Talking about breastfeeding - emotion, context and 'good' mothering

The benefits of breastfeeding are now recognised and promoted by governments and healthcare services internationally (WHO 2007),with feeding regarded as a significant part of the maternal role: in the words of the World Health Organization: ‘no gift is more precious than breastfeeding’. The idea that breastfeeding can be a ‘gift’ signifies the increasing, heavy cultural and emotional load of feeding for mothers. Feeding practices can be used to differentiate ‘good’ and ‘bad’ mothers, ‘high’ or ‘low’ social status and can also be associated with feelings of intimacy, estrangement, guilt, joy, failure or success. In this article we discuss the findings from the Open University's ‘Becoming aMother’ study (www.open.ac.uk/socialsciences/ identities/findings/Hollway.pdf) in the light of these wider issues and current policy initiatives