Motherhood Quote by Richard J. Codey

Codey’s line reads like public policy trying to sound like a neighbor: plainspoken, insistent, and deliberately nonjudgmental. The repetition of “very real and very serious” isn’t poetic flourish; it’s a rebuttal baked into the sentence, aimed at a culture that too often treats postpartum depression as either melodrama or personal failure. As a politician, he’s not just describing a condition. He’s making it legible enough to justify action: screening, funding, insurance coverage, workplace accommodations, public messaging.

Notice the careful widening of the circle. “First time mom or a veteran mother” dismantles the comforting myth that experience inoculates you, that preparedness equals immunity. It’s a strategic empathy move: it tells listeners, “This could be your spouse, your sister, your constituent,” regardless of their family narrative. The timeline clause - “a few days... or a few months” - does similar work. By stretching the window, he preempts the most common dismissal: if the crisis didn’t happen immediately, it must be something else, or it must be a choice.

The subtext is also political risk management. Maternal mental health can get flattened into moral panic, blame, or sensational tragedy. Codey’s framing resists that by normalizing variability and emphasizing seriousness without hysteria. It’s rhetoric designed to move postpartum depression from whisper network to public-health category, where responsibility shifts from the individual mother to the systems around her.