Breast feeding, practices and values: A study of social representations

This paper presents a study carried out on social representations of infant feeding, conducted in three steps. Firstly, a map of knowledge shared by all subjects was identified, secondly the organising principles of representation were highlighted, and finally the linkage of such differences to social dynamics was explored. A questionnaire was submitted to a sample of 484 subjects belonging to six different social categories with different degrees of proximity and knowledge about feeding: mothers, fathers, pregnant women, midwives, university students and childless adults. The results are organised in three steps: a common map of knowledge shared by all subjects, organising principles of individual differences on the topic of infant feeding, and the psychosocial anchoring of conceptions, practices and social values. On the whole, natural breast feeding is the most prominent content of knowledge, and it is always "balanced" between a double valence, modem and traditional. The principles organising such contents are linked to the daily practices with the baby and values (ideal length of breast feeding and ideal length of maternity leave) on which subjects more or less affectively involved in the practice of infant feeding take different positions.