Breastfeeding Discourses Through Thai Narratives from 1932 to 2022

Abstract

This textual analysis examines mother-related narratives published between 1932 and 2022 from education and entertainment-based media as well as from traditional and modern social media platforms, to study the discontinuity and construction of breastfeeding discourses in the media. The results show that the discourses rupture into five eras: (1) Pre-framework era: Buddhist mythologies infuse the signification of breastmilk as the product of a mother’s love and blood. The spirit of the mother runs in breastmilk, signifying a wet nurse as a mother-status. (2) Breastmilk is the food from nature: The spirit of the mother runs in the biological mother’s breastmilk, no longer from a wet nurse. (3) Breastmilk is inferior to infant formula: The power of advertisements and the knowledge of nutritional science makes infant formula become the dominant choice for middle-class mothers as it symbolizes rich and smart mothers. (4) Breastmilk is best: The knowledge of medical science with the power of authority controlled over all media platforms sees a return to breastfeeding domination, in which significated infant formula is viewed as poison and non-breastfeeding mothers are viewed as impatient and uneducated. (5) Breastmilk is ideal, but negotiable: With the influence of social media that breaks the discourses into several spheres, one group realizes and avoids the use of binary oppositions to depreciate bottle-feeding mothers, while the other objectifies breastmilk as though it is an industrialized product in which every breastmilk has the same property. The researchers found out that the breastfeeding discourses throughout the history of Thai culture represents the interaction between Buddhist mythologies and Western science, the middle-class mothers are influenced by the upper-class in every era, while capitalism and patriarchy find a way to engrave in both infant formula and breastfeeding in the form of advertising and publicity.