dc.contributor.author | Crook, Sarah | |
dc.date.accessioned | 2017-06-26T11:21:39Z | |
dc.date.available | 2017-06-26T11:21:39Z | |
dc.date.issued | 2017-03-01 | |
dc.date.submitted | 2017-06-26T12:10:58.875Z | |
dc.identifier.citation | Crook, S. 2017. The Uses of Maternal Distress in British Society, c.1948-1979. Queen Mary University of London | en_US |
dc.identifier.uri | http://qmro.qmul.ac.uk/xmlui/handle/123456789/24566 | |
dc.description | PhD | en_US |
dc.description.abstract | After the Second World War mothering became an object of social, political,
medical and psychiatric investigation. These investigations would in turn serve as
the bases for new campaigns around the practice, meaning and significance of
maternity. This brought attention to mothers’ emotional repertoires, and particularly
their experiences of distress. In this thesis I interrogate the use of maternal distress,
asking how and why maternal distress was made visible by professions, institutions
and social movements in postwar Britain. To address this I investigate how maternal
mental health was constituted both as an object of clinical interrogation and used as
evidence of the need for reform. Social and medical studies were used to develop
and circulate ideas about the causes and prevalence of distress, making possible a
new series of interventions: the need for more information about users of the health
care service, an enhanced interest in disorders at the milder end of the psychiatric
‘spectrum’, and raised expectations of health.
I argue that the approaches of those studying maternal distress were shaped by their
particular agendas. General practitioners, psychiatrists, activists in the Women’s
Liberation Movement, clinicians interested in child abuse and social scientists,
sought to understand and explain mothers’ emotions. These involvements were
shaped by the foundation of the National Health Service in 1948 and the
crystallization of support for alternative forms of care into self-help groups by 1979.
The story of maternal distress is one of competing and complementary professional
and political interests, set against the backdrop of increasing pessimism about the
family. I argue that the figure of the distressed mother has exerted considerable
influence in British society. As such, this research has important implications for
our understanding of how mental distress developed into a mode of social and
political critique across the late twentieth century. | en_US |
dc.description.sponsorship | Wellcome Trust, grant number 099362/Z/12/Z | en_US |
dc.language.iso | en | en_US |
dc.publisher | Queen Mary University of London | en_US |
dc.rights | The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without the prior written consent of the author | |
dc.subject | Mothering | en_US |
dc.subject | Maternity | en_US |
dc.subject | Maternal distress | en_US |
dc.subject | History of Medicine | en_US |
dc.title | The Uses of Maternal Distress in British Society, c.1948-1979 | en_US |
dc.type | Thesis | en_US |