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Lactating, feminists and breastfeeding advocacy: some complexities

Abstract:

Although it is widely recognised that breastfeeding has significant health benefits for infants and mothers, and breastfeeding advocates work hard to promote this message, breast-feeding rates in Aotearoa New Zealand have been decreasing. Reasons for the decline, say breastfeeding analysts, are multifarious. Sometimes, feminism is wrongly blamed as partly contributing to this decline. The following paper addresses this problematic belief and some of the unacknowledged assumptions surrounding it, as well as foregrounding the growing recognition, amongst feminist scholars, of the importance of breastfeeding as a subject of feminist analysis and debate.

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decline in breastfeeding rates, feminism and breastfeeding, feminism and motherhood