ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author contextualises the Swiss breastfeeding culture and the construction of current recommendations regarding infants’ feeding practices by recounting the circumstances of breastfeeding’s decline and rehabilitation in Switzerland. These processes are tied with the biomedicalisation of birth and “scientifisation” of motherhood as well as the biopower exerted on mothers’ bodies and constructed as public and political bodies. Resulting from a mechanistic conception of the female body, the biomedical model of birth shaped the medical monitoring of breastfeeding, centred on the transfer of maternal milk from mother to newborn. For the last three decades, parenting practices have progressively become marked by a primary focus on risks to which children are exposed in the short- and long term and, more specifically, how “good” childcare practices can influence the prevention of these risks. Combining maternal dedication and a projection in the future, breastfeeding offers a privileged lens for observing this evolution. The author discusses in this chapter the authorities and evolving debates about breastfeeding practices and how breastfeeding mothers deal with them.
