Infant feeding in risk society

Abstract

A large percentage of British women, in common with women in other Western countries, feed their young babies formula milk. The paper reports some findings of a study of infant feeding that focussed on women's experiences of feeding their babies this way. Data about this issue were collected through detailed, qualitative face to face interviews with 33 mothers and through telephone interviews using a structured questionnaire with 503 mothers. The study found overall that mother's accounts of feeding babies formula milk draw attention to contradictions and tensions in motherhood and mothering. Formula feeding is predominantly experienced by mothers as ‘easy,’ enabling them to address a wide range of demands and difficulties that mothering a small baby poses for them. At the same time, mothers demonstrate awareness of the socio-cultural construction of the ‘moral mother’ as the mother who minimizes and avoids risk, and so does not use formula milk for infant feeding. How women react to this tension between ‘real life’ and ‘doing what is healthy’ varies, but the study reported here found a large minority of women experience manifestly difficult and debilitating feelings as they attempt to reconcile a pragmatic wish or need to formula feed with dominant constructions of the ‘moral mother.’ By detailing women's accounts of this aspect of motherhood, the paper contributes to sociological investigation of everyday experiences of risk society. To contextualize this discussion, a brief account of the relationship between eating, feeding babies and risk society is also offered.

Keywords:

• Motherhood
• breast feeding
• formula feeding
• risk
• morality

Acknowledgements

The provisional findings of the research were discussed at a seminars held at the University of Kent in July 2005 and in February 2006, and the author would like to express her gratitude to all who attended for their thoughtful and insightful comments and criticisms. The research was supported by a research grant from the Infant Dietetics and Foods Association (IDFA), the body that represents manufacturers of specialist nutrition products in the UK, including infant foods. The grantholders were free to publish findings of their research without prior scrutiny of IDFA. The author is personally in receipt of no other funding or payment from IDFA.

Notes

1 Another differentiation between women that forms the focus for much commentary about the subject of infant feeding is social class. Space means that discussion in this paper does not focus on detailing differences in reported experiences in this regard. The samples in both phases of the research were, however, spread through ranges social class. One general point that can be made is that experiences of infant feeding did not emerge as clearly polarized according to social class. The existence of ‘two cultures,’ in which the experience of working class women and middle class women was highly differentiated, was not identified by this study. The author hopes to explore this finding in a future article.