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Struggling and Coping with Life: Maternal Emotional Distress in a South African Township

Rubin, Sarah Ethel
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=case1401790260

Abstract Details

2014, Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, Anthropology.
This dissertation explores the everyday lives of Xhosa mothers in a township near Cape Town, South Africa. It focuses on Xhosa mothers' emotional experiences during pregnancy and after childbirth in order to demonstrate how their subjectivity is shaped by Xhosa cultural structures and values, the material scarcity and dangers of township life, and the norms and practices of mothering. It challenges the presumed universality of the diagnosis "perinatal depression" by demonstrating that only by focusing on broader realms of maternal experience in local contexts can we understand if and why perinatal depression is a meaningful illness category for a given culture. This dissertation employs longitudinal, person-centered, ethnographic methods, including structured and open-ended interviews with 38 Xhosa women, standardized psychiatric questionnaires, and observations of mothering, family activities, and community life. Xhosa women do not perceive life in the township as wholly problematic, but food insecurity, violence in public and private spaces, and the intersections of HIV and motherhood create widespread suffering. Xhosa concepts and ideals of motherhood include inimba, maternal empathy. Inimba is a complex concept at the heart of a multi-dimensional social role; it provides Xhosa women with a way of understanding a tension between the cultural imperatives of mothering all children and mothering one's own children--a tension exacerbated by poverty. Pregnancy is often joyful, but some find it fraught with anxiety about disclosure and the impending social transformation of woman to mother. Pregnant Xhosa women demonstrate an acute awareness of the liminality (in-between-ness) of pregnancy as they (re)negotiate relationships to secure social support. Xhosa mothers describe a process of "coping" with distress that involves sharing, empathizing, collectivizing, and, finally, "releasing." The process invokes Xhosa cultural concepts ubuntu and inimba. Because of inimba, Xhosa mothers are particularly adept at empathizing and thus coping with distress in a culturally meaningful way. This dissertation contributes to our understanding of how cultural and material contexts and social role affect emotional experiences in the perinatal period; and it contributes more broadly to psychological anthropology, studies of motherhood and mothers, of social suffering and subjectivity, of South African cultures, and of urban poverty.
Eileen Anderson-Fye (Committee Chair)
Atwood Gaines (Committee Member)
Vanessa Hildebrand (Committee Member)
Kimberly Emmons (Committee Member)
442 p.
African Studies; Cultural Anthropology; Gender Studies; Mental Health; Psychology; South African Studies
motherhood; gender; reproductive health; pregnancy; perinatal depression; postpartum depression; mental health; ethnopsychiatry; suffering; subjectivity; empathy; coping; inimba; ubuntu; South Africa; Cape Town; Xhosa culture; anthropology; urban poverty

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Rubin, S. E. (2014). Struggling and Coping with Life: Maternal Emotional Distress in a South African Township [Doctoral dissertation, Case Western Reserve University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=case1401790260

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Rubin, Sarah. Struggling and Coping with Life: Maternal Emotional Distress in a South African Township. 2014. Case Western Reserve University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=case1401790260.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Rubin, Sarah. "Struggling and Coping with Life: Maternal Emotional Distress in a South African Township." Doctoral dissertation, Case Western Reserve University, 2014. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=case1401790260

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

case1401790260
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© 2014, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by Case Western Reserve University School of Graduate Studies and OhioLINK.