ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Sociol.
Sec. Sociology of Families
Volume 10 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fsoc.2025.1671596
This article is part of the Research TopicParenthood and Parental Wellbeing: Exploring Diverse Trajectories and InfluencesView all 3 articles
Breastfeeding in Italy. How "The First 1,000 Days" discourse molecularise social expectations of intensive mothering
Provisionally accepted
- University of Salerno, Fisciano, Italy
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Breastfeeding is one of the core pillars of the so-called “First Thousand Days” (FTD) discourse. By mobilising neuroscience, the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DOHaD), and epigenetics, this contemporary narrative establishes a causal link between various pre-natal and early-life lifestyle factors and health across the lifespan. By framing parental choices as social determinants of children's health, it aligns with broader contemporary parenting trends, such as scientific motherhood and intensive parenting, the expectation that parents, particularly mothers, devote significant time and energy to raising their children according to the latest scientific advice. A qualitative analysis of health information guides and policy papers circulating in Italy over the last 6 years - a country with one of the lowest fertility and breastfeeding rates in Europe - was conducted following the principles of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). The aim was to explore how the promotion of breastfeeding within the FTD framework normalises biomedical imaginaries of childrearing and increases social pressure on mothers. The analysed texts emphasise individual behavioural prescriptions for mothers, focusing on nutrition, bodily techniques, and information gathering, while largely overlooking structural barriers such as inadequate parental leave or poor work-life balance. Biomedical and epigenetic narratives portray the mother as a vector for the child’s gene expression, development, and health. She is positioned as dependent on expert guidance, while embodied maternal knowledge is marginalised. This discourse blends social and biological determinism, reinforcing intensive mothering ideals rooted in healthism, and underestimating the structural constraints that hinder full adherence to these expectations. In the Italian context, characterised by weak parental support policies and limited implementation of breastfeeding promotion, this narrative may contribute to a perception of motherhood as anomic, where the ideal of raising healthy children is promoted without providing the necessary means to achieve it.
Keywords: breastfeeding, Sociology of Health, intensive parenting, Motherhood, Child's health, public health campaigns, epigenetics
Received: 23 Jul 2025; Accepted: 06 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Bandelli. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Daniela Bandelli, dbandelli@unisa.it
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