Moral work in women's narratives of breastfeeding

Women's narratives of their breastfeeding experiences are sites of construction and reconstruction of self as they undertake moral work in relation to feeding their baby. We engaged Foucault's ‘technologies of the self’ and his notion of ethics (the relationship with self) to examine that...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Social science & medicine (1982) 2010-03, Vol.70 (6), p.951-958
Main Authors: Ryan, Kath, Bissell, Paul, Alexander, Jo
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Altruism
Attitude to Health
Bioethics
Biological and medical sciences
Breast Feeding - psychology
Breast-feeding
Breastfeeding
Breastfeeding & lactation
Discourse
Ethics
Feeding Practices
Female
Females
Foucault
Foucault, Michel
Humans
Infant
Infant Nutritional Physiological Phenomena
Infants
Interviews as Topic
Maternal Behavior
Medical sciences
Miscellaneous
Moral work
Morality
Morals
Mother-Child Relations
Mothers - psychology
Narration
Narratives
Political Action
Public health. Hygiene
Public health. Hygiene-occupational medicine
Qualitative Research
Self Concept
Social sciences
Studies
Subjectivity
Teaching. Deontology. Ethics. Legislation
Technologies of the self
UK Breastfeeding Narratives Moral work Subjectivity Technologies of the self Foucault Discourse
United Kingdom
Women
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Summary:Women's narratives of their breastfeeding experiences are sites of construction and reconstruction of self as they undertake moral work in relation to feeding their baby. We engaged Foucault's ‘technologies of the self’ and his notion of ethics (the relationship with self) to examine that moral work (individual actions rather than adherence to universal moral codes) in relation to women's subjectivity constructed in interviews with 49 women from the UK. Four categories of moral work were identified: biographical preservation, biographical repair, altruism and political action. We describe each of these and conclude that women's embodied experience and sense of self are disciplined within current, limited, often punishing discourses by undertaking painful moral work in order to maintain or repair their subjective positions. We suggest the development of new subject positions around infant feeding practices.
ISSN:0277-9536
1873-5347
DOI:10.1016/j.socscimed.2009.11.023