"Giving guilt the flick"?: An investigation of mothers' talk about guilt in relation to infant feeding

Williams, K., Donaghue, N. and Kurz, T. (2013) "Giving guilt the flick"?: An investigation of mothers' talk about guilt in relation to infant feeding. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 37 (1). pp. 97-112.

Abstract

Manuals offering advice to new parents on the topic of infant feeding have recently begun to attend to the possible implications of pro-breast-feeding discourses for mothers’ subjective experiences, particularly with respect to guilt. In this article, we present a discursive analysis of focus groups with 35 Australian mothers in which we examine how mothers discuss their infant-feeding practices and their related subjective experiences. We focus on how the mothers draw upon notions of “guilt,” “choice,” and “emotional self-control” to attend to the possibility of moral judgment over their infant-feeding practices. We highlight a construction of choice that dramatically restricts permissible reasons for not breast-feeding one’s infant and a pervasive view that guilt is a natural and appropriate response for “good” mothers who do not breast-feed. We argue that the incorporation of advice to mothers that they should “not feel guilty” is unrealistic in a context in which breast-feeding is so heavily advocated and that, rather than providing relief or comfort, this advice can create an additional burden for mothers who do not breast-feed. Finally, we reflect upon the implications of our findings in relation to the provision of public health information to women making choices around how to feed their infants.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Murdoch Affiliation(s):	School of Psychology
Publisher:	Sage
Copyright:	The authors
Publisher's Website:	http://pwq.sagepub.com/
URI:	http://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/id/eprint/13717

Item Control Page

Downloads