Based on an ethnography of postpartum consultations by independent midwives in Switzerland, this book produces unique insights into home-birth parents’ breastfeeding journey from the first hours after birth to weaning. Considered the "natural" continuity of childbirth without intervention, breastfeeding is a fundamental component of the holistic, continuous and individualised care independent midwives provide as they engage with parents in a shared construction of meaning around breastfeeding. This book offers new perspectives on the conceptualisation of breastfeeding as a shared process. Parents, in collaboration with their midwife and baby, are jointly constructing "negotiated breastfeeding". As the child grows and develops, questions arise regarding the management of risks, the construction of the lactating body and the body work required, and the perception of breastfeeding as a means of communication with the child, consistent with a "child-centred" approach to parenting. Fostering a reflection on the contrasts and similarities between the marginal model of holistic care and the dominant biomedical model, this book sheds light on issues of a broader scope: the relationship to health risks and health promotion, gender inequalities regarding parental roles and responsibilities, the concept of the child as a "project", and the consequential "intensification" of parenthood. The book also explores transversal themes by outlining how reproduction and parenting are undertaken in Switzerland, framed by the local cultural, political and economic context, including the gender system and resulting power relationships.

Thèse. Sciences sociales. Sciences politiques. 2019

Breastfeeding and child feeding at the center of nurturing practices, yet the work of nurture has escaped the scrutiny of medical and social scientists. Anthropology offers a powerful biocultural approach that examines how custom and culture interact to support nurturing practices. Our framework shows how the unique constitutions of mothers and infants regulate each other. The Dance of Nurture integrates ethnography, biology and the political economy of infant feeding into a holistic framework guided by the metaphor of dance. It includes a critique of efforts to improve infant feeding practices globally by UN agencies and advocacy groups concerned with solving global nutrition and health problems.

Nighttime for many new parents in the United States is fraught with the intense challenges of learning to breastfeed and helping their babies sleep so they can get rest themselves. Through careful ethnographic study of the dilemmas raised by nighttime breastfeeding, and their examination in the context of anthropological, historical, and feminist studies, this volume unravels the cultural tensions that underlie these difficulties. As parents negotiate these dilemmas, they not only confront conflicting medical guidelines about breastfeeding and solitary infant sleep, but also larger questions about cultural and moral expectations for children and parents, and their relationship with one another.

Breastfeeding Rights in the United States shows that the right to breastfeed in this country exists only in a negative sense: you can do it unless someone takes you to court. Kedrowski and Lipscomb catalog and analyze all the laws, policies, judicial opinions, cultural mores, and public attitudes that bear on breastfeeding in America. They then explore the classic double bind: social norms promulgated by the medical and public health establishment say breast is best; but social practices in the workplace and in public spaces make breastfeeding difficult. Aggravating the double bind is the prominence of the breast in American culture as a sexual object. The double bind creates coercively structured choices that are incompatible with the meaningful exercise of rights. The authors conclude that the solution to this problem requires new theory and new strategy. They posit a new democratic, feminist theory of the breastfeeding right that is predicated on the following distinctions: DT It is not a right to breastfeed, but a right to choose to breastfeed. DT It is a woman's right to choose, not a baby's right to be breastfeed. DT It is a right, not a duty. The authors predict that framing the breastfeeding right in this way provides the basis for a new strategic coalition between breastfeeding advocates and liberal feminists, who have historically been wary of one another's rhetoric. Breastfeeding Rights in the United States represents an important advance toward policy change.

From multidisciplinary perspectives, this volume explores the roles mothers play in the producing, purchasing, preparing and serving of food to their own families and to their communities in a variety of contexts. By examining cultural representations of the relationships between feeding and parenting in diverse media and situations, these contributions highlight the tensions in which mothers get entangled. They show mothers’ agency — or lack thereof — in negotiating the environmental, material, and economic reality of their feeding care work while upholding other ideals of taste, nutrition, health and fitness shaped by cultural norms. The contributors to Mothers and Food go beyond the normative discourses of health and nutrition experts and beyond the idealistic images that are part of marketing strategies. They explore what really drives mothers to maintain or change their family’s foodways, for better or for worse, paying a particular attention to how this shapes their maternal identity. Questioning the motto according to which “people are what they eat,” the chapters in this volume show that mothers cannot be categorized simply by how they feed themselves and their family.