{"id":1610,"date":"2013-06-07T19:18:12","date_gmt":"2013-06-07T19:18:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/?p=1610"},"modified":"2025-06-10T12:29:58","modified_gmt":"2025-06-10T12:29:58","slug":"what-is-militant-lactivism-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/what-is-militant-lactivism-2","title":{"rendered":"What is “Militant Lactivism?”"},"content":{"rendered":"

More than a simple parenting choice, breastfeeding becomes a matter of feminist and activist discussion in Charlotte Faircloth’s book Militant Lactivism?<\/a> <\/em>published in March 2013 by Berghahn Books. Below, the author introduces us to the movement for public breastfeeding with an excerpt from her book.<\/p>\n

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\"\"Militant Lactivism?<\/em> is a book based on research with women in London and Paris who are members of La Leche League (LLL), an international breastfeeding support organisation. The text focuses on the accounts of a small but significant population of mothers within LLL who practise \u2018attachment parenting\u2019. This is a style of care which endorses close parent-child proximity and typically involves long-term, on-cue breastfeeding, baby \u2018wearing\u2019 and co-sleeping as part of a \u2018family bed\u2019 philosophy. It is becoming increasingly popular in both the US and the UK, and has recently received a lot of publicity following a particularly provocative TIME magazine feature, amongst other coverage<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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In the book, \u2018full-term\u2019 breastfeeding (up to eight years old in the examples here, though typically for around three to four years) is used as a case study to explore what has been termed an \u2018intensification\u2019 of mothering. In this new era of mothering, women are expected to do much more for their children than might once have been the case. Beyond straightforward \u2018child-rearing,\u2019 today\u2019s ideal mothering is a labour intensive, emotionally absorbing and personally fulfilling activity. This exacerbates a cultural contradiction between the worlds of work and home, increasing the antagonism around women\u2019s decisions to participate, or not, in these two spheres. In particular, then, the book looks at how this style of mothering has become very central to women\u2019s identities, with some women styling themselves as (or being seen by others as) \u2018militant lactivists\u2019 and evangelising about the benefits of full-term breastfeeding and attachment parenting. In this excerpt, I discuss some of the problems with this label. What\u2019s more \u2013 as an early \u2018attachment baby\u2019 \u2013 I highlight how hard it is to research and write about a subject which for so long had seemed \u2018natural\u2019 and self-evident.
\nExcerpt [from the Introduction]:<\/strong>
\nA note on the title is in order. Rather than being a statement about these mothers being \u2018militant lactivists\u2019, it is intended as a question seeking to understand why, how and with what implications such a label is used. As one attachment mother indicated, when it is used, \u2018it\u2019s fun because it\u2019s ironic. When others use it, it\u2019s not funny at all. It\u2019s insulting, because it ascribes a aggressive, combative maliciousness to our behaviour that doesn\u2019t exist.\u2019
\nMy own biography, of course, also plays a part in this account. One of the most frequent questions I am asked about the research is why I was interested in this subject at all, particularly as a woman without children. Much of my interest is shaped by my own mother, who happily describes herself \u2013 around the time that she gave birth to me, at least \u2013 as a \u2018clog-and-dungaree wearing hippy\u2019. I was born at home, on a farm, and breastfed for nearly a year, which in 1982 was even more unusual than it might be now. My mother was a National Childbirth Trust educator, we used homeopathy to treat ailments in childhood, and many of my \u2018routine\u2019 vaccinations were delayed or avoided all together. Attachment parenting (and the associated values and practices) comes easily to me as I imagine how my own mothering might look.
\nWriting about the research has therefore inevitably been an exercise in writing about the self. Readers will no doubt recognise the tension inherent in anthropology, which sees researchers both participating in and objectifying social life. The process of reflection and analysis could sometimes be painful \u2013 I was forced to question things that had for so long seemed so straightforward (and that retain an \u2018affective\u2019 hold over me, even now). Issues faced by feminists, and feminism, became salient; Bobel\u2019s phrase \u2018bounded liberation\u2019 (2001) went some way towards describing the intersections of breastfeeding and \u2018empowerment\u2019 but also, as I discuss in the penultimate chapter, felt quite one-dimensional and problematic.
\nOther blogs by Charlotte about her work:<\/p>\n

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Blog 1: On the way parenting practices get moralised. Faircloth, C. 2012. \u2018Are you Mom Enough? Putting parenting practices under the microscope\u2019 Independent Blogs 18th May 2012 http:\/\/blogs.independent.co.uk\/2012\/05\/18\/are-you-mom-enough-putting-parenting-choices-under-the-microscope\/<\/a><\/p>\n

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Blog 2: On being a friend as well as a researcher. Faircloth, C. 2011. \u2018Positioning: Breastfeeding and friendship\u2019 The Junket Issue 1 October 2011: http:\/\/thejunket.org\/2011\/10\/issue-one\/positioning\/<\/a><\/p>\n

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Blog 3: On a comparison with France. Faircloth, C. 2010. \u2018The trials and tribulations of the \u2018perfect mother\u2019.\u2019 The spiked Review of Books. Issue 33. (March). http:\/\/www.spiked-online.com\/index.php\/site\/reviewofbooks_article\/8351\/<\/a><\/p>\n

_______________________________<\/p>\n

Charlotte Faircloth\u00a0<\/strong>is a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellow with the Centre for Parenting Culture Studies in the School of Sociology, Social Policy and Sociological Research at the University of Kent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

More than a simple parenting choice, breastfeeding becomes a matter of feminist and activist discussion in Charlotte Faircloth’s book Militant Lactivism? published in March 2013 by Berghahn Books. Below, the author introduces us to the movement for public breastfeeding with an excerpt from her book.   Militant Lactivism? is a book based on research with… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1665,1726,280],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1610"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1610"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1610\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21169,"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1610\/revisions\/21169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}