Beyond Public Health and Private Choice: Breastfeeding, Embodiment and Public Health Ethics

Abstract

The key objective of this paper is to emphasize the importance of acknowledging breastfeeding as an embodied social practice within interventions related to breastfeeding and lactation and illustrate how this recognition holds implications for public health ethics debates. Recent scholarship has shown that breastfeeding and lactation support interventions undermine women’s autonomy. However, substantial discourse is required to determine how to align with public health goals while also recognizing the embodied experiences of breastfeeding and lactating individuals. Presently, interventions in this realm predominantly revolve around health-related messaging and the promotion of individual behaviors, often neglecting the systemic and structural factors that influence choices and practices. I closely examine breastfeeding interventions in India, in particular Mothers’ Absolute Affection health promotion program, along with breastfeeding narratives. I argue that for such interventions to evolve, they must acknowledge the intrinsic embodied social nature of breastfeeding during their design and implementation. Furthermore, it is important to emphasize that achieving equity and justice objectives necessitates moving beyond the confines of both conventional public health frameworks and frameworks solely centered on private choices. Instead, a more encompassing approach that embraces the concept of embodiment should be adopted.

Science and Faith to Understand Milk Bioactivity for Infants

“…Finally, human science produces systematic knowledge about many philosophical, aesthetic, and ethical aspects of breastfeeding [ 183 , 184 ]. Human sciences conduct descriptive, theoretical studies on motherhood and breastfeeding, including ethics [ 185 ] and its perceived ‘naturalness’ [ 186 ], but the descriptions do not by themselves provide meaning, value, and hope to individuals, groups, or society. Social sciences combine collected data and human reflections on breastfeeding to study topics such as gender issues, the labor market, and health economy in relation to breastfeeding [ 187 , 188 , 189 ].…”