Lomax, Helen
(2012).
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Abstract
This chapter examines the ways in which policy agendas and contemporary notions of the ‘good mother’ frame infant feeding practices, rendering them a site of moral and interactional trouble for mothers. Drawing on analysis of mothers’ talk with midwives during the first days of motherhood, the chapter explores the ways in which breastfeeding confers a positive maternal identity whilst choosing not to do so is associated with a deficit identity against which mothers’ struggle to present themselves as good parents. The chapter suggests that these encounters are important places to explore the ways in which ‘ordinary’ family practices are troubled by policy agendas which may conflict with women’s embodied experiences, culturally held ideas about feeding babies and contemporary notions about what constitutes a good mother and a healthy baby. A focus on these signal moments makes visible the ways in which policy agendas may negate the rich texture of maternal labour and its complex and troubling relationship with policy.
| Item Type: | Book Chapter |
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| Copyright Holders: | 2012 Policy Press |
| Academic Unit/Department: | Health and Social Care > Health and Social Care |
| Item ID: | 31064 |
| Depositing User: | Helen Lomax |
| Date Deposited: | 17 Jan 2012 10:37 |
| Last Modified: | 27 Oct 2012 09:37 |
| URI: | http://oro.open.ac.uk/id/eprint/31064 |
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