Things (not) to do with breasts in public: Maternal embodiment and the biocultural politics of infant feeding

New Literary History

Volumn 38, Issue 3, 2007, Pages 479-504

  Hausman, Bernice L ^a  

^a VIRGINIA POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE AND STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 60950662587     PISSN: 00286087     EISSN: 1080661X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/nlh.2007.0039     Document Type: Review

References (35)

1. Jocelyn Noveck, "Strong Reaction to Public Feeding Revealed," Roanoke Times, July 28, 2006
2. Katherin Kam, "Why Don't Women Nurse Longer," Babytalk, August 2006, 58-59. Suzanne Haynes of the Office on Women's Health, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, disputes the figures cited in the Babytalk article. Based on her own research following the National Breastfeeding Promotion Campaign, she believes that about two-thirds of the American public approves of or feels neutral about breastfeeding in public. Suzanne Haynes, pers. coram., March 13, 2007
3. Noveck, "Strong Reaction to Public Feeding Revealed." Preliminary data from the DHHS study of the effects of the National Breastfeeding Awareness Campaign suggest that men may be more accepting of breastfeeding in public than women. Haynes, "National Breastfeeding Awareness Campaign Results," August 1, 2005, http:/www.womenshealth.gov/ breastfeeding/campaign-results.html
4. Kam, "Why Don't Women Nurse Longer," 58
5. A fairly recent study published in the British Medical Journal indicates that the majority of television and print media references to breastfeeding highlighted its difficulties. See Lesley Henderson, Jenny Kitzinger, and Josephine Green, "Representing Infant Feeding: Content Analysis of British Media Portrayals of Bottle Feeding and Breast Feeding," British Medical Journal 321 (November 11, 2000): 1196-98
6. See Rebecca Kukla, Mass Hysteria: Medicine, Culture, and Mothers ' Bodies (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005) (hereafter cited as MH), for a discussion of the "Unruly Mother" who is set against what she calls the "Fetish Mother" who represents the ideal of maternal behavior
7. Patricia Stuart-Macadam, "Biocultural Perspectives on Breastfeeding," in Breastfeeding: Biocultural Perspectives, ed. Patricia Stuart-Macadam and Katherine A. Dettwyler (New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1996), 7
8. See Bernice L. Hausman, Mother's Milk: Breastfeeding Controversies in American Culture (New York: Routledge, 2003), 33-68, for an extended discussion of this issue, including a more developed interpretation of the episode of Law and Order. Alison Bartlett provides a discussion of the Law and Order episode in Breastwork: Rethinking Breastfeeding (Sydney: Univ. of New South Wales Press, 2005), 28-30
9. "Mother's Milk," Law and Order, directed by Richard Dobbs (NBC, 2000)
10. For an extended discussion of all of the issues in this paragraph, see Hausman, Mother's Milk, 33-68
11. For the politics of the delay in the Ad Council campaign materials, see Jacqueline Wolf, "What Feminists Can Do for Breastfeeding and What Breastfeeding Can Do for Feminists," Signs 31, no. 2 (Winter 2006): 397-424
12. Another interesting commentary on the Ad Council's public service announcements is Kukla, "Ethics and Ideology in Breastfeeding Advocacy Campaigns," Hypatia 21, no. 1 (2006): 157-80
13. This is an important claim, given that worldwide the most common cause of death for infants and young children is pneumonia. See Jennifer Bryce, Cynthia Boschi-Pinto, Kenji Shibuya, and Robert E. Black, "WHO Estimates of the Causes of Death in Children), Lancet 365, no. 9465 (2005) : 1147-52. Suzanne Haynes mentioned to me that the ice cream scoops were the most popular representations among young women, noting that they are the ones that look the most like breasts, while they were the least popular among older male physicians. Haynes, pers. comm., March 13, 2007
14. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, "Breastfeeding," 2005, http://www.4woman.gov/breastfeeding
15. I am borrowing this section title from Susan Bordo, "Are Mothers Persons?: Reproductive Rights and the Politics of Subjectivity," in Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body (Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press, 1993), 71-98
