Stressor map refresh!

Now with the added excitement of perimenopause, late stage parenting, and sandwich generation squash!

Confession — I have been slowly adding bits and pieces to the original stressor map¹ and quietly updating it since I hit publish on the first version here.

Ongoing updates were always part of the plan. In every conversation I have, every expert interviewed, I bring up a current version of the stressor map and ask “what did I get wrong?” and “what am I missing?” and then I tweak it.

I often walk away from these conversations with more added. I have yet to take things off². 

I did intend for this phase of the work to be as much about growing as it is about pruning. I aim to test each stressor, and I hold back on making connections that feel too tenuous. I really do try to keep simplifying, I swear!  But, more often than not, I find some example, some situation, some tidbit of research demonstrating a connection³, even for those connections that feel tenuous at first glance. To me, this further emphasizes exactly how interconnected everything truly is.

Recently, my lofty plans for simplification took a bigger hit: I opened a whole new wing by extending the timeline through perimenopause/menopause and life with bigger kids⁴.

At first, I focused the stressor map and the discussion around pregnancy and postpartum as an example of dynamic physiological changes aligning with stressors specific to that stage of life. I made excuses for keeping a tight range. Upon reflection, I’m starting to think that taking that approach was self-preservation, an attempt to avoid venturing into unknown territory. While we still have immense data gaps when it comes to pregnancy and postpartum, the science of perimenopause/menopause, especially in the context of stress, is a whole lot gappier⁵. It’s tricky to ground things in physiology when the physiology is poorly understood. 

But then I had coffee with a friend and the conversation veered into her menopause journey, she started listing all the moments of stress that had piled up – in parenting, in family caregiving, in her career – and how these stressors all perfectly aligned with the time her body started the hormonal rollercoaster of perimenopause. All of it loaded up and eventually broke her. And listening to her story I started to realize how similar hers was to the experience in the peripartum period – the rapid physiological changes, the identity shifts, the stressors feeding into each other, and the breaking point. Also, the overall lack of support and compassion for this stage of life⁶.

At the time of our coffee date, the version of the stressor map did not reflect this part of her story or this aspect of the journey for any human in a cycling body, whether they are parents or not.   

And so I accepted that I needed to include this update and, in that acceptance, I finally pushed myself over the edge to – “ok, fine, FINE, I’ll write a fresh post for this”⁷.

So, here we are. 

A new, updated map, with an extended timeline, a few additional stressors, and a bunch of additional (carefully thought out, but still need-to-be-tested) connections. 

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For those who are new here, let’s start from the beginning: 

The Maternal Stress Project centers around understanding and mapping the stress related to motherhood, parenting, family caregiving, and simply being a woman⁸ in modern America⁹, with the goal of examining the complex interconnections at all stages of life. This version of the map is still a starting point, an evolving reference for visualizing what often feels invisible as we identify and elevate new opportunities to positively impact women’s health.

Current version but always a work in progress, constantly evolving with more insight and input. What did I get wrong? What am I missing? Add thoughts in the comments!

GUIDE: 

The nodes on the map are simplified categories of potential psychological stressors – societal and life challenges, existing externally, that may be internalized and impact health. 

For more on what I mean by ‘psychological stressors’, revisit this post: 

The stressor nodes are currently classified as follows:

• PURPLE – gender-related stressors that disproportionately affect women and mothers

• BLUE – gender-neutral stressors related to parenting and family caregiving (note: current iteration considers these gender neutral but will adapt if evidence shows gendered impact)

• BLACK – stressors related to living in a birthing/cycling body, e.g. the fertility journey, pregnancy, birth experience

• GREY – general stressors in life and society that connect to any and all of the above.

The lighter shaded extensions around the nodes suggest a range that may shift depending on individual experience¹⁰. 

The stressors that are time bound (towards the top) tend to relate to having/raising a child or caregiving in America, but the exact timing may change between individuals. The stressors that are not time bound (towards the bottom) represent stressors that individuals can be exposed to at any point in their lifetime.  

