When it comes to psychiatry-hating, the Times of London's India Knight apparently hails from the Stiff Upper Lip faction, not the Tom Cruise one. But that doesn't make her dismissal of the idea of male post-natal depression any less stinging. Just instead of e-meter auditing, she recommends keepin' your mouth shut and drinking in private, like her late father, the Admiral:
Iíve written before about the modern obsession with pathologising everything, from overeating to being lazy. Now, according to a new study, weíre told fathers also suffer from post-natal depression. No they donít. They suffer from the shocking realisation that their life has changed overnight, two-day benders arenít an option, lie-ins might have to take a back seat and the foxy missus is a) not looking so foxy these days and b) has someone else to put first. Thatís not post-natal depression. Itís called growing up.Well done, young mum [timesonline.co.uk, via dietbruboy]
Oh, please let her write more. Even a book, maybe. Because we all know the best way to support women is to demonize their partners.
The media keeps giving people like this a platform exactly why?
My problem with her article is it's pretty deeply mired in the social problems England is going through right now, like binge drinking and problems associated with the party lifestyle (STDs, etc.)...
If it were the only country where male post-partum depression were found, she might have a point, but some of us come from places where the majority of men (and women) don't go out all night and drink until they puke after about the age of 22...
And boy, did I love reading through the screeds demonizing women in their late thirties/early forties having children for having waited so long. And I'm sorry her kid has genetic issues, but mine don't, so it's not a foregone conclusion.
While some of her views may come across as a bit harsh concerning older mothers, none of that prevents her analysis of the social prejudices towards young mums being sadly spot on...
That's funny, I didn't really read it as a screed against older mothers. I read it as a wake-up call to society. But then, I already got my wake-up call when my 34-year old wife's triple screen test came back and said "1 in 27" chance of Down's Syndrome. Too bad it came too late to change anything.
We got the bad news just a couple of days before Christmas, so we had our holidays ruined by the anxiety over waiting for the amniocentesis results to come back. Thankfully, every thing was OK.
The moral of this story? It a better idea to have children earlier rather than later. I've always believed this, but it didn't work out that way for us.
So, why did she have to ruin the whole thing by tacking on that asinine comment at the end?