Category: Parental Rights/ Parenting

The news can often terrify children. As a parent, you can help your kids sort through news stories they might see on TV.

Among the traditional nativity characters, Mary has always been the one that has most profoundly spoken to me personally. I suspect that depth of intuitive, personal connection with her and the part she played in the blessed story among stories is a girl thing – a mother thing. As a result of personal lived experience, I and millions of other women like me, know what it feels like to be a woman and a mother. And I know what it feels like to be pregnant, to endure childbirth, to hold a tiny baby freshly arrived from heaven.

Postpartum mood and anxiety disorders — including postpartum anxiety (PPA), depression (PPD), psychosis, and obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), though colloquially referred to as PPD — are being diagnosed in an increasing percentage of women. A recent study published in JAMA Network Open shows that PPD rates have jumped over the past decade, from 9% in 2010 to 19% in 2021. Other sources show that “somewhere between 10 and 15 percent of mothers experience postpartum depression,” as I noted recently at The Federalist. While some of the past decade’s increase in diagnoses could be due to greater awareness, it is clear that more can and should be done for mothers experiencing PPD.