The timeline (axis at the top) focuses on stages of parenting (bold) with key moments of dynamic physiological change (bold italic) – fertility, the peripartum period, perimenopause/menopause – to factor in the additional biological effects related to the cycling/birthing body (the exact alignment can differ between individuals). Stressors not only tend to cluster around these moments in time but, when aligned with the natural physiological changes, can also have an oversized impact on health and wellbeing.

The connections between the nodes represent how stressors affect each other – ameliorating or exacerbating the severity of the stress burden (again, check this post for clarity on that point). Most stressors are connected in some way. And this connection means that solutions decreasing the stress within one stressor node can have positive health effects that reverberate across the map; solutions that impact multiple stressors through structural or systemic change can have widespread positive effects. 

Yes, I know, the visual is A LOT to take in but consider this interconnected web, stringing everything together, as view into the complexity of potential health risk for women across the reproductive life span AND a map of opportunities to improve women’s health.

Most importantly, these opportunities exist at multiple levels – between partners, amongst friends or community, in the workplace, with policy change¹¹ — that extend far beyond individual stress management skills and strategies.

For a snapshot on how the interconnected stressors bring up solutions that exist beyond the individual see any one of these pieces:

Child care: problem or solution?

Reducing the stress of modern mammalian motherhood

Turns out, abortion does NOT harm women's mental health

With a range of opportunities to decrease the overall stress burden that disproportionately affects women and mothers, I will say it again and continue to beat this drum: stress reduction can not, and should not, solely revolve around individual responsibility. Especially when most stressors experienced today relate to systemic, structural, and societal issues. Once we move beyond thinking that stress is an individual problem with individual solutions AND recognize that everything adds up, we can start to fix the little things while working towards fixing the big things.

Most importantly, we need to stop blaming women and parents¹² for the stress affecting their health and actually protect and SUPPORT them.

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1. ok ok, I need help with semantics! Is it is a stressor map? or a stressor web?

2. I am always continuing to pressure test the stressor map so, maybe, someday, I’ll get to prune something? 

3. A few examples – I added intimate partner violence after having a commenter point out how interconnected that stressor (and it is a significant stressor) is to the stress of child care issues; I connected child health back to abortion access after talking with Dr. Antonia Biggs on the, I added housing after an enlightening conversation with

Julia Craven

, I added identity after hearing this theme creep into nearly all conversations about any single stressor on the map.

4. As I approach “big kid” days (mine are now 9 and 11) and have more and more friends with teens and young adult children, I’m starting to get glimpses of the whole other world of parenting challenges and fears that this stage brings in. And, holy hell, there is a lot of parental stress coming up (which also means another range of opportunities to reduce the sources of this stress.)

5. See my thoughts on that one here:

But what about the children?

Spoiler: I blame the patriarchy

6. Another thing missing during this stage — acknowledgment. At least during pregnancy (less so in postpartum), there is a clear sign to the outside world that you are going through something monumental. Unfortunately, that does not mean the visibility instantly leads to compassion or support.

7. Also, I want to give a shout out to a solid push from Leigha and Liz at California Partners Project, who included me in the org’s incredible Gender Equity Summit and insisted that I include the stressor map as a print out. Adding in an extra thanks to Liz’s lovely edits to my accompanying copy that I included bits of here!

8. Another change to the map — I added intimate partner violence as a stressor node after seeing how it comes up as a connected stressor for child care and abortion. I also changed some of the language in the stressor nodes, including gender-based violence / sexual harassment. That one had it’s extension expanded across the timeline and deserves a very close look as we enter a world that seems to openly permit violent language towards women, especially in the digital space. This change was also inspired by the California Partners Project Gender Equity Summit.

9. I first focused on American motherhood from the cozy zone of the Biden administration that held the promise of policy solutions as a path towards big impacts. Now we exist in a different America, one that has and the emphasis on the need to look at the stress of “modern American motherhood” depressingly more relevant and urgent:

Should we all dress up as Red Bugs this Halloween?

10. it’s not a perfect science.

11. whelp, maybe not federal policy in the big ways we need right now 😮‍💨

12. I am so over the think pieces that tried to connect the Surgeon General’s Advisory on parental stress back to intensive parenting and then blaming it on the parents themselves. Although I do LOVE the interview for The Daily with Claire Cain Miller getting into the root causes of intensive parenting.