Advanced Search

Journal Navigation

Journal Home

Subscriptions

Archive

Contact Us

Table of Contents

CiteULike is a free service for managing and discovering scholarly references - click here to get started.

Sign In to gain access to subscriptions and/or personal tools.
Journal of Contemporary Ethnography
This Article
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow References
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Right arrow Citation Map
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to Saved Citations
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Right arrow Request Reprints
Right arrow Add to My Marked Citations
Citing Articles
Right arrow Citing Articles via HighWire
Right arrow Citing Articles via Google Scholar
Right arrow Citing Articles via Scopus
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by MURPHY, E.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Complore   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us   Add to Digg   Add to Reddit   Add to Technorati   Add to Twitter  
What's this?

Risk, Responsibility, and Rhetoric in Infant Feeding

ELIZABETH MURPHY

University of Nottingham

This article considers the way in which discourses around risk intersect with the ideology of motherhood in advanced liberal societies. Neoliberal citizens are urged to exercise prudence in the light of expert advice about minimizing risk through behavioral choices. The "good mother" is one who maximizes physical and psychological outcomes for her child, regardless of personal cost. Drawing on data from a longitudinal interview study of first-time mothers' feeding practices, the moral context that arises at the intersection of these two discourses is explored. Experts advise mothers to breast-feed and warn of the short-, medium-, and long-term risks associated with formula feeding. Most mothers accept the validity of these expert claims and most initiate breast feeding. However, many abandon breast feeding long before experts recommend. This article considers how mothers deal with the threat to their identities as good, neoliberal citizens and mothers that arises from such feeding practices.

Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Vol. 29, No. 3, 291-325 (2000)
DOI: 10.1177/089124100129023927
Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to Technorati Technorati   Add to Twitter Twitter    What's this?


This article has been cited by other articles:


Home page
 Health (London)Home page
K. Weiner
The tenacity of the coronary candidate: how people with familial hypercholesterolaemia construct raised cholesterol and coronary heart disease
Health (London) , July 1, 2009; 13(4): 407 - 427.
[Abstract] [PDF]

Home page
 European Journal of Women's StudiesHome page
L. Smyth
Gendered Spaces and Intimate Citizenship: The Case of Breastfeeding
European Journal of Women's Studies, May 1, 2008; 15(2): 83 - 99.
[Abstract] [PDF]

Home page
 ChildhoodHome page
E. Murphy
Images of Childhood in Mothers' Accounts of Contemporary Childrearing
Childhood, February 1, 2007; 14(1): 105 - 127.
[Abstract] [PDF]

Home page
 Health Educ ResHome page
J. B. Lowe, L. J. McDermott, W. R. Stanton, A. Clavarino, K. P. Balanda, and B. McWhirter
Behavior of caregivers to protect their infants from exposure to the sun in Queensland, Australia
Health Educ. Res., August 1, 2002; 17(4): 405 - 414.
[Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]