Rating: 
Summary: Excellent examination of the diversity of US motherhood.
Review: At the Breast is sociology at its best-- we think of breastfeeding as "natural" but of course it is social and cultural too. Blum's discussion of how race and class shape women's attitudes toward breast feeding--and their chances of success with it -- was a revelation to me. If you read this book, you'll think twice before casually assuming that women who don't breastfeed are selfish, bad moms, lazy, ignorant etc etc. I can't recommend this book highly enough!
Rating:
Summary: Excellent!
Review: At the Breast is sociology at its best-- we think of breastfeeding as "natural" but of course it is social and cultural too. Blum's discussion of how race and class shape women's attitudes toward breast feeding--and their chances of success with it -- was a revelation to me. If you read this book, you'll think twice before casually assuming that women who don't breastfeed are selfish, bad moms, lazy, ignorant etc etc. I can't recommend this book highly enough!
Rating:
Summary: Excellent examination of the diversity of US motherhood.
Review: Blum has written an excellent book exploring the diversity of US women's experiences of motherhood, particularly as they revolve around breastfeeding. In the contemporary US, Blum argues, breastfeeding is the "measure of the mother." The author takes special care to discuss the diversity of women's breastfeeding experiences in relation to race and class. Drawing from historical experience as well as contemporary interviews, Blum finds that white, married middle-class mothers--with their greater resources and respectability--are more likely to experience breastfeeding as enjoyable and rewarding as compared to white and African-American working class mothers. Furthermore, Blum is rightly suspicious with medical "facts" on breastfeeding and is concerned to unearth how "knowledge" of breastfeeding is related to power relations. Readers will find this an exceptionally well-researched and well-written book, rich with insights about motherhood in our "postfeminist" era.
Rating: 
Summary: A few nuggets in an otherwise sorry treatment of the subject
Review: I bought this book prepared to be fascinated. I was not disappointed. The author addresses some truly fascinating topics of how we view motherhood and breastfeeding in the United States. She makes some good points.There were, however, so many problems with this book that it really overshadowed what the author did well. An interesting contrast is shown between the African American mothers and Caucasian American mothers that she interviewed for this book. One group feeling guilty about not breastfeeding and using public assistance, the other group apparently feeling no guilt about not breastfeeding and expressing a sense of entitlement to public assistance programs. Rather than expounding upon this fascinating subject of differing emotional perspectives on breastfeeding, the author serves up her thinly veiled personal political views. Worse, she openly expresses disrespect for one of the mothers that she interviewed, denoting in the book how she "kept the upper hand" in the interview. While one could argue that an interviewer "needs" to stay in control of the interview, there is absolutely no reason to show such public rudeness to someone who freely gave of their time to help the author with her research. The author makes a conversation about the medical community pushing mothers into guilt about not breastfeeding, based upon ONE interveiw. Without even going into the lack of coverage of varying medical attitudes about breastfeeding in different regions of the United States, it has to be stated that making any such statement based upon just one statement is not only poor judgement, but simply ridiculous. Again the author takes a large issue and over-simplifies it for the convenience of her book. Ms. Blum's contradictory treatment of the importance of breastfeeding is infuriating. With one hand she states her belief in the benefits of breastfeeding, with the other she marginalizes its importance, as if the decision were no more important than whether to wear blue jeans of khakis. If you want a very slim beginning to this subject go ahead and read the book. Please, though, borrow it rather than buy it and reward the author for such a poor job.
Rating:
Summary: A few nuggets in an otherwise sorry treatment of the subject
Review: I bought this book prepared to be fascinated. I was not disappointed. The author addresses some truly fascinating topics of how we view motherhood and breastfeeding in the United States. She makes some good points. There were, however, so many problems with this book that it really overshadowed what the author did well. An interesting contrast is shown between the African American mothers and Caucasian American mothers that she interviewed for this book. One group feeling guilty about not breastfeeding and using public assistance, the other group apparently feeling no guilt about not breastfeeding and expressing a sense of entitlement to public assistance programs. Rather than expounding upon this fascinating subject of differing emotional perspectives on breastfeeding, the author serves up her thinly veiled personal political views. Worse, she openly expresses disrespect for one of the mothers that she interviewed, denoting in the book how she "kept the upper hand" in the interview. While one could argue that an interviewer "needs" to stay in control of the interview, there is absolutely no reason to show such public rudeness to someone who freely gave of their time to help the author with her research. The author makes a conversation about the medical community pushing mothers into guilt about not breastfeeding, based upon ONE interveiw. Without even going into the lack of coverage of varying medical attitudes about breastfeeding in different regions of the United States, it has to be stated that making any such statement based upon just one statement is not only poor judgement, but simply ridiculous. Again the author takes a large issue and over-simplifies it for the convenience of her book. Ms. Blum's contradictory treatment of the importance of breastfeeding is infuriating. With one hand she states her belief in the benefits of breastfeeding, with the other she marginalizes its importance, as if the decision were no more important than whether to wear blue jeans of khakis. If you want a very slim beginning to this subject go ahead and read the book. Please, though, borrow it rather than buy it and reward the author for such a poor job.
