IMPACTS OF BREASTFEEDING PEER SUPPORT PROGRAM ON WOMEN’S CAPACITY TO SUPPORT THEMSELVES AND OTHERS

Abstract

This thesis draws on feminist theories of embodiment, empowerment, and intersectionality and their connections to women’s experiences of breastfeeding. Through community engagement and co-operative inquiry, women’s everyday experiences of embodied breastfeeding were explored for their insights into breastfeeding peer support at the Saskatoon Mothers’ Centre. This research explores how interactions and conversations about breastfeeding knowledge and skills, based on differences in cultural perspectives, can lead to changes in subjective knowledge that underpins an expanded understanding of maternal capabilities, affiliation and collective agency. This exploration focused on understanding women’s own perceptions of their breastfeeding experiences as an important source of maternal dyadic knowledge, as well as knowledge of the relationship between the body, self and others. The feminist literature on breastfeeding has tended to view breastfeeding as a slippery slope toward essentialism, a potential barrier to gender-neutral childrearing that is problematic for a feminist agenda for equality. This research addresses this imbalance and provides evidence to substantiate the claim that a non-essentialist feminist discourse of embodied breastfeeding–one that valorizes the breastfeeding body and its corporeal generosity and sociability–is a potential site of community resistance to medicalized birthing and breastfeeding initiation practices.