This is a continuation of my summary of a review of The Ghost in the House: Motherhood, Raising Children, and Struggling with Depression, by Tracy Thompson. The review was found on Salon.com.
Here's part 1 of the review.

Thompson explains why mothers are so susceptible to depression. One reason is stress. Stress exacerbates depression. Motherhood is stressful - especially these days. She says the current mode of parenthood is to be constantly engaging, entertaining, and interacting with your child: "These days parents, particularly mothers, feel obligated to provide their kids with quality time and enriching activities. One of the mothers in the survey wrote to me that she sometimes feels guilty if she reads the newspaper while her little boy is eating breakfast. There's no such thing as just sitting in a room with the kid and hanging out -- you've got to be "doing" something."

I certainly feel this pressure, although I probably give into it less than I think other moms might (that's my guilt speaking). I will admit something here and now: I don't play with my kids. I will arrange play, suggest play, bring friends over for play, and tell them to play, but I can count on one hand the number of times I've sat on the floor and played vroom vroom cars with them.

I actually think it's a good thing when kids learn to play by themselves. It took a little while for Little J to catch on, but now he and Big J will play imaginatively - with legos, their car set, their train set - and don't need to involve me.

I tend to value independence.

But maybe that makes me a bad mom? Some of you probably think so. But my mom didn't play with me...and that made me reliant on my own imagination and my own self for entertainment. "A boring person is bored," she used to say. I tend to agree. As an adult I am never bored.

Thompson has several suggestions in the interview for ways to combat maternal depression. Certainly medication is one option, as well as a social network. Isolation is the state of modern motherhood and it's unnatural and a huge factor in depression. She says that some women in her survey (stay-at-home moms) would go for days spending time only with their child and their husband...How depressing!

Society is also a factor: lack of decent child care, the draconian 6-week leave after childbirth/adoption, and also the fact that we pay lipservice to how "hard" a job motherhood is...but in reality it's something we all take for granted.