Rating:
Summary: one more book that devalues and misrepresents breastfeeding
Review: I feel sad that mothers-to be would find this book liberating.It does not give an accurate account of the breastfeeding experience and address THE NEEDS OF BABIES AND YOUNG CHILDREN-I am ragged from the acccounts of women demanding the right to "keep their breasts to themselves, keep their pre-baby work lives,sex lives,sleeping lives and bash those that are bucking faulty cultural values as holier than thou- when simply their priorities and expectations are in check with the biology of our infants.This is an investment-not a sacrifice.Furthermore,the portrayal of La leche league is narrow, disrespectful and missrepresentative.I also found the tales of sexual stimulation while nursing to further elevate the ignornce and taboo in this area- sexual abuse is much more likely outside of the family bed and nursing relationship.Ms. Blum needs to study across cultures to get an accurate representation of breastfeeding.Of course, she is on the right track in her book if it is from the perspective of people who are ambivelant about the resposibilities of mothering. I think I will get to work on my book "IF YOU DON'T WANT TO BE A MOM THEN BUY A DOG." Please buy books related to attachment parenting for accurate info "Our Babies Ourselves" by Meredith Small and Katie A.Granju's "Attachment Parenting......" Thanks. Ourinfo......
Rating:
Summary: Not "sociology at its best"
Review: I found this book fascinating ... and maddening. Blum makes some interesting, on-target observations, yet -- despite her awareness that "absences are presences" -- she shapes her research by what she fails to look at. In particular, I was shocked to realize she'd spoken to ONE health care practitioner, even though she speaks authoritatively about "the medical community" pressuring women to breastfeed. This is NOT happening in the real world, where women are discouraged from breastfeeding or given subversive advice based on opinions, not medical research. She "systematically read the various pronouncements of the AAP" and other pieces, then supplemented this with ONE measly interview. Thus she misses learning that the pronouncements of the AAP don't have a thing to do with real doctors and nurses in the real world ... this despite the fact that her own interviews turn up scores of examples of women who got inane advice from doctors and hospital personnel -- advice that destroyed their breastfeeding relationships. Why is this? Because medical schools don't deem breastfeeding important enough to teach. Because breastfeeding is not deemed any HCP's responsibility, and it slips through the cracks. Because HCPs, like everyone, want others to make the decisions they've made. Because HCPs get gifts, free formula, and misinformation from the ubiquitous formula representatives. Blum should read the March 1999 Pediatrics article describing a survey of Fellows of the AAP. This is by no means groundbreaking; past studies have shown similar ignorance in the medical community. These doctors know as much as the average Joe or Jane on the street about breastfeeding, yet they feel confident giving advice -- advice that limits women's choices and robs them of their power. THIS is a feminist issue. This is, to use Robert Mendelsohn's term, MalePractice. How on earth could Blum have missed this point when the evidence is everywhere -- and she herself turned up so much of it? There's a lot of misinformation in this book that could easily have been remedied by research (including Blum's pronouncements on La Leche League, a worldwide organization, based on one geographical area), and I'm disappointed that Blum didn't know better (or perhaps she did, but was too eager to prove her theories and justify her admitted ambivalence about breastfeeding). I'm especially disappointed because this work had so much potential and still contains so many excellent points. And I'm disappointed because, as Katie Allison Granju points out in a previous review, Blum has somehow managed to miss many of the feminist issues tied up in breastfeeding. Blum has let her work be limited by her own experiences -- and she seems too smart for this. :-(
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating read! Superb feminist scholarship!
Review: Linda Blum reveals the complexity and diversity of American motherhood and American women's experiences with (or refrain from) breastfeeding in this scholarly, yet enjoyable read. At the Breast highlights the potential for breastfeeding to be an "empowering, radical feminist" act (despite the contrary interpretation in Granju's review), a tool for social and state control AND many things inbetween. A must read for people interested in feminist research and discussions of the body and particularly, how women's bodies are entangled with state power and race and class relations in the United States. Superb!
