Getting the Green Light: Experiences of Icelandic Mothers Struggling with Breastfeeding

Abstract

The World Health Organization recommends exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months of life, with continued breastfeeding up to two years of age or beyond. This policy has been adopted by the Nordic countries, including Iceland, where there has been an upward trend towards higher breastfeeding rates and duration. The high breastfeeding rates in Iceland indicate that the idea that all women should breastfeed is culturally very strong. Exclusive breastfeeding is constructed as a pillar of successful bonding and absolutely paramount when it comes to promoting the close primary relationship between mother and child. Previous research on breastfeeding from a socio-cultural point of view remains very much rooted in an Anglo-American context and has mostly been conducted in countries where breastfeeding rates remain relatively low and the cultural context of breastfeeding similar. This paper addresses that particular knowledge gap by making visible the identity work that Icelandic mothers perform in order to be able to construct themselves as “good” responsible mothers and how dominant biomedical discourses on infant feeding and ‘good mothering’ discursively position women as powerless and unable to make decisions on breastfeeding cessation. The reaction that they experience from their immediate surroundings indicates that their ‘failures’ in breastfeeding can rarely be constructed as anything other than a personal shortcoming. Whilst the surveillance that they come to expect from other mothers and the general public results in them having to account for their ‘lack’ of breastfeeding in order to avert the hostile gaze of others.