Faircloth, C.Militant Lactivism? Attachment Parenting and Intensive Motherhood in the UK and France, Oxford: Berghahn Books. 2013. ISBN: 9780857457585
Year: 2013
Type: book-review
Abstract: La Leche League (LLL) is a global breastfeeding support organisation founded in 1956 in the USA when breastfeeding rates in the USA had fallen to an all time low of around 20%. It has now expanded globally, reaching 200,000 people per month in over 64 countries through trained volunteers who offer mother-to-mother support through groups, phone or via the internet. Their ten point philosophy is explicit in encouraging physical and emotional closeness between mother and baby and breastfeeding of the baby until s/he is ready to discontinue, an ethos of ‘mothering through breastfeeding’. In this book, Faircloth describes an ethnographic study in London and Paris in which she utilised questionnaires, conducted observations of LLL meetings and in-depth interviews with mothers and LLL leaders about their philosophies of parenting and experiences of breastfeeding. More specifically, Faircloth focuses upon a sub-section of LLL mothers who practice ‘attachment parenting’ within the wider context of intensive parenting. This is characterised by long-term baby-led breast feeding–typically for several years—and close proximity of the mother and baby using a baby sling during the day and co-sleeping at night. Faircloth refers to intensive mothering as an ideology of appropriate mothering, arguing that intensive mothering is an ‘emergent ideology’, influenced by an increasing public health policy level orthodoxy that ‘breast is best’. Thus, she argues, breastfeeding has become a highly moralised activity with attachment parenting being central to women's ‘identity work’. This, she acknowledges, is a complex affair as women balance statistical, ideological and cultural norms. Faircloth uses a theoretical lens of ‘accountability’ to discuss the ways in which women, in the London cohort, justify their approach and incorporate their practices into their identity. She refers to women ‘finding their tribe’ in that the LLL philosophy aligns with their desire to resist dominant social norms of parenting and infant feeding which tended to make them feel marginalised. By networking with a like-minded group of mothers they could both passively and actively resist aspects of the dominant culture such as the pressure on women to join/rejoin the world of commerce and engage in institutionalised child care. Women referred to doing what was/is ‘natural’, referring to it being ‘right’, ‘non-artificial’, ‘traditional’ and ‘instinctive’. However, Faircloth points out, this tends to assume that there is a hominid blue print as represented by contemporary hunter-gatherer societies. This, she argues, is presented as if a constant in human biological patterns of behaviour disregarding the ways in which all human practices have been and are influenced by ecological and social environments. Thus women enter into a cultural contradiction by adopting parenting and infant feeding styles in a society where many of the traditional support structures for attachment parenting are no longer in place. Women also drew upon a range of scientific discourses in the fields of epidemiology, biology, neuroscience and psychology to justify the ‘rightness’ of breastfeeding. However, whilst this basis for their accountability was often seen as the most robust, the influence of affect (‘what feels right in my heart’), was more powerful than seeing it as ‘natural’ or having a scientific basis. Faircloth acknowledges the complexity of this means of accountability which for women was hard to articulate as the language of rationalism was not adequate to describe the embodied knowing, loving and relationship aspects expressed by women. She draws upon a range of perspectives, some of which she converges with and others she diverges from, in an endeavour to come close to women's experiences and narratives. However, it seems, perhaps not surprisingly, that she does not have the language to articulate this embodied knowledge; she is quite open about this and utilises the description of another author who was able to draw upon her own experiences of breastfeeding. In the penultimate chapter, Faircloth presents a comparative analysis of mothering as identity work based on her ethnographic work with LLL mothers in Paris. She argues that identity work is more around liberty and sexuality; mothering is not seen as a primary source of identity work. This relates, in part, to a much earlier return to work due to comparatively restrictive maternity leave and allowances in line with an expectation that women return to engagement in the workplace following giving birth; institutionalised child care is provided to accommodate this. It also relates to an emphasis upon individual autonomy and a desire to maintain a level of separation between parent and child; breast milk pumping is thus more of a cultural norm. Those mothers engaging in attachment parenting in Paris were seen as very marginal and, consequently, showed an even stronger commitment to this way of parenting than their English counterparts. This cross-cultural comparison is particularly useful in highlighting the interaction between structural factors and parenting norms and in illustrating differences in ways of engaging in identity work. However, there could have been more discussion on similarities and differences between accountability strategies between the two cohorts; from this point of view the comparison seems to be somewhat underdeveloped. Overall, this book is highly illuminating and well argued. It will be of particular interest to social anthropologists, medical sociologists, midwives, maternal and child health nurses and breastfeeding specialists to include the range of voluntary organisations.
Source: Sociology of Health & Illness
Author: Fiona Dykes
Institution: University of Lancashire
Language: English
Subfield: Epidemiology
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W1990754957