Rating: 
Summary: Book should be titled "Feminist Interviews On Breasfeeding"
Review: Ms. Blum in the beginning of her book writes a simple question that is also the pretext for this review : So why Another Feminist Writing on Motherhood? Which really is more what the book should be titled. Ms. Blum by no means dicusses in a fair light all of the ideologies of breastfeeding in the contemporary united states, and nor does she discuss all of the pertinent ideologies. She did interview a few women on how they felt and thought about breastfeeding. This was good, but not enough to sustain the book. On the premise of its title, I expected much more. As a woman in today's world I am interested in how other women view motherhood and breastfeeding. I understand that not all women can breastfeed their children because they have to work. I was hoping that this book would make some progress between academic, taken for granted feminism and womanhood. That she would talk about how she actually read Mothering in her research or a book by Elizabeth Davis, a famous midwife who's written a great feminist book herself that embraces real matriarchy but Ms. Blum did not. I hoped to see a tale told from both sides, how the academic feminist takes time out to see what we out here have accomplished, a fair fight, so to speak, but this is not one. Blum shows the slant which she wrote the book at when she writes, "Adrienne Rich wrote that it was motherhood as an institution which imposed the patriarchal entrapment. "
Blum not only ignores the back to our roots women-strength of mothers today who choose the way of breastfeeding as a good, right choice, she puts it down. This is a major problem with so called feminism today: not recognizing that by trying so hard to prove we can do everything men can, and in the same way men do it, we actually lose out on ourselves, and become afraid of our own womanhood. Indeed, Blum seems to leave out the other part of what Adrienne Rich wrote concerning women and the danger of trying so hard to prove themselves as good as men that instead of being realized for their worth on an individual basis on their own individual terms of womanhood, that women would fall into the trap of following all that was bad about patriarchy and then, too fall into the trap of doing all the things that have not helped men themselves over the centuries, in her essay "When We Dead Awaken." In this sense, Ms. Blum and her book suffer, for perhaps she is trying to be "real" like Studs Terkel, but her constant righteous-academic, Ayn Rand-selfishness-is-good persona comes through obviously and unsuccessfully during her interviews with "real moms." As someone who has seen both sides of the proverbial coin, I found this book lacking in that she did not represent them both: the real feminism of mothers who do choose to breastfeed, women who do make a difference, women who've put themselves on the line when it comes to having the right to breastfeed in public, women who fought for the right to pump breastmilk at work, who took on Nestle, and women who prefer to not. Ms. Blum completely ignores all the work of organizations such as Mothering, La Leche League, Doulas, Midwives and many, many more. While Ms. Blum is writing her thesis and getting her degrees, and rightly expecting credit for them, it is utterly wrong to not give credit to these other organizations. These are the organizations and people who've been fighting organizations -- the medical and pharmaceutical industries, television, and public institutions such as schools. They've been right there, sweating it out. Why doesn't Ms. Blum give these organizations some feminist credit?
They've certainly been making real progress. What happens instead, is Ms. Blum interviews women and uses them to further what are basically, in a feminist view, overall patriarchal institutions. Read this book to find out one more reason why academic feminism - feminism that is content to say it is the ever the harbinger while it looks mainly to the past is stagnant and complacent, in comparison with the real triumphs of women and not to the present accomplishments of organizations that really are run by women -- who are in the real world making a difference today. These women, shockingly, can be living at home doing, as we say, "motherwork", making a difference. Many women who breastfeed have read, believe me, Adrienne Rich and many other feminist texts. They are educated women. Ms. Blum has chosen for the large part to ignore such women, women who are educated and ENJOY breastfeeding. By not showing al the points of view, she does not live up to her title. I strongly suggest reading, instead, on the issues of breastfeeding and motherhood, Milk, Money and Madness, by Naomi Baumslaug, The Politics of Breastfeeding by Gabrielle Palmer, The Thinking Woman's Guide to a Better Birth anything by Henci Goer, picking up an issue of Mothering magazine (Ms. but better, if you will, for moms)or Immaculate Deception II by Suzanne Arms, and Birthing from Within by Pam England. Those are real eye-openers, while Ms. Blum's book covers what those who read those books and that magazine, and ones like them already know!
Rating: 
Summary: Great book for feminist perspective
Review: This book brought out so many emotions from me. Not only am I a breastfeeding mom, in August 2000 I will be a receiving a BA in Women's Studies. I used this book as part of an independent research project that I did with one of my professors in the department. The research entailed looking at breastfeeding from a feminist perspective. Blum does have some really great key points that I had not considered when critically analyzing infant feeding decisions. Race and class are definitely issues that can affect breastfeeding initiative. She also seems to show that health professionals actively promote breastfeeding. However, I am also doing an internship at a major hospital which does over 6500 births a year, and I can tell you that the health professionals are definitely lacking in the promotion of breastfeeding. Grassroots efforts are being done by the Lactation Consutlants on staff and others involved in this area however the resistance is still very high from Dr's and nurses. I realize some who read this book may not understand why she reiterated all the negative reasons why women continue not to breastfeed, however this is reality. Our society is NOT as breastfeeding friendly as we think we are. I agree, as a breastfeeding mom, that she did not really address the breastfeeding experience as well as she could have. But overall, I think this is a great book to get a good synopsis of feminist issues in relation to breastfeeding. **sidenote** As a result of this independent research my professor is using this as part of the required reading for her Body Politics graduate level class in the Women's Studies Department.
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