Download or read book An Ideological Analysis of Breastfeeding in Contemporary America written by Loreen N. Olson and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2019-12-19 with total page 153 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An Ideological Analysis of Breastfeeding in Contemporary America: Disciplining the Maternal Body analyzes the discourses involved in the pro-breastfeeding, “breast is best” paradigm, highlighting how such politically charged rhetoric restrains women’s ability to make the choices that are best for them and their families. Loreen Olson and Jenni M. Simon combat the idea that is so often espoused by medical professionals, researchers, and society at large: to be a good parent, one must provide breast milk to the infant in order for the baby to grow into a healthy, productive citizen. By exposing the biases present, Olson and Simon advocate for the need to make discursive space for all parents and all feeding choices. Scholars of communication, rhetoric, gender and women’s studies, and feminism will find this book particularly useful.

Download or read book Embodied Activisms written by Victoria A. Newsom and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2022-02-09 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Embodied Activisms explores how activists use their bodies to resist social norms, engage with institutions, and promote change. This book spans historical perspectives, current contexts, and the most current scholarly literature to interrogate how embodied activisms are read, performed, understood, and actualized. The studies in this volume address current, critical issues such as police accountability activism, the climate crisis, environmental concerns, and protests of Supreme Court confirmation hearings. Chapters analyze a wide range of nonviolent mobilization tactics, including silent protests, embodied witnessing, leisure spectacle demonstrations, performance art and other forms of creative practice, and rallies. Analyses engage with aspects of intersectionality in activism and critique diverse modes of embodied resistance in locations including East Central Europe, the Americas, and the Mediterranean region.

Download or read book Back to the Breast written by Jessica Martucci and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2015-11-20 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After decades of decline during the twentieth century, breastfeeding rates began to rise again in the 1970s, a rebound that has continued to the present. While it would be easy to see this reemergence as simply part of the naturalism movement of the ’70s, Jessica Martucci reveals here that the true story is more complicated. Despite the widespread acceptance and even advocacy of formula feeding by many in the medical establishment throughout the 1940s, ’50s, and ’60s, a small but vocal minority of mothers, drawing upon emerging scientific and cultural ideas about maternal instinct, infant development, and connections between the body and mind, pushed back against both hospital policies and cultural norms by breastfeeding their children. As Martucci shows, their choices helped ideologically root a “back to the breast” movement within segments of the middle-class, college-educated population as early as the 1950s. That movement—in which the personal and political were inextricably linked—effectively challenged midcentury norms of sexuality, gender, and consumption, and articulated early environmental concerns about chemical and nuclear contamination of foods, bodies, and breast milk. In its groundbreaking chronicle of the breastfeeding movement, Back to the Breast provides a welcome and vital account of what it has meant, and what it means today, to breastfeed in modern America.

Download or read book Lactivism written by Courtney Jung and published by . This book was released on 2015-11-24 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Breastfeeding has become a moral imperative in 21st century America. Once upon a time, this moral imperative made sense. Breastfeeding was believed to bring multiple health benefits, including increased resistance to many chronic and even fatal diseases, protection against Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), improved intelligence, and countless immunities. The irony now, however, is that breastfeeding continues to gain moral force just as scientists are showing that its benefits have been greatly exaggerated. In 2012, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention declared the failure to breastfeed "a public health issue, " thus placing bottle-feeding on par with smoking, obesity, and unsafe sex. Recently, politicians too have launched highly visible breastfeeding initiatives, such as former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's well-publicized Latch On campaign. And, meanwhile, women who don't breastfeed their babies have found themselves with a lot of explaining to do. Physicians, public health officials, and other mothers are pressuring them to breastfeed even though the best science shows that the advantages of doing so are minimal at best. What is going on? In Lactivism, Courtney Jung offers the most deeply researched and far-reaching critique of the breastfeeding imperative to date. Drawing on a wide range of evidence, from rigorously peer-reviewed scientific research to interviews with physicians, politicians, business interests, activists, social workers, and mothers from across the social and political spectrum, Jung presents an eye-opening account of how a practice that began as an alternative to Big Business has become Big Business itself"--

Download or read book Intensive Mothering written by Linda Rose Ennis and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To celebrate the twentieth anniversary of Sharon Hays' landmark book, The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood, this collection will revisit Hays' concept of "intensive mothering" as a continuing, yet controversial representation of modern motherhood. In Hays' original work, she spoke of "intensive mothering" as primarily being conducted by mothers, centered on children's needs with methods informed by experts, which are labourintensive and costly simply because children are entitled to this maternal investment. While respecting the important need for connection between mother and baby that is prevalent in the teachings of Attachment Theory, this collection raises into question whether an over-investment of mothers in their children's lives is as effective a mode of parenting, as being conveyed by representations of modern motherhood. In a world where independence is encouraged, why are we still engaging in "intensive motherhood?"

