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Beyond Health, Beyond Choice: Breastfeeding Constraints and Realities
Current public health promotion of breastfeeding relies heavily on health messaging and individual behavior change. Women are told that “breast is best” but too little serious attention is given to addressing the many social, economic, and political factors that combine to limit women’s real choice to breastfeed beyond a few days or weeks. The women’s, infants’, and public health interests are undermined. Beyond Health, Beyond Choice examines how feminist perspectives can inform public health support for breastfeeding. Written by authors from diverse disciplines, perspectives, and countries, this collection of essays is arranged thematically and considers breastfeeding in relation to public health and health care; work and family; embodiment (specifically breastfeeding in public); economic and ethnic factors; guilt; violence; and commercialization. By examining women’s experiences and bringing feminist insights to bear on a public issue, the editors attempt to reframe the discussion to better inform public health approaches and political action. Doing so can help us recognize the value of breastfeeding for the public’s health and the important productive and reproductive contributions women make to the world.
356 pages, Paperback
First published July 1, 2012
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April 13, 2014
I wanted to like this book. I really did. Feminist breastfeeding studies have become a major academic interest of mine, so this seemed like the perfect introduction into this area of thought. Unfortunately, the authors felt the inexplicable need to rivet "feminist" analyses of contemporary breastfeeding conditions and politics to an insipid public health agenda of "promoting breastfeeding."
This must be made clear: feminism is about support and empowering women, not about shaming and policing them. If you enter into a conversation about breastfeeding with your mind already made up how ALL women should be feeding their children, then you've lost the plot. Even if formula were as awful and breastfeeding as beneficial as this book makes them out to be (and there is good reason to be skeptical of this), this book does not ask the interesting questions: what are the political implications of moralizing a practice that involves personal, embodied labor? How do we support ALL mothers, not just those who are willing and able to exclusively breastfeed? etc.
Interestingly, this book failed to address the breastfeeding experiences of people who were not cis women, and barely mentioned queer women at all. Further, extended breastfeeding (longer than one year) was not directly addressed, despite the fact that there is an intense moralization of this practice. Most problematically (beyond the complete dismissal of formula feeding mothers), this text repeatedly homogenizes "women's" experience, only occasionally addressing women of color and poor/working class women, and even then only in the context of treating them like aberration from the norm or "problem cases.
If you are looking for a text that substantively addressing the complex nexus of issues surrounding breastfeeding from a feminist perspective, this is most decidedly NOT the book for you. The few mildly thought-provoking essay in this volume are not worth the trouble of obtaining the whole book. Good alternatives to this book include "Is Breast Best?" by Joan B. Wolf and "Tainted Milk: Breastfeeding, Feminisms, and the Politics of Environmental Degradation" by Maia Boswell-Penc.
The infant feeding decisions of mothers cannot be tools for public health objectives. This is not a feminist position, and that this book exists quite honestly confuses me.
This must be made clear: feminism is about support and empowering women, not about shaming and policing them. If you enter into a conversation about breastfeeding with your mind already made up how ALL women should be feeding their children, then you've lost the plot. Even if formula were as awful and breastfeeding as beneficial as this book makes them out to be (and there is good reason to be skeptical of this), this book does not ask the interesting questions: what are the political implications of moralizing a practice that involves personal, embodied labor? How do we support ALL mothers, not just those who are willing and able to exclusively breastfeed? etc.
Interestingly, this book failed to address the breastfeeding experiences of people who were not cis women, and barely mentioned queer women at all. Further, extended breastfeeding (longer than one year) was not directly addressed, despite the fact that there is an intense moralization of this practice. Most problematically (beyond the complete dismissal of formula feeding mothers), this text repeatedly homogenizes "women's" experience, only occasionally addressing women of color and poor/working class women, and even then only in the context of treating them like aberration from the norm or "problem cases.
If you are looking for a text that substantively addressing the complex nexus of issues surrounding breastfeeding from a feminist perspective, this is most decidedly NOT the book for you. The few mildly thought-provoking essay in this volume are not worth the trouble of obtaining the whole book. Good alternatives to this book include "Is Breast Best?" by Joan B. Wolf and "Tainted Milk: Breastfeeding, Feminisms, and the Politics of Environmental Degradation" by Maia Boswell-Penc.
The infant feeding decisions of mothers cannot be tools for public health objectives. This is not a feminist position, and that this book exists quite honestly confuses me.
Displaying 1 of 1 review