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On Good Mothering: Practicing Solidarity in the Midst of the Breastfeeding Wars

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Parenting as Spiritual Practice and Source for Theology

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Abstract

This chapter explores the contested terrain of breastfeeding in the United States. I ground the conversation in personal and sociological examinations of women’s experiences of infant feeding, in order to explore how women navigate what it means to breastfeed in light of expectations of “good mothering” in the United States. This work offers a theoretical, theological, and practical engagement around the complexities of infant feeding as a way of engaging the ambivalence endemic to motherhood. By way of conclusion, I offer several strategies to support women living in and through these complexities, particularly as they relate to feeding our babies.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Office of the Surgeon General (US), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (US), and Office on Women’s Health (US), The Surgeon General’s Call to Action to Support Breastfeeding, Publications and Reports of the Surgeon General (Rockville (MD): Office of the Surgeon General (US), 2011, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK52682/.

  2. 2.

    Janet Martin Soskice, The Kindness of God: Metaphor, Gender, and Religious Language, 1 edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008); Rachel Muers, “The Ethics of Breast-Feeding: A Feminist Theological Exploration,” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 26, no. 1 (2010): 7–24. Marcia W. Mount Shoop, Let the Bones Dance: Embodiment and the Body of Christ (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010).

  3. 3.

    “Promotion & Support | Breastfeeding | CDC,” accessed January 16, 2017, https://www.cdc.gov/breastfeeding/promotion/; Office of the Surgeon General (US), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (US), and Office on Women’s Health (US), The Surgeon General’s Call to Action to Support Breastfeeding; Section On Breastfeeding, “Breastfeeding and the Use of Human Milk,” Pediatrics 129, no. 3 (March 1, 2012): e827–e841.

  4. 4.

    Office of the Surgeon General (US), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (US), and Office on Women’s Health (US), The Surgeon General’s Call to Action to Support Breastfeeding.

  5. 5.

    Leslie Kaufman, Swarna Deenadayalan, and Adam Karpati, “Breastfeeding Ambivalence among Low-Income African American and Puerto Rican Women in North and Central Brooklyn,” Maternal and Child Health Journal 14, no. 5 (September 2010): 696–704.

  6. 6.

    Ibid.

  7. 7.

    Muers, “The Ethics of Breast-Feeding,” 17.

  8. 8.

    Courtney Jung, Lactivism: How Feminists and Fundamentalists, Hippies and Yuppies, and Physicians and Politicians Made Breastfeeding Big Business and Bad Policy (New York: Basic Books, 2015), 8.

  9. 9.

    Orit Avishai, “Managing the Lactating Body: The Breastfeeding Project in the Age of Anxiety,” in Infant Feeding Practices, ed. Pranee Liamputtong (Springer New York, 2011), 23–38.

  10. 10.

    Weiss, Joanna. “How Breastfeeding Activists Attack the Wrong Targets.” 2011. http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2011/10/06/world_breastfeeding_week_some_lactivists_are_attacking_the_wrong.html.

  11. 11.

    From the Surgeon General’s Call to Action on Breastfeeding: “The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) report cautioned that, although a history of breastfeeding is associated with a reduced risk of many diseases in infants and mothers, almost all the data in the AHRQ review were gathered from observational studies. Therefore, the associations described in the report do not necessarily represent causality. Another limitation of the systematic review was the wide variation in quality among the body of evidence across health outcomes.

    As stated by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) evidence review, human milk is the natural source of nutrition for all infants. The value of breastfeeding and human milk for infant nutrition and growth has been long recognized, and the health outcomes of nutrition and growth were not covered by the AHRQ review” (emphasis on natural mine). Surgeon General’s Call to Action, “The Importance of Breastfeeding.”

  12. 12.

    Jung, Lactivism, 208.

  13. 13.

    Cynthia G. Colen and David M. Ramey, “Is Breast Truly Best? Estimating the Effects of Breastfeeding on Long-Term Child Health and Wellbeing in the United States Using Sibling Comparisons,” Social Science & Medicine 109 (2014): 55–65.

  14. 14.

    Soskice, The Kindness of God, 14.

  15. 15.

    See also Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore, Also A Mother: Work and Family as Theological Dilemma, (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1994).

  16. 16.

    Soskice, The Kindness of God, 26.

  17. 17.

    Ibid., 29.

  18. 18.

    Ibid., 30–31.

  19. 19.

    Ibid., 34.

  20. 20.

    Julia Kristeva, The Kristeva Reader, ed. Toril Moi (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), 206.

  21. 21.

    Shoop, Let the Bones Dance. 110.

  22. 22.

    Ibid.

  23. 23.

    Elizabeth O’Donnell Gandolfo, The Power and Vulnerability of Love: A Theological Anthropology (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2015).

  24. 24.

    Judith Butler, Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence (New York: Verso, 2006), 23–4.

  25. 25.

    Butler, Precarious Life, 23–24.

  26. 26.

    I wrote about this experience for our Mothering Matters blog, which is available here: https://motheringmattersblog.wordpress.com/2014/10/15/life-and-loss/

  27. 27.

    Kristeva, The Kristeva Reader, 206.

  28. 28.

    I have not yet mentioned adoptive or GLBT families, who might not be able to, or desire to, offer their infants breast milk.

  29. 29.

    Valerie Saiving Goldstein, “The Human Situation: A Feminine View,” The Journal of Religion 40, no. 2 (1960): 100–112.

