The politics of breastfeeding: a feminist analysis of breastfeeding policies and promotion in Nigeria

TL;DR

This paper analyzes how breastfeeding policies in Nigeria overlook the real-life challenges mothers face, often reinforcing gender inequality.

Contribution

The paper introduces a feminist and Ubuntu-informed critique of breastfeeding policies, highlighting contradictions between global ideals and local realities.

Findings

Global and Nigerian breastfeeding policies assume a universal positive experience, ignoring maternal challenges.

Exclusive breastfeeding is framed as ideal, marginalizing the difficulties many mothers encounter.

Structural gaps like poor social amenities and insufficient maternity leave reinforce gender inequalities.

Abstract

Since the 1990s, global health policies have prescribed breastfeeding as an ideal and primarily positive practice essential to child survival and maternal health. In Nigeria, infant feeding policies have largely drawn on these global frameworks in promoting exclusive breastfeeding as a strategy against infant mortality.

Grounded in feminist ethics of care and the Ubuntu philosophy, this critique examines the contradictions between breastfeeding policies and maternal realities in Nigeria. The analysis identified the following: (1) a universalist approach in global and Nigerian breastfeeding policies that assumes breastfeeding is ideal and positively experienced by most mothers. (2) policies place breastfeeding at the top of the invisible hierarchy of infant feeding and pathologize quotidian maternal experiences by framing exclusive breastfeeding as ideal, and positive in most cases thereby marginalizing the challenges and costs many mothers face. (3) unaddressed gaps between policy directives and structural conditions in Nigeria such as underdeveloped social amenities, insufficient maternity leave laws and cultural realities, reinforce gender inequalities, erode maternal autonomy and influence breastfeeding practices.

The gaps between breastfeeding policies and maternal realities in Nigeria highlight the need for policies discourse that are grounded in considering the challenges mothers face in breastfeeding. The review suggests ways to move beyond frameworks that treat infant care as solely a mother’s responsibility by emphasizing the essential role of support in infant care.

Not applicable N/A.