Is Breast Best? by Joan B. Wolf, Hardcover, 9780814794814 | Buy online at The Nile
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Is Breast Best?

Taking on the Breastfeeding Experts and the New High Stakes of Motherhood

Author: Joan B. Wolf   Series: Biopolitics

A controversial argument against the notion that breast-feeding is superior to bottle-feeding

Since the invention of dextri-maltose and the subsequent rise of Similac in the early twentieth century, parents with access to clean drinking water have had a safe alternative to breast-milk. This book challenges the widespread belief that breastfeeding is medically superior to bottle-feeding.

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Summary

A controversial argument against the notion that breast-feeding is superior to bottle-feeding

Since the invention of dextri-maltose and the subsequent rise of Similac in the early twentieth century, parents with access to clean drinking water have had a safe alternative to breast-milk. This book challenges the widespread belief that breastfeeding is medically superior to bottle-feeding.

Read more

Description

Why has breastfeeding re-asserted itself over the last twenty years, and why are the government, the scientific and medical communities, and so many mothers so invested in the idea? In Is Breast Best? Joan B. Wolf challenges the widespread belief that breastfeeding is medically superior to bottle-feeding. Despite the fact that breastfeeding has become the ultimate expression of maternal dedication, Wolf writes, the conviction that breastfeeding provides babies unique health benefits and that formula feeding is a risky substitute is unsubstantiated by the evidence. In accessible prose, Wolf argues that a public obsession with health and what she calls “total motherhood” has made breastfeeding a cause célèbre, and that public discussions of breastfeeding say more about infatuation with personal responsibility and perfect mothering in America than they do about the concrete benefits of the breast.
Parsing the rhetoric of expert advice, including the recent National Breastfeeding Awareness Campaign, and rigorously questioning the scientific evidence, Is Breast Best? uncovers a path by which a mother can feel informed and confident about how best to feed her thriving infant—whether flourishing by breast or by bottle.

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Critic Reviews

“"Wolf offers a powerful and important cultural critique...this is an insightful and eye-opening book that will be of interest to sociologists of gender, medical sociologists, and science studies scholars."-Abigail C. Saguy, American Journal of Sociology”

"Beautifully written, powerfully argued... Challenges the science prescription that all infants must be breastfed." Linda Blum, author of At the Breast: Ideologies of Breastfeeding and Motherhood in the Contemporary United States "...presenting an analysis of mainstream breastfeeding promotion and interrogating claims about the superiority of breastfeeding that will be entirely familiar to the British reader... In thorough and thoroughly interesting 40 or so pages she [Wolf] demonstrates how a plethora of methodological problems pervade breast-feeding research, especially in relation to causality." Health, Risk & Society

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About the Author

Joan B. Wolf is Associate Professor of Women’s Studies at Texas A&M University and author of Harnessing the Holocaust: The Politics of Memory in France.

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More on this Book

Since the invention of dextri-maltose and the subsequent rise of Similac in the early twentieth century, parents with access to clean drinking water have had a safe alternative to breast-milk. Use of formula spiked between the 1950s and 1970s, with some reports showing that nearly 75 percent of the population relied on commercial formula to at least supplement a breastfeeding routine. So how is it that most of those bottle-fed babies grew up to believe that breast, and only breast, is best? In Is Breast Best? Joan B. Wolf challenges the widespread belief that breastfeeding is medically superior to bottle-feeding. Despite the fact that breastfeeding has become the ultimate expression of maternal dedication, Wolf writes, the conviction that breastfeeding provides babies unique health benefits and that formula feeding is a risky substitute is unsubstantiated by the evidence. In accessible prose, Wolf argues that a public obsession with health and what she calls "total motherhood" has made breastfeeding a cause celebre, and that public discussions of breastfeeding say more about infatuation with personal responsibility and perfect mothering in America than they do about the concrete benefits of the breast. Why has breastfeeding re-asserted itself over the last twenty years, and why are the government, the scientific and medical communities, and so many mothers so invested in the idea? Parsing the rhetoric of expert advice, including the recent National Breastfeeding Awareness Campaign, and rigorously questioning the scientific evidence, Wolf uncovers a path by which a mother can feel informed and confident about how best to feed her thriving infant-whether flourishing by breast or by bottle.

Read more

Product Details

Publisher
New York University Press
Published
19th December 2010
Pages
258
ISBN
9780814794814

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