School of Nursing and Midwifery, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
Med Anthropol. 2013;32(5):467-86. doi: 10.1080/01459740.2013.768620.
Breast milk expression has been promoted as liberating for women and as offering them more choices, but there has been little research on women's experiences of it and even less critical commentary on the consequences of its incorporation into mainstream behavior. Drawing on narratives of women in the United Kingdom about breastfeeding, we explore the increasingly popular practice of expressing and feeding expressed breast milk. We argue that breast milk has become commodified, breastfeeding commercialized and technologized, and the mother-infant relationship disrupted. We suggest that breastfeeding as a process is being undermined by vested interests that portray it as unreliable and reconstruct it in artificial feeding terms, so playing on women's insecurities. The major beneficiaries of expression are fathers who want increased involvement in infant care and commercial enterprises that aim to maximize profits for shareholders.
母乳喂养被宣传为对女性的解放，为她们提供了更多的选择，但对女性的体验的研究很少，对其纳入主流行为的后果的批判性评论就更少了。本文通过对英国女性母乳喂养的叙述，探讨了越来越流行的表达和喂养母乳的做法。我们认为，母乳已经商品化，母乳喂养已经商业化和技术化，母婴关系也被打破。我们认为，母乳喂养作为一个过程正在被那些将其描述为不可靠的利益集团所破坏，并以人工喂养的方式重建它，从而利用女性的不安全感。表达的主要受益者是希望更多地参与婴儿护理的父亲和旨在为股东实现利润最大化的商业企业。
