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Despite gains in women’s equality over the past several decades, inequality still
shapes many aspects of women’s lives. This is particularly the case during a vulnerable
time such as the perinatal and postpartum periods, when women are giving birth,
recuperating from childbirth, facing the often-unprecedented demands of newborn
care, and dealing with a range of stressors such as emotional, financial, and relationship
changes. Institutionalized inequities accentuate this situation; for example, Canadian
parental leave policies provide a false aura of universal protection amidst several key
exclusions and weaknesses that leave many women with inadequate maternity leave
benefits, or none at all (Felesky & Kirshner, 2005; Kershaw, 2009). Internalized societal
ideals regarding motherhood can compound this vulnerability in particularly cruel ways:
one manifestation is the belief that a mother alone should be able to meet all of her
baby’s needs, and that to ask for or accept help, indicates weakness – or even failure –
as a mother (Rossiter, 1988). In my own professional work, I find this to be a common
belief among many new mothers.
Hrdy (2009) shows the fallacy of this belief through extensive research into the
biological and social history of human emotional development. She posits that, even
among primates, human babies are uniquely demanding; thus, mothers and their
infants were never meant to be alone, and the practice of the isolated nuclear family (or
the mother-child dyad) goes against the survival of homo sapiens as a species. Yet in socalled
wealthy and ‘advanced’ societies, millions of women struggle, alone, with the
burdens of a new baby – and oftentimes, other life stressors as well.
Beyond the immediate perinatal period, mothers face other disadvantages
because of sexism and misogyny. Women are still clustered in lower-paying occupations
such as the service industry (Scott, 2005; UNICEF, 2008), and are less likely than men to
be in higher-income positions (OECD, 2006). Women face violence and abuse in intimate
relationships, and must overcome many complex legal, safety-related, financial and
personal challenges in order to leave such relationships, heal from these experiences,
and create a new and safe home environment for themselves and their children
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