Amaryllis Castillo gets to work at 7:45 a.m. for her job as a certified home health aide. The mother of two, who is 26 weeks pregnant, works a six-hour shift caring for elderly patients, taking them to activities and out for lunch. At 5 p.m., she clocks in for her second job providing customer service, which she works until 9 p.m. She does that from home, which allows her to be with her children, who are 12 and two.
But despite working these two jobs—for a combined 50 or more hours a week—Castillo, who lives in Philadelphia, barely makes enough to cover rent, daycare, car payments, utilities, and groceries (though she makes too much to qualify for food stamps), reports. Neither job comes with benefits: No health insurance, no paid sick leave, no 401(k), and no paid time off to recover from the upcoming birth of her baby.
Next City“I’m just making it happen,” she says.
The American approach to pregnancy and birth has largely been to leave families to manage the transition to new parenthood on their own. The United States is one of the only countries in the world without paid parental leave, and while a handful of states have started their own paid-leave initiatives—though Pennsylvania isn’t one of them—even these programs do not cover all workers. Nor is there a national program for preventing or treating postpartum mood disorders, or PPMDs—mental health conditions that include postpartum depression, postpartum anxiety, PTSD, and postpartum psychosis—which affect about 15-20% of new mothers in America.
Financial stress is among a myriad of factors that can trigger PPMDs. Being low-income is a risk factor for developing depression, and one of the greatest predictors for developing a PPMD is having previously experienced a mental health disorder. When it comes to postpartum depression in particular, financial strain and have been found to exert a impact on the likelihood of developing it. This effect, researchers assert, is “consistent across different cultures and countries.”
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