Dana Becker

Instead of thinking about stress as something outside us, it's now become integral to the self. So the problem of stress has become our own personal predicament to solve, and there's no dearth of advice about how to do this: eat more kale, get some therapy, take a yoga class. The message is: change yourself, change your lifestyle, or learn to adapt to the stress. Consider what it means to accept this way of thinking about stress. If women believe that it's our job to manage the stress of combining paid employment and family work, we're more likely to "de-stress" by putting more bath oil in the bath and less likely to work toward changing family-unfriendly workplace policies or to agitate for universal daycare.