TY - JOUR

T1 - Feeding Mothers’ Love

T2 - Stories of Breastfeeding and Mothering in Urban China

AU - Breengaard, Michala Hvidt

PY - 2018

Y1 - 2018

N2 - By analysing narratives of infant feeding, this article explores how emotions are involved in the making of maternal subjectivity. The article is based on interviews with 21 Chinese middle-class mothers of small infants living in Beijing and their stories of how breastfeeding connects to intimacy and love. By merging post-structural approaches of subjectivity with affect theory, the article shows how the emotional dimension of breastfeeding promotes an ideal of mothers as primary caregivers. It finds that this ideal is challenged by practices of multiple caregiving in the mothers’ everyday lives. By exploring the performativity of emotions, the article adds another sociological perspective beyond those concerned with medical discourses of feeding infants. Also, as emotions have been neglected in much social research on Chinese mothering, it contributes to new sociological knowledge about mothering in China.

AB - By analysing narratives of infant feeding, this article explores how emotions are involved in the making of maternal subjectivity. The article is based on interviews with 21 Chinese middle-class mothers of small infants living in Beijing and their stories of how breastfeeding connects to intimacy and love. By merging post-structural approaches of subjectivity with affect theory, the article shows how the emotional dimension of breastfeeding promotes an ideal of mothers as primary caregivers. It finds that this ideal is challenged by practices of multiple caregiving in the mothers’ everyday lives. By exploring the performativity of emotions, the article adds another sociological perspective beyond those concerned with medical discourses of feeding infants. Also, as emotions have been neglected in much social research on Chinese mothering, it contributes to new sociological knowledge about mothering in China.

KW - Breastfeeding

KW - emotions

KW - mothering

KW - mother–child bonding

KW - subjectification

KW - urban China

U2 - 10.1080/08038740.2018.1530298

DO - 10.1080/08038740.2018.1530298

M3 - Journal article

AN - SCOPUS:85057570937

VL - 26

SP - 313

EP - 330

JO - NORA - Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research

JF - NORA - Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research

SN - 0803-8740

IS - 4

ER -