Unhappy Mothers: Women, Motherhood and Social Change in Postwar Britain
By (Author) Sarah Crook
Manchester University Press
Manchester University Press
5th November 2025
United Kingdom
Tertiary Education
Non Fiction
Social and cultural history
Gender studies: women and girls
Womens health
Hardback
272
Width 138mm, Height 216mm
In the decades following the Second World War, mothers' experiences of loneliness, boredom and unhappiness were increasingly widely acknowledged. The language of postnatal depression came to be attached to this, but mothers organised around their own discontent in ways that challenged the medical model. Unhappy mothers draws attention to the social, political, and professional contexts within which knowledge about unhappy mothering developed. Drawing upon an extensive range of archival material, the book addresses themes around expertise, feminism, and the value given to lived experience.
Sarah Crook is a Senior Lecturer in History at Swansea University