Feeding Mothers' Love: Stories of Breastfeeding and Mothering in Urban China. Issue 4 (2nd October 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Breengaard, Michala Hvidt
• Is Part Of: NORA. Volume 26:Issue 4(2018)
• Page Start: 313
• Page End: 330
• Publication Date: 2018-10-02
• Subjects: Breastfeeding -- mothering -- emotions -- mother–child bonding -- subjectification -- urban China; Women's studies -- Periodicals; Feminism -- Periodicals; 305.4
• DOI: 10.1080/08038740.2018.1530298
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0803-8740

Abstract

ABSTRACT: By analysing narratives of infant feeding, this article explores how emotions are involved in the making of maternal subjectivity. The article is based on interviews with 21 Chinese middle-class mothers of small infants living in Beijing and their stories of how breastfeeding connects to intimacy and love. By merging post-structural approaches of subjectivity with affect theory, the article shows how the emotional dimension of breastfeeding promotes an ideal of mothers as primary caregivers. It finds that this ideal is challenged by practices of multiple caregiving in the mothers' everyday lives. By exploring the performativity of emotions, the article adds another sociological perspective beyond those concerned with medical discourses of feeding infants. Also, as emotions have been neglected in much social research on Chinese mothering, it contributes to new sociological knowledge about mothering in China.