Feminism, Breasts and Breast-Feeding

This volume uses a feminist approach to examine the vast amount of material on breast-feeding. Baby milk manufacture is usually seen as the sole cause of the decline in breast-feeding. Using interviews with women, the author looks at other dimensions: the sexualization of breasts; the conditions under which the infant feeding takes place and professional interventions into mothering. Policy documents and popular breast-feeding books are shown to be preoccupied with getting women to do what they deem natural rather than with women's real needs.