Paper short abstract:

This paper looks at women’s maternity narratives and beliefs concerning mother’s milk as a source of contamination for their baby. Resistance to doctors’ instructions to stop breastfeeding demonstrates how women interpret and measure risk against what it means to be a good mother.

Paper long abstract:

This paper looks at women's maternity narratives and beliefs concerning mother's milk as a source of contamination for their baby. During fieldwork in Chiapas, Mexico I came across repeated incidences where mother's milk or the mother's body itself was blamed for non-serious illness in a newborn. Despite public health messages promoting the benefits of exclusive breastfeeding women were repeatedly told by individual doctors that existing medical problems or complications in birth meant that their milk was causing harm to their baby. Physical and emotional conditions could literarily turn a woman's milk bad (mala leche). This reinforced a notion perpetuated throughout the clinical management of pregnancy and birth that without intervention a woman was at risk of harming her child. In Mexico women who go against advice are seen (by doctors and the state) to be increasing their risk of complications and in doing so they are considered bad mothers. Adhering to medical advice defines women as good mothers because they are demonstrating risk averse behaviour. The advice given to women to replace breastfeeding with formula does not take into account the logics of intercultural norms that breastmilk can be made good again by treating the mother with non-medical interventions. This leads to decision making in the home that goes against medical opinion. New mothers find themselves in an in-between space where interpretation of risk is dependent upon the importance of being a good mother in the eyes of the state or adhering to intercultural norms that a mother's milk is best.