At the Breast

by BLUM, LINDA

• ISBN13: 9780807021415
• ISBN10: 0807021415
• Format: Trade Paper
• Copyright: 2000-06-09
• Publisher: Beacon Press

Summary

In our ironic, "postfeminist" age few experiences inspire the kind of passions that breastfeeding does. For advocates, breastfeeding is both the only way to supply babies with proper nutrition and the "bond" that cements the mother/child relationship. Mother's milk remains "natural" in a world of genetically modified produce and corporate health care. But is it a realistic option for all women? And can a well-intentioned insistence on the necessity of breastfeeding become just another way to cast some women as bad mothers? Linda M. Blum is author ofBetween Feminism and Labor: The Significance of the Comparable Worth Movement. She teaches sociology and women's studies at the University of New Hampshire, and wrote this book while a Bunting Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.

Author Biography

Linda M. Blum is author of Between Feminism and Labor: The Significance of the Comparable Worth Movement. She teaches sociology and women's studies at the Univer sity of New Hampshire and lives in Belmont, Massachusetts.

Table of Contents

``Breast Is Best''	1	(18)
From Sacred to Disembodied Motherhood: Breastfeeding with the Experts and the State	19	(44)
``Mother to Mother'' in La Leche League	63	(45)
``To Educate and Persuade'': White Working-Class, Respectable Mothers	108	(39)
``To Take Their Own Independence'': African-American Working-Class Mothers	147	(33)
Twenty-First-Century Virtual Mothers or Rounded Mothers?	180	(22)
Appendix A Statement of Ms. Monica Johnson for the University of Michigan, Women of Color Task Force	202	(2)
Appendix B Methodology	204	(11)
Appendix C Mass Circulation Magazine Articles, 1963--1993	215	(6)
Notes	221	(36)
Bibliography	257	(20)
Acknowledgments	277	(1)
Index	278