Medicalizing Motherhood

Frank Furedi's contribution to the discussion of medicalization" resonated strongly with findings from my own research about contemporary representations of women's emotional experiences. It is indeed the case that compared to the 1970s there is very little contest and debate about the increasing use of illness labels to account for these experiences. To the contrary, there is now wide acceptance of the idea that the most positive development that can take place for women is for more of them to be diagnosed as ill. It is also the case that, as part of this, women's lives are subject to the "unprecedented medicalization of social experience" through the "construction of new psychological conditions" to which Furedi refers.