June 14th 2017
The two questions I am most frequently asked at antenatal appointments are: did I have ‘normal’ deliveries with my first two children and did I breast-feed them? When I can answer both questions in the affirmative, I am told that I am in a low risk category and should be able to avail of early release from hospital if I so wish. The engagement becomes pleasant and relaxed and, in spite of myself, I feel like I have just received a gold star for my schoolwork. I wonder if I would feel a sense of failure if I had had Caesarean sections or if I had bottle-fed my children. I was not breastfed and neither was my husband.
We were born into a generation and country of formula feeding. Breastfeeding was an uncertain and confusing experience for me, with family unable and, often unwilling, to offer support. In the early days of motherhood I would wince with pain as the baby latched on. I persisted because of the moments of
oneness I felt with my children and the sense of absolute empowerment that came from knowing my body could nurture their tiny bodies.
If pregnant bodies are subjected to medical and social scrutiny, then so too are breastfeeding bodies. Within medical discourse, breastfeeding has obtained a status of moral imperative that is inextricably linked to the conception of ‘good mothering’ (Marshall, Godfrey & Renfew 2007:
2147). Hird describes breast milk as ‘white blood’ where the breast and mouth act as portals for the mobile exchange of immunizing agents, imprinting one body on the other (2007: 13). Breastfeeding implies abun-dant corporeal generosity such are the nutritional and emotional benefits suggested in medical discourse. Teenage mothers are unlikely to be able to ignore the prevalence of posters and pamphlets on breastfeeding to be found in medical waiting areas and antenatal information packs. These detail the benefits of breast milk for babies’ development, such as coun-teracting infection, bacteria and allergies. According to Sipsma, Jones and Cole-Lewis (2015), there are benefits to be derived for the teenage mother also, such as economic affordability, weight loss, maternal-infant bonding and reduced risk of post-natal depression. However, breastfeeding is not an inconsequential exchange for teenage mothers. Through breastfeeding, teenage mothers utilize protein and other nutrients, normally reserved for their own physical development, in order to provide for their baby (Stadtlander 2015). Hird’s (2007) interpretation of breastfeeding as an ongoing process of gifting without calculable returns fails to incorporate the very specific tensions faced by teen mothers, who must share nutrients reserved for their own development with their baby. Breastfeeding can prolong a mother’s feeling of her body not quite being her own (Fox &
Neiterman 2015). Through breastfeeding, a mother continues to gift her body to her baby, but for some, they may simply need to get their body back.
Cultural and familial support for breastfeeding is much more evident in some parts of the world than in others. Despite breastfeeding promo-tional campaigns, encounters with actual women breastfeeding are rare in some Western countries (Marshall et al. 2007). In these contexts teenage mothers are much less likely to initiate breastfeeding than older mothers, and when they do they are less likely to sustain breastfeeding (Hunter,
Magill-Cuerden & McCourt 2015; Sipsma et al. 2007). In Ireland breast-feeding rates in general are amongst the lowest in the developed world.
At 46.3 per cent, breastfeeding initiation in Ireland lags far behind other developed countries, where initiation rates are 90 per cent in Australia, 81 per cent in the UK and 79 per cent in the US (HSE 2016). Breastfeeding rates in Ireland have improved over the last two decades, but rather than being nationally representative, figures are most likely skewed by higher breastfeeding initiation rates amongst immigrant mothers (84.2 per cent) (Nolan & Layte 2014). Young mothers with a low socio-economic status and without a third-level qualification continue to be the group least likely to initiate or continue breastfeeding in the Irish context (Gallagher, Begley &
Clarke 2016; McGorrian, Shortt, Doyle, Kilroe & Kelleher 2010). This raises questions about the social and personal factors that impact on breastfeed-ing rates in Ireland, particularly amongst teen mothers.
Breastfeeding as the default feeding strategy is very publicly endorsed, yet practical support for breastfeeding is more problematic. Stadtlander (2015) suggests that teenage mothers want to do what is best for their babies but often lack specific knowledge and confidence to initiate and continue breastfeeding. As noted previously, the medicalization of pregnancy can leave a mother feeling detached from her growing body, with little sense of ownership over her own physical being or that of her baby. Arguably, the methodical medical management of birthing can reinforce this lack of ownership. The young women in Hunter et al.’s study (2015) labelled the labour ward as a disempowering space. They described feeling tired, dazed, scared, in pain, overwhelmed and utterly incapacitated as they passively lay while medical staff delivered the baby, stitched vaginal tears and dressed the baby. Many described the initiation of breastfeeding as ‘something that was done to them, rather than something they were helped to do themselves’
(Hunter et al. 2015: 51). Routinized medical procedures left the teenage mothers feeling like physical objects rather than self-determining individu-als (ibid.). If mothers are to engage confidently in the bodily exchange that is breastfeeding, then surely this requires a process of empowerment. It is easy to problematize teenage mothers as reluctant breastfeeders, yet to allow the medical and social contradictions around breastfeeding to remain uncritiqued. On the one hand, expectant mothers are bombarded by the
alignment of breastfeeding with good mothering, but on the other hand, post-natal narratives frequently depict unsupportive and disempowering hospital environments. The young mothers in Noble-Carr and Bell’s (2012) work described the invasive and unhelpful contributions they had received from hospital staff. One participant explained how ‘they were pushing and hurting my breasts and I was like “for the love of God, just stop!”’ (ibid. 35).
