Rachel Louise Moran's "Blue"

Rachel Louise Moran is an associate professor of history at the University of North Texas. She is the author of Governing Bodies: American Politics and the Shaping of the Modern Physique.

Moran applied the "Page 99 Test" to her new book, Blue: A History of Postpartum Depression in America, and reported the following:

From page 99:

“PEP promised its phones were answered by “nonjudgemental listeners” who “do not teach or preach.” Its parent support groups and warm line were meant to encourage open conversation, which they attempted to do in both English and Spanish. Critically, “We are not giving advice on medical matters, but providing a sympathetic ear for everyday frustrations,” PEP emphasized.

The group told the story of one warm line caller, a woman with a ten-day-old baby. “I need somebody here with me,” the moderately depressed woman explained. “I just can’t get through another day by myself.” The woman was local, so a PEP volunteer spent most of the next day with her, and afterward remained in phone contact with the woman. In a few days, she had weathered the worst of it and was doing better.

PEP focused on mild to moderate postpartum distress, and its volunteers rarely used the language of depression. They would deal with the loneliness and sadness and confusion about parenting, the pressures facing the “supermom,” and would quickly refer anything more serious to a medical professional. But some women argued that embracing medicalization was not the same as arguing medical problems should only be dealt with individually. Instead, they said, these serious and doctor-managed postpartum problems also needed peer support groups.

Page 99 is the last page of chapter 4, “Supermoms and Support Groups.” It passes the Page 99 Test pretty well. The page is wrapping up a conversation on PEP, Postpartum Education for Parents, a Santa Barbara parents’ support group developed in 1979. They held meetings and trainings and ran a “warm line” to offer non-emergency support for new parents. They did all this from a peer-support perspective. The members were volunteers, and built up a model of parents-supporting-parents through hard times.

The group did not use the language of depression or mental illness much in those years but served as an important stepping stone towards programs that did. One leader of PEP, Jane Honikman, went on to start a group explicitly about postpartum depression in 1987. I tell the story of that critical organization, Postpartum Support International, later in the book.

I was fortunate to get access to personal papers from the early years of PEP (call logs, scrapbooks, pamphlets, grant applications), and to do an oral history with Jane Honikman. I think readers can get a peek at how special these sources are on this page. They can also see one major theme of the book, the relationship between medical professionals and grassroots activists. This page addresses PEP’s decision to not frame their support in medical terms, and the tension between the medical and social is a strand that runs throughout the book. Naturally, there are many book themes that are not present on this one page: the relationship between postpartum depression and feminism, celebrity and media, and political decision-making, to name a few. But page 99 is a start!

Visit Rachel Louise Moran's website.

--Marshal Zeringue