Western Medicine and Marketing: Construction of an Inadequate Milk Syndrome in Lactating Women

I conducted a longitudinal phenomenological study in England to explore the perceptions of 10 lactating women related to the nature of their breast milk and their ability to exclusively breast-feed their babies. The women viewed breast-feeding as a mechanical manufacturing process, and they carefully monitored the output of breast milk. Health care professionals contributed to the women's perceptions and displayed mechanistic assumptions in relation to breastfeeding, reflecting their enculturation through the biomedical paradigm. I present personal accounts to highlight the influence of two dominant Western ideologies-biomedical science and capitalism-upon women's perceptions of their breast milk.