Download or read book Cribsheet written by Emily Oster and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2019-04-23 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author of Expecting Better and The Family Firm, an economist's guide to the early years of parenting. “Both refreshing and useful. With so many parenting theories driving us all a bit batty, this is the type of book that we need to help calm things down.” —LA Times “The book is jampacked with information, but it’s also a delightful read because Oster is such a good writer.” —NPR With Expecting Better, award-winning economist Emily Oster spotted a need in the pregnancy market for advice that gave women the information they needed to make the best decision for their own pregnancies. By digging into the data, Oster found that much of the conventional pregnancy wisdom was wrong. In Cribsheet, she now tackles an even greater challenge: decision-making in the early years of parenting. As any new parent knows, there is an abundance of often-conflicting advice hurled at you from doctors, family, friends, and strangers on the internet. From the earliest days, parents get the message that they must make certain choices around feeding, sleep, and schedule or all will be lost. There's a rule—or three—for everything. But the benefits of these choices can be overstated, and the trade-offs can be profound. How do you make your own best decision? Armed with the data, Oster finds that the conventional wisdom doesn't always hold up. She debunks myths around breastfeeding (not a panacea), sleep training (not so bad!), potty training (wait until they're ready or possibly bribe with M&Ms), language acquisition (early talkers aren't necessarily geniuses), and many other topics. She also shows parents how to think through freighted questions like if and how to go back to work, how to think about toddler discipline, and how to have a relationship and parent at the same time. Economics is the science of decision-making, and Cribsheet is a thinking parent's guide to the chaos and frequent misinformation of the early years. Emily Oster is a trained expert—and mom of two—who can empower us to make better, less fraught decisions—and stay sane in the years before preschool.

Download or read book Maternal Breast Feeding and Its Substitutes in Nineteenth Century French Art written by Gal Ventura and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2018-10-02 with total page 503 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gal Ventura explores the ideological sources promoting maternal breast-feeding in modern Western society, through a survey of hundreds of artworks produced in France from the French Revolution to the beginning of the twentieth century.

Download or read book Beyond Health Beyond Choice written by Paige Hall Smith and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2012-08-15 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 result: 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.

Download or read book Boundaries of Touch written by Jean Halley and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2010-10-01 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A history of the shifting and conflicting ideas about when, where, and how we should touch our children Discussing issues of parent-child contact ranging from breastfeeding to sexual abuse, Jean O'Malley Halley traces the evolution of mainstream ideas about touching between adults and children over the course of the twentieth century in the United States. Debates over when a child should be weaned and whether to allow a child to sleep in the parent's bed reveal deep differences in conceptions of appropriate adult-child contact. Boundaries of Touch shows how arguments about adult-child touch have been politicized, simplified, and bifurcated into "naturalist" and "behaviorist" viewpoints, thereby sharpening certain binary constructions such as mind/body and male/female. Halley discusses the gendering of ideas about touch that were advanced by influential social scientists and parenting experts including Benjamin Spock, Alfred C. Kinsey, and Luther Emmett Holt. She also explores how touch ideology fared within and against the post-World War II feminist movements, especially with respect to issues of breastfeeding and sleeping with a child versus using a crib. In addition to contemporary periodicals and self-help books on child rearing, Halley uses information gathered from interviews she conducted with mothers ranging in age from twenty-eight to seventy-three. Throughout, she reveals how the parent-child relationship, far from being a private or benign subject, continues as a highly contested, politicized affair of keen public interest.

Download or read book Nutrition During Lactation written by Institute of Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 1991-02-01 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On the basis of a comprehensive literature review and analysis, Nutrition During Lactation points out specific directions for needed research in understanding the relationship between the nutrition of healthy mothers and the outcomes of lactation. Of widest interest are the committee's clear-cut recommendations for mothers and health care providers. The volume presents data on who among U.S. mothers is breastfeeding, a critical evaluation of methods for assessing the nutritional status of lactating women, and an analysis of how to relate the mother's nutrition to the volume and composition of the milk. Available data on the links between a mother's nutrition and the nutrition and growth of her infant and current information on the risk of transmission through breastfeeding of allergic diseases, environmental toxins, and certain viruses (including the HIV virus) are included. Nutrition During Lactation also studies the effects of maternal cigarette smoking, drug use, and alcohol consumption.

Download or read book Black Mothers and Attachment Parenting written by Patricia Hamilton and published by Policy Press. This book was released on 2022-06-14 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on black feminist theorizing, this outstanding work examines black mothers' engagements with attachment parenting and shows how it both undermines and reflects neoliberalism.

