Healthy discretion? Breastfeeding and the mutual maintenance of motherhood and public space

Although idealizations of motherhood are ever in flux, specific historical moments can be said to produce distinctive tropes of ‘good’ motherhood that have very real impacts on how women act and conceptualize themselves as mothers. This article examines good motherhood in its current iteration, and how now-common beliefs about breastfeeding are implicated in its construction. Furthermore, it looks at the ways in which idealizations of motherhood discipline the breastfeeding body so that it will fit into public space without disruption. I discuss the contradictory impacts of characterizations of the good mother as they appeared in the pro-breastfeeding dialogs that arose following a 2007 incident in which a mother was asked to cover herself up while nursing in a Kentucky restaurant. I posit that while these characterizations helped to make breastfeeding a more widely accepted public activity, they also had the effect of reifying a very narrow conception of what it means to be a good mother. I make this claim through an analysis of two common refrains heard in pro-public-breastfeeding arguments: breast milk is exceedingly healthy and mothers should not be persecuted if they nurse discreetly. Although these assertions together are compelling to the general public in that they provide a scientific justification for breastfeeding while at once assuaging fears of discomfort presented by a reproductive act being performed in a public space, I suggest that they also work to discipline women and maintain public-space-as-usual.     

Changes in Food Consumption and the Implications for Food Security and Undernourishment: India in the 1990s

This article examines the changes in the nature and quantity of food consumption in India during the reform decade of the 1990s, and analyses their implications for calorie intake and undernourishment. The study documents the decline in cereal consumption, especially in the urban areas, and provides evidence that suggests an increase in the prevalence of undernourishment over the period 1987/88 to 2001/2002. The results also point to a significant number of households, even in the top expenditure decile, suffering from undernourishment. This calls for a reassessment of the current strategy of directing the Targetted Public Distribution System (TPDS) exclusively at households ‘below the poverty line’. This study shows that, both as a source of subsidized calories and as a poverty reducing instrument, the PDS is of much greater importance to female‐headed households than it is to the rest of the population. Another important result is that, notwithstanding the sharp decline in their expenditure share during the 1990s, rice and wheat continue to provide the dominant share of calories, especially for the rural poor. The overall message is that, especially in a period of significant economic change, one needs to go beyond the standard expenditure‐based money metric measures to assess the changes in the living standards of households.