  30. 30.

    Jacquelyn Grant, “Sin of Servanthood,” 200–201 cited in Chanequa Walker-Barnes, Too Heavy a Yoke: Black Women and the Burden of Strength (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock 2014), 141.

    Kimberly Wallace-Sanders, Mammy: A Century of Race, Gender, and Southern Memory (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2009).

  31. 31.

    Walker-Barnes, Too Heavy a Yoke, 147.

  32. 32.

    “Megan’s Story,” Fearless Formula Feeder. Accessed June 30, 2016, http://www.fearlessformulafeeder.com/2016/02/fff-friday-we-will-bond-no-matter-how-she-is-fed/.

  33. 33.

    Monica A. Coleman, Making a Way out of No Way: A Womanist Theology (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, c2008); Tracey E. Hucks, “‘Burning with a Flame in America’: African American Women in African-Derived Traditions,” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 17, no. 2 (2001): 89–106.

  34. 34.

    Ellie J. Lee, “Living with Risk in the Age of ‘Intensive Motherhood’: Maternal Identity and Infant Feeding,” Health, Risk & Society 10, no. 5 (October 2008): 476.

  35. 35.

    Gill Thomson, Katherine Ebisch-Burton, and Renee Flacking, “Shame If You Do—Shame If You Don’t: Women’s Experiences of Infant Feeding,” Maternal & Child Nutrition 11, no. 1 (January 2015): 42.

  36. 36.

    Ibid.

  37. 37.

    Muers, “Ethics of Breastfeeding,” 17.

  38. 38.

    Ibid.

  39. 39.

    Katharine Lassiter, Recognizing Other Subjects: Feminist Pastoral Theology and the Challenge of Identity (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock), 150.

References

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    Google Scholar 

  • Breastfeeding, Section On. “Breastfeeding and the Use of Human Milk.” Pediatrics 129, no. 3 (2012): e827–e841.

    Google Scholar 

  • Butler, Judith. Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence. New York: Verso, 2006.

    Google Scholar 

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    Google Scholar 

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    Google Scholar 

  • Hucks, Tracey E. “‘Burning with a Flame in America’: African American Women in African-Derived Traditions.” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 17, no. 2 (2001): 89–106.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jung, Courtney. Lactivism: How Feminists and Fundamentalists, Hippies and Yuppies, and Physicians and Politicians Made Breastfeeding Big Business and Bad Policy. New York, NY: Basic Books, 2015.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kaufman, Leslie, Swarna Deenadayalan, and Adam Karpati. “Breastfeeding Ambivalence Among Low-Income African American and Puerto Rican Women in North and Central Brooklyn.” Maternal and Child Health Journal 14, no. 5 (2009): 696–704.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. “Breastfeeding Ambivalence among Low-Income African American and Puerto Rican Women in North and Central Brooklyn.” Maternal and Child Health Journal 14, no. 5 (2010): 696–704.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kristeva, Julia. The Kristeva Reader, edited by Toril Moi. New York: Columbia University Press, 1986.

    Google Scholar 

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    Google Scholar 

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    Google Scholar 

  • Miller-McLemore, Bonnie J. Also A Mother: Work and Family as Theological Dilemma. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1994.

    Google Scholar 

  • Muers, Rachel. “The Ethics of Breast-Feeding: A Feminist Theological Exploration.” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 26, no. 1 (2010): 7–24.

    Google Scholar 

  • Office of the Surgeon General (US), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (US), and Office on Women’s Health (US). The Surgeon General’s Call to Action to Support Breastfeeding. Publications and Reports of the Surgeon General. Rockville (MD): Office of the Surgeon General (US), 2011. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK52682/.

  • Shoop, Marcia W. Mount. Let the Bones Dance: Embodiment and the Body of Christ. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010.

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  • Soskice, Janet Martin. The Kindness of God: Metaphor, Gender, and Religious Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.

    Google Scholar 

  • Thomson, Gill, Katherine Ebisch-Burton, and Renee Flacking. “Shame If You Do—Shame If You Don’t: Women’s Experiences of Infant Feeding.” Maternal & Child Nutrition 11, no. 1 (2015): 33–46.

    Google Scholar 

  • Walker-Barnes, Chanequa. Too Heavy a Yoke: Black Women and the Burden of Strength. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2014.

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  • Weiss, Joanna. Breastfeeding Activists Should Stop Fighting With Mainstream Moms, 2011. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/07/breastfeeding-activists-s_n_1000832.html.

  • Weiss, Joanna. “How Breastfeeding Activists Attack the Wrong Targets.” 2011. http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2011/10/06/world_breastfeeding_week_some_lactivists_are_attacking_the_wrong.html.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. NC State University, Raleigh, USA

    Annie Hardison-Moody

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  1. Annie Hardison-Moody
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. St. Catherine University, Saint Paul, Minnesota, USA

    Claire Bischoff

  2. Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, USA

    Elizabeth O’Donnell Gandolfo

  3. North Carolina State University, Raleigh, North Carolina, USA

    Annie Hardison-Moody

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Hardison-Moody, A. (2017). On Good Mothering: Practicing Solidarity in the Midst of the Breastfeeding Wars. In: Bischoff, C., O’Donnell Gandolfo, E., Hardison-Moody, A. (eds) Parenting as Spiritual Practice and Source for Theology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-59653-2_6

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