Overview
- Demonstrates how news and entertainment media have provided and continue to provide a narrow definition of the breastfeeding woman, stigmatize women who do not fit this ideal, and normalize formula, while perpetuating blame for women who wean prematurely
- Reframes breastfeeding from a “new mom” dilemma to a vital concern that significantly impacts the overall health of the American public
- Solidifies media constructions as key to understanding dominant public controversies and perceptions of breastfeeding
- Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras
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Table of contents (10 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Keywords
About this book
This book centers on the role of media in shaping public perceptions of breastfeeding. Drawing from magazines, doctors’ office materials, parenting books, television, websites, and other media outlets, Katherine A. Foss explores how historical and contemporary media often undermine breastfeeding efforts with formula marketing and narrow portrayals of nursing women and their experiences. Foss argues that the media’s messages play an integral role in setting the standard of public knowledge and attitudes toward breastfeeding, as she traces shifting public perceptions of breastfeeding and their corresponding media constructions from the development of commercial formula through contemporary times. This analysis demonstrates how attributions of blame have negatively impacted public health approaches to breastfeeding, thus confronting the misperception that breastfeeding, and the failure to breastfeed, rests solely on the responsibility of an individual mother.
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Katherine A. Foss is Associate Professor of Media Studies in the School of Journalism at Middle Tennessee State University, USA. She is author of Television and Health Responsibility in an Age of Individualism (2014). Foss earned her PhD from the University of Minnesota, USA in 2008.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Breastfeeding and Media
Book Subtitle: Exploring Conflicting Discourses That Threaten Public Health
Authors: Katherine A. Foss
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56442-5
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media Studies, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-319-56441-8Published: 29 June 2017
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-319-85913-2Published: 02 August 2018
eBook ISBN: 978-3-319-56442-5Published: 14 June 2017
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XIX, 286
Number of Illustrations: 1 b/w illustrations
Topics: Media and Communication, Journalism, Popular Culture , Culture and Gender, Digital/New Media