Rock-a-by Baby: Feminism, Self-Help and Postpartum Depression [Paperback]

Although self-help has been an integral strategy of the women's movement, the burgeoning self-help publishing industry and growing popularity of talk shows encouraging personal confession have provoked vicious attacks on self-help from many feminists. Rock-a-By Baby examines the postpartum depression support group movement and exploring the relationship between gender, the ideas and strategies of women's self-help groups and feminism. Taylor uses interviews and personal letters, talk show transcripts, organizational newsletters and a survey of postpartum group leaders to illuminate conflicts played out in the arena of women's self-help.Verta Taylor is Associate Professor of Sociology at Ohio State University. She is the co-author of Survival in the Doldrums: The American Women's Rights Movement, 1945 to the 1960s, and co-editor of Feminist Frontiers. succeeds beautifully...provides an intriguing look at group dynamics and gender politics. -- Wendy Simonds, Signs
Rock-a-by-Baby is a moving story grounded in women's experience of postpartum depression. It is also an insightful analysis of new social movements and feminism in late-twentieth-century America. Verta Taylor links the personal and the political in rich sociological and feminist tradition. And she does so wonderfully. -- Political Processes
Rock-a-by Baby is feminist sociology at its best. -- Barrie Thorne, University of California, Berkeley
Taylor skillfully combines the concept of women's culture from feminist gender studies and thel3á