16. Linda Blum, At the Breast Ideologies of Breastfeeding and Motherhood in the Contemporary United States (Boston: Beacon, 1999) (hereafter cited as ATB)
17. U.S. Government, "The Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978," no date, http://www.eeoc.gov/abouteeoc/35th/thelaw/pregnancy-discrimination-1978. html
18. There are specific states with laws requesting that employers allow women to breastfeed during breaks at work, or requesting the breastfeeding/lactation breaks themselves. Most of the laws involve language exempting employers who feel the operation of the business would be disrupted by allowing such break time. Many women and employers do not know about these laws. See Melissa R. Vance, "Summary of Breastfeeding Legislation in the U.S.," May 12, 2006, http://www.lalecheleague.org/LawBills8.html (accessed June 29, 2006)
19. "License to Breastfeed," Babytalk, no date, http://www.parenting.com/parenting/whitepage/magazine-pullouts/pdfs/btcard.pdf
20. In November 2006 a mother, her two-year-old child, and her spouse were asked to leave a Freedom Airlines flight from Burlington, Vermont, to New York City, when she began breastfeeding the child in a rear window" seat of the airplane. According to various news reports, the flight attendant asked the mother to use a blanket to cover up. When the mother refused, she was asked to leave the plane and was escorted off by a ticket agent. The airline later backpedaled and asserted the right of all women to breastfeed on its airplanes, regardless of whether they were "discreet" or not. See "Woman Says She Was Kicked Off Plane for Breast-Feeding," Boston.com, November 14, 2006, http://www.hoston.com/news/local/Vermont/articles/2006/11/14/woman-says- she-was- kicked-off-plane-for-breast-feeding-baby?mode+PF
21. and Barbara Kantrowitz and Pat Wingert, "Breasts on a Plane," MSNBC Newsweek, November 28, 2007, http://www.msnbc.com/id/15924715/site/ newsweek
22. Sharon Hays, Flat Broke with Children: Women in the Age of Welfare Reform (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2004)
23. Barbara L. Behrmann discusses this in her book The Breastfeeding Café: Mothers Share the Joys, Challenges, and Secrets of Nursing (Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press, 2005)
24. Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, Mother Nature: A History of Mothers, Infants, and, Natural Selection (New York: Pantheon, 1999)
25. Philip Alcabes, "Epidemiologists Need to Shatter the Myth of a Risk-Free Life," Chronicle of Higher Education, May 23, 2003, B11-12
26. See Rima D. Apple, Perfect Motherhood: Science and Childrearing in America (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers Univ. Press, 2006) for a book-length discussion of scientific motherhood in the United States
27. Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, The Dialectic of Enlightenment, trans. John Gumming (New York: Continuum, 1976)
28. See Joan Williams, Unbending Gender: Why Work and Family Conflict and What to Do About It (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2000) for a discussion of the "ideal worker" as male
29. Current figures suggest that slightly over two-thirds of mothers start out breastfeeding, but just over one-third of mothers are still breastfeeding at six months, and fewer than that are exclusively breastfeeding. Roni Rabin, "Breast-Feed or Else," New York Times, June 13, 2006
30. Kate Meyer, "Lactose Intolerant!" New York Daily News, June 7, 2005, http://www.dailynews.com/news/local/v-pfriendly/story/316620p-270873c.html
31. Raja Mishra, "Nursing Mother's Protest Grows: Organizers Target Delta Today," Boston Globe, November 21, 2006, http://www.boston.com/news/ nation/articles/2006/11/21/nursing-mothers-protest- grows?mode+PF
32. "Woman Fights for Breast-Fee ding Rights," CBSNews.com, July 2, 2006, http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/07/02/national/printable1773867. shtml. See also note 28
33. Bartlett discusses "lactivists" who respond to censures of public nursing (Bartlett, Breastwork, 66-83)
34. Eden Force, Letter to the Editor, New York Times, July 6, 2006
35. Rabin, "Breast-Feed or Else."