Another explained how they were ‘pulling and tugging on me, trying to get the milk out, and I’m like “There is no milk. Just let me have a bottle”’
(ibid.). The teen mothers discussed how they just wanted the midwives to get their hand off their breasts. Most women would probably feel some level of discomfort with their breasts being handled and manipulated, but for teenagers, who are already acutely body conscious, this experience is all the more intrusive and disconcerting. In general, discomfort with breast exposure and associated embarrassment are critical factors in teen moth-ers’ feeding decisions (Stadtlander 2015; Ineichen, Pierce & Lawrenson 1997). Embarrassment is compounded in contexts such as Ireland where breastfeeding women are invisible, implying that exposing breasts is shame-ful, except for private sexual encounters. For Hickey-Moody, ‘the mouth-sucking-infant-nipple machine deterritorializes capitalist economies of the body in which the woman’s breast is a sexual commodity’ (2013: 279).
Therefore, breastfeeding potentially symbolizes a conflictual assemblage of self for the teen mother where the corporeal generosity of giving physi-cally to one’s baby is interrupted by corporeal consciousness that threatens to take socially from oneself.
Conclusion
Pregnancy as a transformative embodied event is undisputed. It transforms both the outer surface and inner materiality of the female body. Therefore the lack of empirical research on teenage girls’ lived experiences of the embodied transformations of pregnancy is quite puzzling. Teenage preg-nancy symbolizes an unexpected collapse of the developmental categories
of ‘girl’ and ‘woman’, and for some this sudden transformation from girl to woman is most problematic. However, Hickey-Moody’s (2013) analysis of the Deleuzian girl proposes that one does not make a defined transition from girl to woman, but zigzags backwards and forwards across time, form-ing experiential assemblages of ‘girl’ and ‘woman’. Through pregnancy, one does not leave girlhood to become a women because, for Deleuze, these are not distinct categories. Sax (2010) also suggests that an overemphasis on pregnancy as an age bound experience rather than a body bound experi-ence has neglected detailed explorations of how all women be and become through pregnancy. Coleman (2008) uses the notion of ‘becoming’ as her point of departure for explaining how bodies come to be within particular circumstances. Coleman’s work is useful for helping us to understand how teenage mothers might come to experience the physical, cognitive and emotional demands of both pregnancy and adolescence. She draws on Deleuze to suggest that bodies are not bounded subjects that are separate from the circumstances they encounter. A body in this instance is a rela-tional becoming. The relations between bodies and their situations and surroundings result in specific positive or negative effects and this can limit or enhance the becoming of bodies, but it does not stall it. For Coleman,
‘a body does not stop becoming because it is unhappy, depressed or angry’
(2008: 175). Therefore the pregnant body becomes through a process of engagement between the body and numerous other forces (Coffey 2013).
Even if the teenage girl struggles with the demands of providing for her growing child and concerns over weight management, self-consciousness or pregnancy concealment, her body continues to become in the midst of these struggles. Here the pregnant teenage body is essentially an assemblage of contradictions and opportunities.
Note
Research conducted by Professional Master of Education students Mikaela Mahon and Carly Tyrrell was referenced in this chapter. I would like to acknowledge their contribution.
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4 Teen Mothering in the United States: Fertile Ground for Shifting the Paradigm
abstract
Teen mothering was identified as a social and public health problem in the United States (US) beginning in the late 1970s, as advocacy groups, policymakers and researchers responded with alarm to the rise in ‘unwed’ teen pregnancies and births. Alarm intensified as study after study suggested that an early birth stunts or derails the future of mother and child. Although this characterization was problematic from the start, an alarmist paradigm remains entrenched in professional and policy discourse. The cumulative evidence from third generation studies and qualitative research calls for a paradigm shift that recognizes teen mothers’ strengths and resilience and ties their vulnerabilities to childhood adversi-ties and longstanding disadvantage.