J Med Humanit (2009) 30:143144

DOI 10.1007/s10912-009-9074-8

Mothers Milk: Breastfeeding Controversies

in American Culture
Bernice Hausman, Routledge, New York and London,
ISBN 0-415-96656-6

Bradley Lewis

Published online: 6 February 2009

# Springer Science + Business Media, LLC 2009

Bernice Hausmans Mothers Milk is one of the best and most rigorous examples of cultural
studies of medicine published to date. Professor Hausman, whose background is in
literature and science, cultural theory, and feminist scholarship, demonstrates through
example how one addresses the two most critical questions in this emerging genre of
academic scholarship: (1) How to do cultural studies of medicine? and (2) Why do cultural
studies of medicine?
With regard to the first question, Hausman shows that one does cultural studies of
medicine, not by looking at medical alone or culture alone, but by carefully tending to an
array of circulating discourses both inside and outside science that surround a particular
medical topic. In Mothers Milk, Hausman looks at media representations, medical
literature, lay self-help manuals, formula ads, evolutionary theory, La Leche literature,
feminist scholarship, and personal and ethnographic data. She carefully explores how these
circulating discourses at times synergistically reinforce each other and at other times
contradict and struggle with each other.
For the why do it? question, Hausman shows that the reason to engage in cultural
studies of medicine is to join the struggle of cultural embodiment and the politics of identity
and diversity. At times, cultural workers have avoided engaging medicine and biology
because they wished to avoid the problem of biological essentialism. As Hausman writes:
Feminist approaches to breastfeeding need not fear biological essentialism, but should use
scientific data to press for better social circumstances for all mothers, including the right to
breastfeed with appropriate support. She argues that the way to use science without falling
into essentialism is by presenting the scientific case in a self-consciously discursive
manner [that] highlights its existence as an argument rather than a set of facts. In the case
of breastfeeding, Hausman finds that the scientific argument for breastfeeding, what she
calls the scientific case for breastfeeding, is largely in favor of breastfeeding. And, most
important, even though the scientific case for breastfeeding is interwoven with ideological
perspectives on maternal sexuality and maternal authority, it is still politically useful as an

B. Lewis (*)
Gallatin School of Individualized Study, New York University, New York, NY, USA
e-mail: Bl466@nyu.edu
144 J Med Humanit (2009) 30:143144

argument in favor of breast feeding advocacy. For that reason, it should be used in the
service of political goals.
At the same time, Hausman argues cultural workers must also both engage and
challenge biomedical discourses about womens bodies and mothers responsibilities
toward their children We should know by now that technology cannot fix damaged social
relations; neither does a repudiation of technology offer us respite from the complexities of
modern living. In short, we have to engage science and technology in all its details and
cultural complexities rather than blindly accept it or blithely reject it. This is part of the
struggle over culturethe struggle over who we are and who we might become.
Throughout the book, Hausman examines why nursing a baby has become such an
ideologically charged experience in contemporary culture. She shows that the stakes are
high, and they include womens rights, a range of economic interests, and host social
biases. Breast feeding controversies, Hausman argues, reveal the social tensions around the
meaning of womens bodies and the value of maternity in US culture. Hausman has
produced a provocative and multifaceted work and an exemplar model for cultural studies
of medicine. Mothers Milk is must reading for anyone concerned with cultural politics of
womens embodiment.