Postnatal Depression Vs Suffering

This study is ethnography of postnatal experiences of South Asian migrant women in Perth WA examining cultural differences relating to mothering and arguing that the South Asian culture in which these women were socialized could impact greatly on how they experienced the feelings of what is called “postnatal depression” in the Western medical arena. Their postnatal psychological understandings of “postnatal depression” was analysed through the lenses of South Asian convention of female virtue practiced through restrictions on female behavior. The migrant women having internalizing the South Asian cultural schema of womanhood articulate their negative postnatal feelings as a prerequisite of motherhood. It is argued that feelings are not the totality of experience; rather experience is formulated by the particular sociocultural perspective of the individual who is having the experience.