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Family Matters is a brand new series from Wiley highlighting topics that are important to the everyday lives of family members.  Each book tackles a common problem, like teenage troubles, new babies or problems in relationships, and provides easily understood advice from authoritative professionals.  The Family Matters series is designed to provide expert advice to ordinary people struggling with everyday problems and bridges the gap between the professional and client.  Each book also offers invaluable help to professionals working in these fields as extensions to the advice they can give in person.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Dr Paula Nicolson has been researching and writing about postnatal depression and other aspects of reproductive and family health for over 15 years. At present she is Reader in Health Psychology at Sheffield University and Director of CHEPAS (Consumer Health Psychology at SCHARR). CHEPAS is a research group concerned with the needs and expectations of those who work in the NHS. She is the author of numerous academic papers and popular newspaper or magazine articles featured in The Independent, The Guardian, The Daily Mail and Woman's Own.

Extract:

Why do I feel so sad when I am so happy?  I must be a bad mother.

Having a baby is usually a reason for happiness and celebration.  Depression after childbirth causes emotional pain and suffering that lives side by side with the joy.  That is the underlying paradox and it is that paradox that frequently leads to sense of bewilderment and guilt.

Ninety percent of new mothers find themselves in tears and feeling “down” soon after giving birth and one in ten will become depressed during the first year.

Through the stories of 24 women trying to negotiate their lives as mothers, Paula Nicolson helps women understand more about the realities of motherhood.  Postnatal Depression: Facing the paradox of loss, happiness and motherhood  shows how better self-knowledge and a greater understanding of PND can help lift the burden and restore self esteem and harmony to mothers and their families.

“Paula Nicolson develops her now classic study of maternal depression to help women who are unhappy after childbirth understand, accept and survive the onslaught of conflicting emotions they experience” Shelia Kitzinger

PUB COMMENTS

The birth of their child is one of the happiest times for mothers. However, ninety percent of new mothers find themselves in tears and feeling down soon after giving birth and one in ten become depressed in their baby's first year. In the traditional medical view Postnatal Depression (PND) has been considered to be the consequence of hormonal changes but this alone is not enough to explain PND completely and health care professionals and researchers are still struggling to identify who will suffer from it and who will not.

In this down-to-earth, practical guide, Paula Nicolson, not only explains PND and outlines the theories of its causes, but also confronts the fundamental questions that most women want to know: "will it affect me?" and "what should I do if it does?".

Using the stories of 24 women trying to adapt to being mothers, Paula Nicolson deals with the issues at the heart of this problem. By having a better understanding of the realities of motherhood, including the psychological and biological aspects, new mothers are able to develop a better self-awareness, which in turn allows them to deal with the emotional and practical challenges that lay ahead.

Aimed directly at expecting and new mothers, this clear and accessible read is also an aid for health professionals and researchers of PND who struggle with the apparent lack of logic surrounding it.

Authors comment

I have wanted to write this book for nearly 20 years but when I suggested it to publishers in the early 1980s, they tended to dismiss the idea as absurd. A book for men on being a father? No self respecting bloke would be seen dead with such self help junk – particularly not in Britain, H.Q of the stiff upper lip where for centuries the UMU classes (upper middle and upper) has been sending their children off as young as possible to boarding school.

Extract:

In 2000, Tony Blair became the first man to become a father while Prime Minister for 200 years. A year later, the 70 year old media tycoon Rupert Murdoch announced his third wife was pregnant. Since the 1980s gender experts claim masculinity is "in crisis"; the male psyche is wilting as social and sexual attitudes change too fast for the ballsy ones. Women insist on men who have great pecs and emotional intelligence too - the body of Brad Pitt and the soul of Sigmund Freud.

And the ballsy ones can't cope. The sperm count of the average male is falling probably, doom mongers suggest, because we smoke too much, drink too much, stress too much and are exposed to 1001 noxious chemicals.

Under this pressure more and more men are opting out. According to popular culture or at least, the popular culture reflected in TV shows like Sex in the City, most of the best men are now gay, bisexual or have decided to opt for a long period of celibacy. In Sweden the birth rate has got so low the government has recruited Bjorn Borg to head an advertising campaign whose slogan is direct - Fuck for the Future. Failure to do so will mean there soon won't be any Swedes.

Despite all these post-modern angsts, sex still happens, relationships still happen, children still happen. In 2000, XXX children were born according to United Nations statistics. In Britain, xxx births that year and xxx in the United States. These numbers are tiny compared to the estimated XXX births in China.

