Paternal Postpartum Depression

Just recently finished writing an integration paper about Postpartum Depression for our Developmental Psych class. Here's the conclusion part. If you want to read the articles mentioned, you may refer to the references part.

Conclusion

Modern times is all about re-examining and reorienting personal beliefs, values, and traditions perpetuated in the society. It is about challenging prevailing systems of beliefs and believing in the tendency of people to go beyond what is dictated by society. Even in the basic unit of the society, people are beginning to accept the changing roles and the multiple roles that one must be able to play in the family. With this, research starts to explore topics including paternal Postpartum Depression. People get to be enlightened that the involvement and emotional investment of the father to his children is as important as the one given by the mother.

The studies mentioned in the previous section focuses on the various effects of father-infant bond on the development of an infant. The researchers started by introducing the work of Schaber and his colleagues (2021), which served as a foundation for the fact that father-infant bond is more than quantity, but more on quality. For instance, the duration of paternal leave may have some effect on the emotional bonding, but it is not the sole indicator. The ability of the father to build relationships and communicate, and the psychosocial state of the father have a large impact as well on the infant development. This is proven as well in the next main article featured on the paper, which basically tells the reader how maladaptive behaviors that stemmed from untreated paternal Postpartum Depression can have a detrimental effect on the state of the infant. Some of the aforementioned findings were how fathers with higher anxiety scores tend to be less responsive to the needs of their infants, less sensitive, less warm and affectionate towards their infants and displayed more negative reactions when responding to the needs of their infants compared to non-depressed fathers. Meanwhile, the last main study mentioned all about the predisposition of a child who grew up with a father suffering from untreated depression to psychiatric disorders and how it can generally affect the cognitive development of the child (Eddy et al., 2019). Remember how it was mentioned that the psychosocial development of middle adulthood is all about projecting outwards, hence when the father had been projecting outwards the opposite of the values of trust, share, love, hope, and care that was formed during the previous stages, it will have a detrimental effect on the development of the infant. This is why parents should be able to resolve issues in their own development, so that it will break the cycle. Parents should be careful of what they project, and this is what true generativity means. In conclusion, society should start raising awareness and talking about postpartum depression in both mothers and fathers so both would have the courage to ask for help and to not leave it untreated.

References:

Eddy, B., Poll, V., Whiting, J., & Clevesy, M. (2019). Forgotten fathers: Postpartum depression in men. Journal of Family Issues, 40(8), 1001-1017.

Koch, S., De Pascalis, L., Vivian, F., Renner, A. M., Murray, L., & Arteche, A. (2019). Effects of male postpartum depression on father–infant interaction: The mediating role of face processing. Infant Mental Health Journal, 40(2), 263–276. https://doi.org/10.1002/imhj.21769

Schaber, R., Kopp, M., Zähringer, A., Mack, J. T., Kress, V., & Garthus-Niegel, S. (2021). Paternal Leave and Father-Infant Bonding: Findings From the Population-Based Cohort Study DREAM. Frontiers in psychology, 12, 668028. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.668028