In this article I explore the multiple and at times conflicting public health and
folk discourses which shape breast-feeding practices in Punata, Bolivia. I examine
why women may cease to breast-feed despite active efforts made by the healthcare
system to promote breast-feeding. Breast-feeding practices are saturated with
meaning and circumscribed by time and economic constraints as well as numerous
cultural factors. These include conceptualizations of the body, emotions and
illnesses that affect infants who are breast-fed, as well as constructions of the
mother–infant bond and attitudes about what constitutes ‘good
mothering’ and its relationship to gender and class expectations. In this
locality, the emotions of lactating women are said to find release through their
breast milk and are seen to cause illness in their breast-feeding infants. I explore
how mothers accepted, challenged or contested such views, and how they negotiated
the politics of blame that emerged regarding who was at fault for their
infant's illnesses. I demonstrate how breast-feeding is an embodied
experience intrinsically linked to ideas about motherhood and show how the
deployment of blame for these illnesses can strategically obfuscate or shed light on
the numerous social and economic constraints under which women may find themselves.
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