Beyond Health, Beyond Choice

Current public health promotion of breastfeeding relies heavily on health messaging and individual behavior change. Women are told that “breast is best” but too little serious attention is given to addressing the many social, economic, and political factors that combine to limit women’s real choice to breastfeed beyond a few days or weeks. The result: women’s, infants’, and public health interests are undermined.  Beyond Health, Beyond Choice examines how feminist perspectives can inform public health support for breastfeeding.

Written by authors from diverse disciplines, perspectives, and countries, this collection of essays is arranged thematically and considers breastfeeding in relation to public health and health care; work and family; embodiment (specifically breastfeeding in public); economic and ethnic factors; guilt; violence; and commercialization. By examining women’s experiences and bringing feminist insights to bear on a public issue, the editors attempt to reframe the discussion to better inform public health approaches and political action. Doing so can help us recognize the value of breastfeeding for the public’s health and the important productive and reproductive contributions women make to the world.

PAIGE HALL SMITH is Associate Professor of Public Health Education and Director of the Center for Women’s Health and Wellness at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. 

BERNICE L. HAUSMAN is Professor of English at Virginia Tech and the author of Mother’s Milk: Breastfeeding Controversies in American Culture and Viral Mothers: Breastfeeding in the Age of HIV/AIDS.

MIRIAM LABBOK is Professor and Director of the Carolina Global Breastfeeding Institute in the Department of Maternal and Child Health in the Gillings School of Global Public Health, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.