In her 2001 paper “Predictors of Postpartum Depression: An Update,” researcher Cheryl Tatano Beck presents the most common risk factors associated with postpartum depression in women. Postpartum depression occurs when women experience symptoms such as tearfulness, extreme mood changes, and loss of appetite for a lengthened period after giving birth. At the University of Connecticut in Storrs, Connecticut, nursing professor Beck updated a previous study of hers by analyzing literature about postpartum depression published in the 1990s. Beck found four predictors of postpartum depression that she had not included in her previous study. “Predictors of Postpartum Depression: An Update” presents risk factors that healthcare professionals can use to predict whether pregnant women are more likely to develop postpartum depression.

In 1978 Social Science and Medicine published Barbara L.K. Pillsbury's article, 'Doing the Month': Confinement and Convalescence of Chinese Women After Childbirth, which summarized the results of Pillsbury's study on Chinese childbirth customs. Pillsbury, a professor of cultural anthropology at San Diego State University in San Diego, California, conducted over eighty interviews with people in Taiwan and China, including civilians, herbalists, and physicians over a four-month period in 1975. She aimed to highlight how a traditional Chinese post-childbirth custom known as zuo yuezi (sitting the month) persisted in modern Chinese society. The practice refers to the month-long period that women who have just given birth must spend resting, or in convalescence, adhering to a strict set of rules that address dietary needs and other cultural rituals. Pillsbury's Doing the Month provides a description and analysis of zuo yuezi (sitting the month), highlighting how traditional Chinese medicine persists in an increasingly westernized Chinese society, specifically in the case of childbirth and reproductive medicine.