The Postpartum Conversation We Need to Be Having

The conversation around Hayden Panettiere and the Lindsay Clancy case has me thinking a lot about the way we treat women who struggle postpartum. As a therapist who works with postpartum women, and as a mom myself, this feels incredibly personal. For years, Hayden was publicly judged and shamed during some of the hardest periods of her life. People questioned her as a mother and criticized choices they knew very little about, while she was openly struggling with postpartum depression and later spoke about substance use. Instead of asking what she might be going through, so much of the conversation became about what kind of mother she was.

That is exactly why women are scared to talk about postpartum mental health. Postpartum struggles can look like depression, anxiety, rage, OCD, intrusive thoughts, insomnia, panic, and in rare cases, psychosis. Women are already terrified that admitting they are struggling will make someone think they are a bad mom. Then they watch other mothers get absolutely destroyed publicly for struggling, and we wonder why they stay quiet.

The Clancy case is an extreme and devastating situation, and postpartum psychosis is very different from postpartum depression. But both conversations force us to look at how we respond when mothers are struggling. We cannot shame women for falling apart and then wonder why so many are terrified to admit they are not okay. Motherhood does not make someone immune to depression, anxiety, addiction, rage, intrusive thoughts, or psychosis. We need to listen sooner, support better, and judge less. Maybe instead of asking how a mother could struggle this much, we need to start asking why she had to struggle this much before we took her seriously.