This Research Topic is part of a series marking
World Breastfeeding Week, hosted in conjunction with Frontiers in Communication.
You can find the companion volume here:
Communicating Breastfeeding Benefits and Supporting New Mothers’ WellbeingWhile breastfeeding appears to be primarily an embodied, physical, biological act, a comprehensive study on breastfeeding needs to consider women’s experience around the world from a behavioral, social, cultural and anthropological perspective. Women have different breastfeeding journeys due to their geographical location, the social, financial, medical and health care support they receive, and the cultural and educational context of their situations. Commercial interests play a part in the promotion of particular approaches to infant feeding and there have been different trends to breastfeeding across time and place.
In promoting breastfeeding as the best option for infants, contemporary culture often equates good mothering with breastfeeding but is there in place an effective, well-financed system in place for the emotional and physical support of new mothers who are breastfeeding?
To celebrate UN breastfeeding week and raise awareness of new mothers’ well being, Frontiers is launching a new series to gather multi disciplinary insights into women’s international experiences of breastfeeding in a world in which there are stark divisions in the choices available to women in the global south and the global north. In order to address these questions in a cross-disciplinary way, we welcome submissions from the fields of sociology, gender studies, social policy, social psychology, education, media and communication.
Topics we would like to explore include:
-Breastfeeding Support from international societies: is the narrative used to promote breastfeeding inclusive and able to resonate through different cultures and societies?
- Social institutions’ support to breastfeeding mothers: international perspectives: maternity leave duration and regulation, support of breastfeeding in different workplaces,
- Nursing in public debates and the tensions between official policy promotion of breastfeeding and the lived experience of those who attempt to feed their babies in difficult circumstances in which hostile, often misogynist discourses circulate
- Variations in breastfeeding experiences due to class and culture across the globe
- Pressure to breastfeed: why breast is best could become an alienating mantra for early-mothers. Who decides and how are women’s decisions received, validated and supported?
- The role of personal experience and the emotional insecurities, which also influence and shape feeding practice and outcomes. Why is breastfeeding situated within a discourse of success and failure? What factors shape mothers’ experience?