Patty Sotirin’s research while affiliated with Michigan Technological University and other places

We argue that a woman's decision to breast‐feed or not is overdetermined by two discursive complexes we label “the romance of the natural mother” and “the science of breast‐feeding.” These complexes incorporate socio‐historical articulations of motherhood, female sexuality, medicine, science, and advertising. Taken together, they dictate the performative possibilities of “normal” and “moral” breast‐feeding. In problematizing normal, moral articulations, we offer alternative possibilities for conceiving and performing breast‐feeding.