In this article I propose the notion of domestic mood as an important
concept for mental health research. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork
conducted among women living in Hanoi, Vietnam, I explore the maternal
mental health problems that the women reported, focusing particularly on
the household tensions and conflicts that made the entry into motherhood
a distressful experience. To develop the concept of domestic mood, I draw
on Martin Heidegger’s work, particularly his claim that human being is
always a being-with. Comprehending maternal mental health problems, I
argue, requires that we pay attention not only to individual states of mind,
but also to the ways that domestic environments shape people’s moods.
Taking this analytical approach, I show how the mental health states of
pregnant women and new mothers in Vietnam were inseparable from their
husbands’ structural vulnerabilities within kin groups.