Milk and management: breastfeeding as a project

Abstract

Ideas about motherhood among middle-class women in South Africa recently seem to have shifted toward more “intensive mothering,” partly enabled by class privilege resulting from highly unequal labour relations. In this context breastfeeding and other mothering practices are approached as a “project” that can be managed through planning, measuring and the application of medical expertise. Tracing the breastfeeding experiences of highly educated, middle-class women in the southern suburbs of Cape Town, I outline the paradoxical claims to personhood that women experience when trying to be “good mothers.” The “project approach” can be seen as a means to assemble contradictory expectations and values of motherhood and integrate them into everyday life. It also implies that these managerial approaches are suggestive of approaches to life more broadly.

Keywords:

• breastfeeding
• intensive mothering
• middle-class
• motherhood
• sacrifice