{"title":"There's no formula for a good mother: shame and estranged maternal labour","authors":"Christina Doonan","doi":"10.1177/14647001211042488","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"This article theorises a group of mothers’ experiences of shame as a result of feeding infant formula to their children. Drawing on interviews with formula and breastfeeding mothers, the author brings together insights from scholarship on shame, feminist scholarship on reproductive labour and the Marxist notion of estranged labour to demonstrate that shame causes the formula-feeding mothers in this study, who initially wanted to breastfeed, to be estranged in their labour as mothers. The article addresses a gap in qualitative infant-feeding scholarship, which focuses primarily on breastfeeding. It provides an empathic account framing breastfeeding and formula-feeding mothers as potential allies against ‘controlling images’ of motherhood who face different facets of the same pressure to fulfil idealised roles. Both scholarly work on reproductive labour, and public programmes supporting new mothers, should account more seriously for the experiences of formula feeding mothers.","PeriodicalId":47281,"journal":{"name":"Feminist Theory","volume":"23 1","pages":"512 - 538"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9000,"publicationDate":"2022-01-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"2","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Feminist Theory","FirstCategoryId":"90","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14647001211042488","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"WOMENS STUDIES","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 2
Abstract
This article theorises a group of mothers’ experiences of shame as a result of feeding infant formula to their children. Drawing on interviews with formula and breastfeeding mothers, the author brings together insights from scholarship on shame, feminist scholarship on reproductive labour and the Marxist notion of estranged labour to demonstrate that shame causes the formula-feeding mothers in this study, who initially wanted to breastfeed, to be estranged in their labour as mothers. The article addresses a gap in qualitative infant-feeding scholarship, which focuses primarily on breastfeeding. It provides an empathic account framing breastfeeding and formula-feeding mothers as potential allies against ‘controlling images’ of motherhood who face different facets of the same pressure to fulfil idealised roles. Both scholarly work on reproductive labour, and public programmes supporting new mothers, should account more seriously for the experiences of formula feeding mothers.
期刊介绍:
Feminist Theory is an international interdisciplinary journal that provides a forum for critical analysis and constructive debate within feminism. Theoretical Pluralism / Feminist Diversity Feminist Theory is genuinely interdisciplinary and reflects the diversity of feminism, incorporating perspectives from across the broad spectrum of the humanities and social sciences and the full range of feminist political and theoretical stances.