Status Updates From Backlash: O Contra-ataque n...

"Demographers have collected a vast amount of data comparing the mental health of single + married women. None of it supports the thesis that single women are causing the 'age of melancholy': study after study shows single women enjoying far better mental health than their married sisters (also making more money)."

"As it turns out, social scientist have established only one fact about single women's mental health: employment improves it.

The 1983 landmark Lifeprints study found poor employment, not poor marriage prospects, the leading cause of mental distress among single women."

"As psychological researcher Lynn L. Gigy, one of the few in her profession to study single women, has noted, social science still treats unmarried women like 'statistical deviants.' They have been 'virtually ignored in social theory + research.'"

In 1986, Psychologist Annette Baran speculated that, "the rising mental distress of single women is a phenomenon of this era." In fact, no one knew whether single women were more or less depressed in the 80s; no epidemiological study had actually tracked changes in single women's mental health."

"The 'infertility epidemic' among middle-class career women over 30 was a political program, + for infertility specialists a marketing tool, not a medical problem.

The same White House that promoted the infertility threat allocates no funds toward preventing infertility--and in fact rebuffed all requests for aid."

"In reality, women's quest for economic + educational equality had only improved health + fertility. Better education + bigger paychecks breed better nutrition, fitness, + health care, all important contributors to higher fertility."

"At the same time, gynecologists began calling endometriosis, a uterine ailment that can cause infertility, the 'career woman's disease.' It afflicts women who are 'intelligent, living w stress, + determines to succeed at a role other than mother early in life.'

In fact, epidemiologist find endometriosis no more prevalent among professional women than any other group."

"In seeking the source of the 'infertility epidemic,' the media + medical establishment considered only professional women, convinced that the answer was to be found in the rising wealth + independence of a middle-class female population."