The concept of stress has become an important vehicle for explaining human dilemmas, at least in part because of the variety of social functions it performs. In the United States the contemporary discourse of stress and the metaphors associated with it pervade both academic and popular accounts of women’s stress, emphasizing the stressful nature of working motherhood. The social origins of the tensions in working mothers’ lives are obscured in the rush to help women calm down so that they can defend against assaults on their immune systems. I argue that the feminized, medicalized discourse of stress offers an ultimately unworkable resolution of societal tensions centering around work and family. By means of an aspirational rhetoric related to the achievement of ‘balance’ it reinforces the dominant culture’s historical attachment to the separate spheres, thereby reaffirming women’s natural place in the social order as nurturers and domestic laborers.
Almeida, D.M., Wethington, E. and Chandler, A.L. ( 1999) ‘Daily Transmission of Tensions between Marital Dyads and Parent-Child Dyads’, Journal of Marriage and the Family61(1): 49-61.
2.
Annandale, E. ( 2003) ‘Gender and Health Status: Does Biology Matter?’ , in S.J. Williams, L. Birke and G.A. Bendelow (eds) Debating Biology: Sociological Reflections on Health, Medicine and Society pp. 84-95. London: Routledge.
3.
Aronowitz, S. ( 1988) Science as Power: Discourse and Ideology in Modern Society . Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
4.
Bartky, S.L. ( 1988) ‘Foucault, Femininity, and the Modernization of Patriarchal Power’, in I. Diamond and L. Quinby (eds) Reflections on Resistance: Feminism & Foucault, pp. 61-86. Boston: Northeastern University Press.
5.
Beard, G.M. ( 1972[1881]) American Nervousness: Its Causes and Consequences. A Supplement to Nervous Exhaustion. New York : Arno Press.
6.
Becker, D. ( 2005) The Myth of Empowerment: Women and the Therapeutic Culture in America. New York: NYU Press .
7.
Belkin, L. ( 2003, October 26) ‘The Opt-Out Revolution’, New York Times Magazine, 42-8; 58, 85-6.
8.
Belle, D. and Doucet, J. ( 2003) ‘Poverty, Inequality, and Discrimination as Sources of Depression among U.S. Women’, Psychology of Women Quarterly27: 101-113.
9.
Bianchi, S.M. and Raley, S.B. ( 2005) ‘Time allocation in families’, in S.M. Bianchi, L.M. Casper and R.B. King (eds) Work, Family, Health, and Well-Being, pp. 21-42. Mahway, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
10.
Bond, J.T., Galinsky, E. and Swanberg, J.E. ( 1998) The 1997 National Study of the Changing Workforce. New York: Families and Work Institute.
11.
Brizendine, L. ( 2007) The Female Brain. London: Bantam Press.
12.
Cameron, D. ( 2007) The Myth of Mars and Venus. New York : Oxford University Press.
13.
Colón, S. and Nayyar, S. ( 2004) ‘25 Stories of Stellar Moms’, Working Mother , November, pp. 44-56.
14.
Coltrane, S. ( 2000) ‘Research in Household Labor: Modeling and Measuring the Social Embeddedness of Routine Family Work’, Journal of Marriage and the Family62(4): 1208-33.
15.
Crawford, M. ( 2004) ‘Mars and Venus Collide: A Discursive Analysis of Marital Self-help Psychology’, Feminism & Psychology , 141(1): 63-79.
16.
Crittenden, A. ( 2001) The Price of Motherhood. New York: Henry Holt.
17.
Crawford, R. ( 1980) ‘Healthism and the Medicalization of Everyday Life’ , International Journal of Health Services, 10(3): 365-88.
18.
Crawford, R. ( 2000) ‘The Ritual of Health Promotion’, in S.J. Williams, J. Gabe and M. Calnan (eds) Health, Medicine, & Society: Key Theories, Future Agendas, pp. 219-35. London : Routledge.
19.
DiFulco, D. ( 2004) ‘How She Does it’, Working Mother, November, pp. 5-16.
20.
Fine, C. ( 2008) ‘Will Working Mothers’ Brains Explode? The Popular New Genre of Neurosexism’, Neuroethics1: 69-72.
21.
Fletcher, J.K. ( 2005) ‘Gender Perspectives on Work and Personal Life Research’ , in S.M. Bianchi, L.M. Casper and R.B. King (eds) Work, Family, Health, and Well-Being, pp. 329-41. Mahway, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
22.
Foucault, M. ( 1977) Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage.
23.
Gorner, P. ( 2006, 27 February) ‘Sex and the Lonely Rat: Study Hints at Why Women Cope Better’, Chicago Tribune, Metro, 27 February, p. 1.
24.
Gosling, F.G. ( 1987) Before Freud: Neurasthenia and the American Medical Community, 1870-1910. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
25.
Gray, J. ( 2008) Why Mars and Venus Collide: Improving Relationships by Understanding How Men and Women Cope Differently with Stress. New York: HarperCollins
26.
Haraway, D.J. ( 1991) Simians, Cyborgs, and Women. New York : Routledge.
27.
Hare-Mustin, R.T. and Marecek, J. ( 1990). Making a Difference: Psychology and the Construction of Gender. New Haven: Yale University Press.
28.
Harper’s Bazaar (2005) ‘Beauty News’, April.
29.
Hays, S. ( 1996) The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood. New Haven: Yale University Press.
30.
Hirshman, L.R. ( 2006) Get to Work: A Manifesto for Women of the World. New York: Viking.
31.
Hochschild, A.R. ( 1989) The Second Shift: Working Parents and the Revolution at Home. New York: Viking.
32.
