Digitalised health, risk and motherhood: politics of infant feeding in post-colonial Hong Kong

Abstract

In 2013, the ‘right to baby formula’ movement supported by educated, middle-class Chinese families in Hong Kong was launched online challenging the dominant message that ‘breast is best’. In this article, I focus on links between mediatisation, globalisation of formula milk and motherhood in post-colonial Hong Kong. Although previous research has examined ideologies of motherhood and mothers’ infant feeding decisions, little research has focused on the impact of digital media within post-colonial societies undergoing rapid social change. Drawing on data from a study of mothers living in Hong Kong that I conducted during 2010–2011 and 2013–2014, I show how digital media contribute to changes in individuals’ experiences with breastfeeding, perceptions of risk and health, as well as social relations, norms, values and identities in contemporary Hong Kong. I explore how and with what consequences the family, especially as it relates to motherhood and childhood, and the practices of infant feeding are intertwined with digital media and the body politic in neoliberal, post-colonial Hong Kong. I argue that although digital media have globalised the biomedical discourse that ‘breast is best’, mothers in Hong Kong have, through digital storytelling and virtual interaction, generated alternative interpretations of science, health and their embodied illness experience that serve to counterbalance the cultural contradictions of motherhood. I show that through social networking, parents have not only gained sufficient political power to secure formula milk, they are also simultaneously subsumed to consumer desire created by the marketing of international pharmaceutical companies.

Keywords:

• risk
• mediatisation
• social media
• digitalised health
• motherhood
• consumption
• breastfeeding
• infant feeding
• neoliberalism
• body politic

Acknowledgements

I thank the women who shared their infant feeding experiences with me. Gratefully, I acknowledge the helpful and thoughtful comments I received from two anonymous reviews. I also thank Prof. Andy Alaszewski for his invaluable help and support, especially in the final stage of revision.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.