ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the lives of women and their babies in the intimate reciprocity of breastfeeding. It explores relationships between the breastfeeding mother and her child through the 24 hours, and the seasonal variations—linked with agricultural work and the harvest, or with arid and rainy seasons, for example—that exist in some societies. There are many aspects of breastfeeding that need to be explored further. Most important of these is the meaning that breastfeeding has for mothers in each society and each culture within a society. In breastfeeding, as in the conduct of childbirth, the tyranny of clock-watching has intruded on the spontaneous physiological rhythms. Breastfeeding avoidance is frequently part of a system of values that stresses the conjugal relationship at the expense of the mother–baby relationship, and that puts priority on the sexual privileges of men, and the use of a woman to display men's status and wealth.
