Clicked send too soon. (and wasted one post for today!)
Janice Reynolds
Here's the review:

At The Breast
Ideologies of Breastfeeding and Motherhood in the Contemporary United States
Linda M. Blum
Beacon Press Boston, 1999     ISBN 0-8070-2141-5       282 pages

I wasn’t sure if I was going to “like” this book.  Unlike other
“breastfeeding” books I have read, I didn’t know how this book would end –
pro or anti-breastfeeding?

Linda Blum teaches sociology and women’s studies at the University of New
Hampshire, and approaches this debate from the feminist point of view.  She
surveyed feminist books on mothering, breastfeeding articles in 30 years of
popular magazines, reviewed medical journals, attended LLL meetings and
interviewed a wide variety of mothers.

The book starts with a chapter on the history of motherhood and
breastfeeding in the United States, and how society has always had a say in
mothering and women’s bodies, whether it was the state, maternalist
socities, science, or currently, the economy.  Rarely are mothering
decisions allowed to be made on the basis of what is best for the woman.

Blum, chapter by chapter, looks at middle-class white mothers (through the
LLL), white working-class mothers, and black working-class mothers.  In
questioning them about their mothering decisions (not just breastfeeding)
she shows how these groups have very different factors that weigh into their
motherhood decisions.  For example, the middle-class mother sees the
benefits of breastfeeding as an edge to maintaining her threatened
middle-class position.  She usually has a husband to support her, and sees
the intact mother/father family unit as necessary to successful
child-rearing. The white working class woman may lack the earnings of a man
in the family, so her route to upward class mobility is to either get
married to her man, or get him earning the money.  So if that man is not
supportive of breastfeeding, it may be much more important to her to keep
him happy, than to gain the health benefits of breastfeeding.   In contrast,
the black working-class woman often doesn’t look to a man to help her, but
will work herself, and utilize her friends and family to help raise her
child.  So often her most practical decision is to bottlefeed, so anyone can
care for the child.  As well, Blum suggests that there are carryover issues
of slavery to deal with.    As slavery was often justified on the idea that
“blacks were like animals themselves”, any appeals to promote breastfeeding
on the basis of its “naturalness” since we, too, are “mammals”, may be
totally repugnant to the black woman.  The working class woman is much more
open to scrutiny by the state through the welfare and health system, and
these women may rather formula feed (the majority and approved method) than
enduring the repeated interference that getting support for breastfeeding
success may require.

As a feminist, Blum sees the woman and her own best interest lost in debate.
She proposes that the pleasurable feelings, and the health advantages for
the mother be emphasized more.

A number of the books she refers to throughout are on my reading list, and I
wish I had read them before starting this book.  These include Adrienne Rich
’s  “Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution” and Sharon
Hays’ “The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood”.

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