the Female Body GOVERNING

“Doing What Comes Naturally . . .” 245
and everything to gain. In this sense, they are still being good patients,
even by disregarding medical advice because they are doing more than
is required.
The management of stress emerged as a common site of disciplinary
surveillance for the women. This draws on a very long tradition of
assumptions that women can infl uence the outcome of pregnancy by
the force of their imagination, mood, or state of mind. Women’s dreams
or imaginings were traditionally believed to be the cause of deformity
or “monstrosity” in babies (Braidotti, 1996; Stonehouse, 1994), for
example, and in contemporary discourse, stress is widely held to inhibit
conception (although no evidence exists to support this):
Martin: . . . because all the way through it, you get the people who
do know [about their infertility], like your friends, your boss . . . my
boss—“Take her on holiday,” “Get her drunk,” “Make her relax.”
Nancy: And you think, I’ve been there, done that.
Martin: “Tell her to stop work” was a big one.
Karen: Really?
Nancy: And we did consider that, but I didn’t [stop work].
Martin: But I did. I told you to pack up work, because . . . she wasn’t
in a management position of any description, but she seemed to be
somewhat stressed. And er . . . I just felt, well, let’s fi nd out. Let’s
give it a year and fi nd out. But Nancy’s answer to that was, “What’s
the bloody point?” Because we could end up without a job, without
a year’s salary, and without a baby.”
Conventional values of masculinity converge to make Martin responsible
for resolving the “relaxation” issue, by getting her drunk, or
taking her on holiday—strategies that have their echoes in discourses of
seduction, rather than reproduction. Nancy’s decision to keep working,
however, closes the discussion, and Martin is torn between his suspicion
that his work colleagues may be right about the need for Nancy to stop
working and his need to respect Nancy’s decision.
Signifi cantly, although some of the male partners accepted responsibility
with regard to overcoming what were seen as female problems
of stress management, even where male infertility was implicated, few
cases were found where the connection between behavior and fertility
was made and acted on by men. Several of the men were recommended
to take simple steps to improve sperm count and quality, such as wearing
loose underwear, not taking hot baths, abstaining from alcohol and
tobacco, and taking supplements. However, the compliance rate was very
low (see also, Lee, 1996, p. 20), which contrasted sharply with the women