insight
Rather than viewing PPD as an endpoint outcome of organizational factors like discrimination or lack of support, this study reconceptualizes PPD as a work-life shock event that activates an intricate sensemaking process for working mothers.
Crucially, the symptoms and treatment associated with PPD’s imposing identity force women to engage in identity work to determine new personal priorities and narratives around self-care, work, and family.
By foregrounding PPD’s direct role in shaping mothers’ inner dialogues and coping strategies, this research provides a more holistic, process-oriented understanding of how working women navigating PPD reconstruct their identities across life domains.
The resultant focus on self-compassion and cross-domain balance represents personal growth from adversity.
Opens avenues for research on imposing identities, maternal mental health, gendered organizations, and posttraumatic growth
Strengths
Limitations
Clinical Implications
Treating postpartum depression requires psychologists to appreciate it as an imposing identity that fundamentally alters working mothers’ sense of self, rather than minimizing it astransient mood fluctuation.
Clinicians should normalize patients’ difficulty adjusting and make space for processing loss while restoring priorities that support self-compassion.
This involves facilitating helpful coping orientations, identity transitions between work and family, and crafting personal narratives that reject societal ideals about intensive mothering or ideal workers.
Psychologists should cultivate self-compassion while harnessing compassion for others to benefit patients’ networks. Maximizing support from partners, relatives, colleagues and friends aids coping and growth.
Finally, clinicians need to correct misconceptions and judgmental rhetoric that isolates new mothers, helping patients’ networks appreciate postpartum depression’s disruptive yet transformational catalyst for posttraumatic growth and positive identity changes.
With multidomain support, patients’ suffering containing seeds of resilience for themselves and their organizations.
References
Primary reference
Gabriel, A. S., Ladge, J. J., Little, L. M., MacGowan, R. L., & Stillwell, E. E. (2023). Sensemaking through the storm: How postpartum depression shapes personal work–family narratives.Journal of Applied Psychology, 108(12), 1903–1923.https://doi.org/10.1037/apl0001125
Other references
Glaser, B. G., & Strauss, A. L. (1967). The discovery of grounded theory: Strategies for qualitative research. Aldine.
Ladge, J. J., & Greenberg, D. N. (2015). Becoming a working mother: Managing identity and efficacy uncertainties during resocialization.Human Resource Management, 54(6), 977-998.https://doi.org/10.1002/hrm.21651
O’Hara, M. W., & McCabe, J. E. (2013). Postpartum depression: Current status and future directions.Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 9(1), 379–407.https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-clinpsy-050212-185612
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Olivia Guy-Evans, MSc
BSc (Hons) Psychology, MSc Psychology of Education
Olivia Guy-Evans is a writer and associate editor for Simply Psychology. She has previously worked in healthcare and educational sectors.
Saul McLeod, PhD
BSc (Hons) Psychology, MRes, PhD, University of Manchester
Saul McLeod, PhD., is a qualified psychology teacher with over 18 years of experience in further and higher education. He has been published in peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Clinical Psychology.
