CGBI: Breastfeeding Exclusive January 2018- Breastfeeding: New Anthropological Approaches
Breastfeeding: New Anthropological Approaches, edited by Cecilia Tomori, Aunchalee Palmquist, and EA Quinn, features contributions by bioarchaeologists, biological anthropologists, and sociocultural anthropologists. It brings together innovative scholarship that advances knowledge about breastfeeding, human lactation, and human milk.
This volume incorporates advances that have been made in the field over the last two decades, and its chapters touch upon a variety of topics including:
- human milk biochemistry and collaborative mother-infant immune systems
- collaborative mother-infant immune systems
- lay perceptions of immunology and human milk sharing
- mother-infant breastsleeping among the Beng in Côte d’Ivoire, Maya families in Guatemala, Japan, and the U.S.
- African American mothers’ perspectives on “natural” breastfeeding
- breastfeeding and body size in Pacific Island populations
- human milk sharing as moral motherwork in Central Florida, U.S.
- milk medium chain fatty acids and human evolution
- chestfeeding and gender identity in British Columbia, Canada
- mixed feeding in humans
- breastfeeding and weaning in the archaeological record
- biocultural breastfeeding and weaning in Yucatán, Mexico
- breastfeeding and employment in the Midwestern U.S.
- maternal-infant tradeoffs as a way to understand how parents make infant feeding decisions
It also includes a Foreword and Afterword written by distinguished Professors Penny van Esterik and James McKenna.
Breastfeeding: New Anthropological Approaches demonstrates the power of anthropological research to illuminate the evolutionary, historical, biological, sociocultural, and political economic complexity of breastfeeding across time and space.
This book is a valuable resource for scholars teaching about motherhood and parental care; breastfeeding, infant feeding and infant sleep; and infancy and human development. It is also relevant reading for health professionals and community breastfeeding advocates, including birth and breastfeeding supporters interested in understanding the broader contexts of human lactation and infant feeding that impact their own work.
