Why New Motherhood Can Dismantle a 'Resilience Portfolio'
The psychologist Sherry Hamby and colleagues propose a “resilience portfolio” model. Grounded in research on adverse experiences, it describes how a person's physical and mental health outcomes after adversity might depend on the combination of their strengths and support structures—their portfolio. For many women, new motherhood seems to almost systematically dismantle the portfolio of strengths they previously relied on, starting with the domain of meaning-making. Women the author speaks to are often used to defining themselves through achievement and getting things done, but early motherhood, in a sense, asks them to just stand still.
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The portfolio framing locates resilience in the combination of strengths and supports. That shifts the focus from the individual alone to the structures around her.
The harder shift may be in meaning-making: if a woman's identity came from achievement, early motherhood's request to “just stand still” isn't rest—it's a loss of the self she knew.