About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

38 Soc. Probs. 412 (1991)
The Emergence of Premenstrual Syndrome as a Social Problem

handle is hein.journals/socprob38 and id is 422 raw text is: The Emergence of Premenstrual Syndrome as a Social Problem* C. AMANDA RITTENHOUSE, University of California, San Francisco This paper focuses on published discourse as an element in the emergence of premenstrual syndrome (PMS) as a social problem in the early 1980s. A content analysis shows that PMS was defined in part as a social problem through the interaction of medical, popular, and feminist literature after the dramatic events of the British trials in which two women charged with manslaughter used PMS as a defense. The published discus- sions were shaped not only by these dramatic events but also by the cultural context in which women's roles and assumptions about the influence of women's biology were being redefined. The paper thus offers a way to under- stand social problems by tracing their emergence in the literature that shapes the definition of the problem and by identifying the influences of cultural context and dramatic events. In the early 1980s premenstrual syndrome (PMS) became a household term. Popular press articles told women how to beat the blues, overcome the premenstrual uglies, and negotiate interpersonal relations during that time of the month. Clinicians and researchers met at international conferences to discuss the definition, etiology, and possible treatments for a syndrome estimated by some to affect 80 percent of all women. Feminists and legal scholars debated the validity of the term, its medical definition, and its use as a defense for criminal behavior. Since premenstrual tension (PMT), as PMS was first termed, has been in the medical discourse since Frank (1931) associated it with hormone imbalances, we may ask why PMS did not capture the attention of the public discourse until the early 1980s. This paper exam- ines the influence of cultural context on the emergence of PMS as a social problem: a puta- tive condition or situation that (at least some) actors label as a 'problem' in the arenas of public discourse and action, defining it as harmful and framing its definition in particular ways (Hilgartner and Bosk 1988:70). I trace the process by which PMS emerges as a social problem through a content analysis of medical, popular, and feminist literature. From this analysis, I develop a model to explain the emergence of premenstrual syndrome as a social problem and answer the following research questions: What set of events or social contexts triggered the emergence of PMS as a social problem in the early 1980s? How did constructions of PMS shift over time based upon the interaction of the three bodies of literature reviewed? Setting the Stage-Theoretical and Conceptual Definitions Classic social problems analysis follows a natural history model (Blumer 1971; Fuller and Meyers 1941; and Spector and Kitsuse 1973, 1977) that describes stages through which a social problem moves. Hilgartner and Bosk (1988) have formulated an alternative model in which public attention is treated as a scare resource. Therefore, the process of competition and selection for public attention plays a key role in determining whether or not an issue emerges as a social problem. For each issue, public attention depends on certain principles of * I would like to thank Virginia Olesen, Adele Clarke, Kathy Lee, Michael Ciraolo, Jay Stowsky, and the anonymous reviewers of Social Problems for their comments on earlier drafts of this paper. Correspondence to: Rittenhouse, Urban Health Study, Institute for Health Policy Studies, School of Medicine, Box 1304, University of California. San Francisco, CA 94143-1304. 412 SOCIAL PROBLEMS, Vol. 38, No. 3, August 1991

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Purchase Access

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most