Thursday’s airing of “The State of Things” with Frank Stasio on NPR covered Breastfeeding and Feminism.
Specifically, the show addressed the issues women face when breastfeeding and returning to work. Below is the summary of the show from the NPR website and the link to the audio file.
State of Things-Breastfeeding and Feminism
A provision in the new health care legislation aims to make it easier for new mothers to return to work and continue to nurse their babies. The provision revives a long-simmering debate in the field of feminist scholarship about the impact of breastfeeding on the status of women. Some say it shackles women to a life of domesticity, some say it is the personal duty of a “good” mother and others suggest both arguments are short-sighted. Host Frank Stasio discusses how something so personal became so political with: Paige Hall Smith, professor and director of the Center for Women’s Health and Wellness at UNC-Greensboro; Alison Stuebe, Maternal-Fetal Medicine physician and professor at UNC-Chapel Hill; Jackie Wolf, professor and chair of the Department of Social Medicine at Ohio University; Bernice Hausman, professor of English at Virginia Tech; Beth Messersmith, member of Triangle chapter of MomsRising.org; and Jeannine Sato, director of Durham Connects.