“Breast is Best”—Really?

Abstract

This paper explores how the normalization of ‘breast is best’ has conceptualized women’s agency in relation to their role as (breast)feeders and how this has contributed to a very particular framing of women as working in private for the ‘public’ good. It does so by critically evaluating three case studies in which breastfeeding was framed as the best source of food for newborns: the 1970s campaigns against baby formula manufacturers, efforts during the early 2000s to assure HIV-positive mothers that they should breastfeed, and more contemporary framings by the agroecology movement of breastfeeding as the “first act of food sovereignty.” In each of these case studies we reflect on how the costs that this particular food/feeding practice imposes on women are obscured, ignored, or normalized. We suggest that breastfeeding, and exclusive breastfeeding in particular, often functions as a hegemonic practice, because breastfeeding is configured as ultimately being the personal responsibility of individual women (biological mothers). In what sense is this practice hegemonic? The case studies show that breastfeeding tends to be understood as something that is a universal good, but in practice constrains the agency of breastfeeding women and normalizes the status of women (and mothers in particular) as a dominated social group.