Postpartum Reactions: Some Unrecognized Variations

The authors describe four postpartum syndromes that are not often recognized, including infanticide and child battering, the grandmother reaction, the adoptive mother reaction, and the father reaction. These reactions derive from experiences involving the person's mental representations of pregnancy, parturition, and motherhood and are not confined to the biological mother. The phenomenon of successive generations of postpartum reactions in women is described and explained as being grandmother-oriented. Awareness of this sequence should aid in the anticipation of postpartum psychopathology.