Hochschild, A.R. ( 2003) The Commercialization of Intimate Life: Notes from Home and Work. Berkeley: University of California Press.
33.
Jacobs, J.A. and Gerson, K. ( 2004) The Time Divide: Work, Family, and Gender Inequality. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
34.
Johnston, D.D. and Swanson, D.H. ( 2004) ‘Moms Hating Moms: The Internalization of Mother War Rhetoric’, Sex Roles51(9/10): 497-509.
35.
Lafrance, M.N. ( 2009) Women and Depression: Recovery and Resistance. London: Routledge.
36.
Lamont, E. ( 2005) ‘A Beautiful Mind’, Elle, May, p. 169.
37.
Lareau, A. ( 2003) Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life. Berkeley: University of California Press.
38.
Lorber, J. ( 1994) The Paradoxes of Gender. New Haven : Yale University Press.
39.
Lutz, C. ( 1996) ‘Cultural Politics by Other Means: Gender and Politics in Some American Psychologies of Emotions’, in C.F. Graumann and K.J. Gergen (eds) Historical Dimensions of Psychological Discourse, pp. 125-44. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press.
40.
Martin, B. ( 1988) ‘Feminism, Criticism, and Foucault’, in I. Diamond and L. Quinby (eds) Reflections on Resistance: Feminism & Foucault, pp. 3-19. Boston: Northeastern University Press.
41.
Martin, E. ( 1994) Flexible Bodies: The Role of Immunity in American Culture from the Days of Polio to the Age of AIDS. Boston: Beacon Press.
42.
Risman, B.J. ( 1998) Gender Vertigo: American Families in Transition. New Haven: Yale University Press.
43.
Roehling, P.V., Moen, P. and Batt, R. ( 2003) ‘Spillover’, in P. Moen (ed.) It’s about Time: Couples and Careers, pp. 101-121. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press [ILR Press] .
44.
Rose, N. ( 1990) Governing the Soul: The Shaping of The Private Self. London: Routledge.
45.
Rose, N. ( 1996) ‘Power and Subjectivity: Critical History and Psychology , in C.F. Graumann and Kenneth Gergen (eds) Historical Dimensions of Psychological Discourse, pp. 103- 24. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
46.
Rose, N. ( 2007) The Politics of Life Itself: Biomedicine, Power, and Subjectivity in the Twenty-First Century. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
47.
Rousseau, G.S. ( 1993) ‘"A Strange Pathology": Hysteria in the Early Modern World, 1500-1800’, in S.L. Gilman , H. King, R. Porter, G.S. Rousseau and E. Showalter (eds) Hysteria Beyond Freud, pp. 91-221. Berkeley: University of California Press.
48.
Sawicki, Jana. ( 1991) Disciplining Foucault: Feminism, Power, and the Body. New York: Routledge.
49.
Showalter, E. ( 1993) ‘Hysteria, Feminism, and Gender’, in S.L. Gilman, H. King, R. Porter, G.S. Rousseau and E. Showalter (eds) Hysteria Beyond Freud, pp. 286-344. Berkeley: University of California Press.
50.
Shreve, A. ( 1982) ‘Careers and the Lure of Motherhood’, New York Times, 21 November, p. 38.
51.
Smith-Rosenberg, C. ( 1985) ‘The Hysterical Woman: Sex Roles and Role Conflict in Nineteenth-Century America’, in C. Smith Rosenberg Disorderly Conduct: Visions of Gender in Victorian America, pp. 197-216. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
52.
Smith-Rosenberg, C. and Rosenberg, C. ( 1973) ‘The Female Animal: Medical and Biological Views of Woman and Her Role In Nineteenth-Century America’, The Journal of American History60: 332-56.
53.
Sontag, S. ( 1977) Illness as Metaphor. New York: Doubleday.
54.
Stone, P. ( 2007) Opting Out? Why Women Really Quit Careers and Head Home . Berkeley: University of California Press.
55.
‘S-T-R-E-S-S Hurts: A Wake-up Call for Women’ ( 2001) ABC News Special, 10 March.
56.
Taylor, S.E. ( 2002) The Tending Instinct. New York: Henry Holt.
57.
Taylor, S.E., Cousino Klein, L., Lewis, B.P., Gruenewald, T.L., Gurung, R.A.R. and Updegraff, J.A. ( 2000) ‘Biobehavioral Responses to Stress in Females: Tend-and-Befriend, Not Fight-or-Flight’, Psychological Review, 107(3): 411-29.
58.
Ussher, J. ( 1992) Women’s Madness: Misogyny or Mental Illness?Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.
59.
Ussher, J. ( 2006) Managing the Monstrous Feminine: Regulating the Reproductive Body. London: Routledge.
60.
Warner, J. ( 2005) Perfect Madness. Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety. New York: Riverhead.
Wheldon, J. ( 2006) ‘Stress May Be Causing Infertility in Women’ , Daily Mail, June 26, accessed 26 June 2006 . Available: http://dailymail.co.uk/health/article-391616
63.
Williams, J. ( 2000) Unbending Gender. New York: Oxford University Press.
64.
Williams, J.C., Manvell, J. and Bornstein, S. ( 2006) ‘"Opt Out" or Pushed Out?: How the Press Covers Work/Family Conflict’, report. San Francisco: University of California Hastings College of Law, Center for WorkLife Law .
65.
Wood, A.D. ( 1973) ‘‘The Fashionable Diseases’: Women’s Complaints and their Treatment in Nineteenth-Century America’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, IV(1): 25-52.
66.
Yazel, L. ( 2005) ‘Cut Your Stress in Half: Four Women on the Verge Try Four Stress Cures’, Self, June, pp. 86-189.
