Nighttime Breastfeeding An American Cultural Dilemma [Hardcover]

Nighttime for many new parents in the United States is fraught with the intense challenges of learning to breastfeed and helping their babies sleep so they can get rest themselves. Through careful ethnographic study of the dilemmas raised by nighttime breastfeeding, and their examination in the context of anthropological, historical, and feminist studies, this volume unravels the cultural tensions that underlie these difficulties. As parents negotiate these dilemmas, they not only confront conflicting medical guidelines about breastfeeding and solitary infant sleep, but also larger questions about cultural and moral expectations for children and parents, and their relationship with one another.

Cec?lia Tomoriis a medical anthropologist who has worked as a health services researcher at Northwestern Universitys Feinberg School of Medicine and the Jesse Brown VA Medical Center and is currently a Research Associate at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

List of Illustrations
Preface and Acknowledgements

Introduction

Chapter 1. Embodied Cultural Dilemmas: An Anthropological Approach to the Study of Nighttime Breastfeeding and Sleep
Chapter 2.Struggles Over Authoritative Knowledge and Choice in Breastfeeding and Infant Sleep in the U.S.
Chapter 3.Making Breastfeeding Parents in Childbirth Education Courses
Chapter 4.Dispatches from the Moral Minefield of Breastfeeding
Chapter 5.Breastfeeding as Mens Kin Work
Chapter 6.Breastfeeding Babies in the Nest: Producing Children, Kinship, and Moral Imagination in the House
Chapter 7.Time to Sleep: Nighttime Breastfeeding and Capitalist Temporal Regimes