Full Description
New parents in the United States are caught between responding to infant needs for closeness and breastfeeding, and cultural and medical norms that emphasize solitary sleep. This anthropological investigation shows that nighttime closeness and breastfeeding are the evolutionary and cross-cultural norm, but recent sociocultural shifts produced novel ideals of separation. The book uncovers how breastfeeding parents rework these cultural ideals. In this new edition, the author describes shifting medical guidance that increasingly supports breastfeeding yet remains largely separated from infant sleep guidance. The volume also provides a path towards more equitable approaches to nighttime infant care grounded in reproductive justice.
Contents
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 Men's "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
Conclusion
Appendixes
Bibliography
Index