Some men in 2000 will have had children by different women but allowing for the occasionally fertility super hero who became a father twice, three times or more in the year, it's a reasonable guess 250 million men became fathers in 2000 AD I've never written a book which has such a large potential readership. I was 24 years old when I became a father - and I find it hard to remember what it was like not being a father. For it was one of those events that changed my life. Before it happened.

Now that being a father is one of the bedrocks of my sense of myself, I smile when I think back at how scared I was at the prospect. I would not have believed anyone who had told me when Aileen was pregnant, that having children would be one of the great - and sustaining - joys of my life.

I have no intention of painting too rosy a picture. If you are a father you will be scared at times, embarrassed at times and sometimes mad because your partner doesn't want to make love in case the kids get bored with cartoons and walk into the bedroom. Often you'll be broke and sometimes in despair. Why can't you persuade your 10 year old that being a human being does not mean having those £79 Nike trainers.

Extract:

This is a book for parents and all who care for young people. There are many books, pamphlets, leaflets and so on available for teenagers, but there are few books which are written for mothers and fathers, step-parents, foster parents and other carers. In the chapters that follow I will cover some of the issues that I believe are of concern to adults. Sexuality is not an easy topic for parents and carers to deal with once their children enter adolescence. Everyone is aware of the need to discuss sex with a teenager. The only question is - how to start the conversation? The experience of this mother and daughter will be familiar to countless adults who have struggled with this problem.

And one day I remember I was walking along the track, and Mum says to me "So you know how to do it now then?" So I said well I knew already, like, you know, because I did. Then she said "You know properly now and all this lot". And I was getting really embarrassed and I was saying yeh, like this, and I was trying to get on to a different subject. And she was saying "So you know how to make a baby and how to look after a baby" and all this rubbish. So I goes "Yes, Mum" and I was trying to get off the subject all the time.

There is no doubt that the first and overwhelming obstacle is embarrassment. Many adults put this down to the poor sex education they themselves received. This may be a factor, but other things play their part. Sexuality causes all sorts of complex feelings within a family, and these feelings have the effect of creating taboos and inhibitions. We will be looking at some of these in the course of this book.

In addition to embarrassment, parents face other difficulties when it comes to dealing with teenage sexuality. Some feel inadequate - uncertain what to say or how to cope with conflicts over values and attitudes. Others find themselves getting anxious about what is going on in sex education lessons at school, or the possibility of an unwanted pregnancy. Such worries may lead them to behave in a fussy or over protective fashion. On top of all this there are parents who feel quite simply out of their depth. The very idea of talking about sex and sexuality may be something which is quite foreign to them. They realise that their son or daughter is growing up, they know that parents ought to say something, but they are unable to do anything about it.

I hope that all parents and carers, whether shy or anxious, confident or embarrassed, will find something of value in this book.

Extract:

WHAT THIS BOOK IS ABOUT? - A PREFACE

When a princess kisses a frog and it becomes a prince or when a prince kisses a sleeping princess and she awakes-we expect "happily ever after." But that magic kiss isn't always enough.

The glow of romance may keep you going during your engagement and maybe the first year or two of marriage - but then you had better be equals - and equally committed to the relationship. It is a shame that so many people become disillusioned with a relationship which held so much promise. Fairy tale endings in films make us expect the unrealistic. Hey guys, this ain't Disneyland!

When entering a marriage or a "live in" relationship you can hope for the best OR you can plan and nurture. The second option is far closer to a "guarantee" of satisfaction. It allows for a firmer commitment because you know the terms of the agreement - your relationship contract. With this in mind your romance can develop deeper roots in reality.

If you are already married or in a close relationship you may need some re-direction. All relationships do. So let's take a deep look into the most complicated relationship yet invented. You think that IBM or AT&T are complicated? They are nothing compared to the potentials for joy and the possibilities for problems of a modern marriage.

Although some people have stated that the death of the family is fast approaching, Margaret Mead, the famous anthropologist, believed that the family is "in fact, the only institution that doesn't have a hope of disappearing. " The jury is still out deciding the state and future of marriage. Looking back at our basic needs and drives, we can easily see why close relationships are essential for most people. (Being alone is good only if you have chosen it!) We all have needs for emotional security, for love, and yes! - even for sex. These make it psychologically imperative that most of us pursue close committed relationships.

As biological and medical science continues to unveil the essential interactions of our brains and bodies and as psychology probes deeper into our minds to find out what makes us "tick" we discover that we are extremely complicated individuals. When you put two complicated individuals together you have an even more complicated relationship. So to understand how to increase our romantic potentials we should know about our deeper physical and biological realities. They can help us to bring a more profound level of contentment and romance into our relationships.