“and You’re Telling Me Not to Stress?” a Grounded Theory Study of Postpartum Depression Symptoms among Low-income Mothers

ing from these five main categories, we found that “mothering is overwhelming” is the core experience of PPD symptoms for low-income women. The demands of parenting small children, along with mothers’ ambivalence, isolation, juggling, and real-life worries, converged to produce an understanding of PPD as feeling overwhelmed by both the material and emotional demands of mothering in the context of the hardships associated with living in poverty. As our presentation of the results suggests, the PPD symptoms that mothers described did not “stand alone” as arbitrary or abstract feelings. Rather, mothers attributed their PPD symptoms to their day-to-day realities of mothering under materially difficult and stressful conditions. These circumstances, and mothers’ subjective experiences, together produced a core experience for low-income women with PPD symptoms of feeling overwhelmed, and literally being overwhelmed, by the multiple responsibilities that they were managing largely alone.