Download or read book The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood written by Sharon Hays and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 1996-01-01 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Working mothers today confront not only conflicting demands on their time and energy but also conflicting ideas about how they are to behave: they must be nurturing and unselfish while engaged in child rearing but competitive and ambitious at work. As more and more women enter the workplace, it would seem reasonable for society to make mothering a simpler and more efficient task. Instead, Sharon Hays points out in this original and provocative book, an ideology of "intensive mothering" has developed that only exacerbates the tensions working mothers face. Drawing on ideas about mothering since the Middle Ages, on contemporary childrearing manuals, and on in-depth interviews with mothers from a range of social classes, Hays traces the evolution of the ideology of intensive mothering--an ideology that holds the individual mother primarily responsible for child rearing and dictates that the process is to be child-centered, expert-guided, emotionally absorbing, labor-intensive, and financially expensive. Hays argues that these ideas about appropriate mothering stem from a fundamental ambivalence about a system based solely on the competitive pursuit of individual interests. In attempting to deal with our deep uneasiness about self-interest, we have imposed unrealistic and unremunerated obligations and commitments on mothering, making it into an opposing force, a primary field on which this cultural ambivalence is played out.

Download or read book Mass Hysteria written by Rebecca Kukla and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2005 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Mass Hysteria, Rebecca Kukla examines the present-day medical and cultural practices surrounding pregnancy, new motherhood, and infant feeding. In the late-eighteenth century, the configuration of the maternal body underwent a radical transformation and the two maternal bodies that emerged out of this transformation still govern our imagination and rituals surrounding pregnancy and lactation. Exploring the history and the current life of these two maternal bodies within medical institutions, popular culture, and politics, Kukla offers a critical assessment of the lived repercussions of these ideological figures and practices for contemporary women's and infants' health and well-being.

Download or read book The Big Letdown written by Kimberly Seals Allers and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2017-01-24 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Breastfeeding. The mere mention of it has many mothers wracked with anxiety (how will I manage with work, other kids, what if I don't make enough milk?) or guilt about not doing it (will I be hurting my child if I choose not to breastfeed? what will people think of me if I choose not to?). This hot-button issue is one we've talked about repeatedly in the media and in celebrity culture. Remember when Angelina Jolie posed for the cover of W nursing her newborn? Oh, the controversy! And when Barbara Walters complained about the woman breastfeeding next to her on a plane? She was forced to issue a public apology. Or what about when supermodel Gisele Bunchen declared that there should be worldwide law that mothers be required to breastfeed their babies for the first six months of life? All hell broke loose. This topic gets people riled up, and there has never been a narrative account that explores the breastfeeding big picture for parents and their children in today's world. THE BIG LETDOWN by author, journalist, and breastfeeding advocate Kimberly Seals Allers will change that for the better and open up a candid conversation about the cultural, sociological, and economic forces that shape the breastfeeding culture and how it undermines women in the process.

Download or read book Negotiated Breastfeeding written by Caroline Chautems and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-10-18 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Breastfeeding and Media written by Katherine A. Foss and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-06-14 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book centers on the role of media in shaping public perceptions of breastfeeding. Drawing from magazines, doctors’ office materials, parenting books, television, websites, and other media outlets, Katherine A. Foss explores how historical and contemporary media often undermine breastfeeding efforts with formula marketing and narrow portrayals of nursing women and their experiences. Foss argues that the media’s messages play an integral role in setting the standard of public knowledge and attitudes toward breastfeeding, as she traces shifting public perceptions of breastfeeding and their corresponding media constructions from the development of commercial formula through contemporary times. This analysis demonstrates how attributions of blame have negatively impacted public health approaches to breastfeeding, thus confronting the misperception that breastfeeding, and the failure to breastfeed, rests solely on the responsibility of an individual mother.

Download or read book Breast or Bottle written by Amy Koerber and published by Univ of South Carolina Press. This book was released on 2013-05-31 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Breast or Bottle? is the first scholarly examination of the shift in breastfeeding recommendations occurring over the last half century. Through a close analysis of scientific and medical controversies and a critical examination of the ways in which medical beliefs are communicated to the public, Amy Koerber exposes layers of shifting arguments and meaning that inform contemporary infant-feeding advocacy and policy. Whereas the phrase "breast or bottle" might once have implied a choice between two relative equals, human milk is now believed to possess unique health-promoting qualities. Although it is tempting to view this revision in medical thinking as solely the result of scientific progress, Koerber argues that a progress-based interpretation is incomplete. Epidemiologic evidence demonstrating the health benefits of human milk has grown in recent years, but the story of why these forms of evidence have dramatically increased in recent decades, Koerber reveals, is a tale of the dedicated individuals, coalitions, and organizations engaged in relentless rhetorical efforts to improve our scientific explanations and cultural appreciation of human milk, lactation, and breastfeeding in the context of a historical tendency to devalue these distinctly female aspects of the human body. Koerber demonstrates that the rhetoric used to promote breastfeeding at a given time and cultural moment not only reflects a preexisting reality but also shapes the infant-feeding experience for new mothers. Koerber's claims are grounded in extensive rhetorical research including textual analysis, archival research, and interviews with key stakeholders in the breastfeeding controversy. Her approach offers a vital counterpoint to other feminist analyses of the shift toward probreastfeeding scientific discourse and presents a revealing rhetorical case study in the complex relationship between scientific data and its impact on medical policy and practices. The resulting interdisciplinary study will be of keen interest to scholars and students of rhetoric, communication, women's studies, medical humanities, and public health as well as medical practitioners and policymakers.