Breastfeeding today means thinking about the future: the place of women in contemporary breastfeeding-promotion discourses
Abstract
Introduction: The Brazilian Ministry of Health has intensified the production of educational materials on breastfeeding for professionals and the general population in the last two decades. Objective: Assessing the recent materials developed to promote and guide breastfeeding; identifying similarities and differences between discourses targeting pregnant and lactating women, as well as health professionals directly related to propositions for women. Methods: The enunciation theory by Émille Benveniste was the adopted theoretical-methodological basis. According to this theory, the speaker is not the one who constitutes itself as the speaker, but as the one who “implants the other before itself”. Results: Although the oneself or subject of a discourse enunciation (Ministry of Health) remains in place, there are significant distinctions in the approach towards women. Manuals available for health professionals commonly represent women as individuals endowed with the subjectivity and protagonism of breastfeeding. Overall, materials targeting women are objective, they present normative language and become instruments of child health policies. Conclusion: Official discourses act as “absolute discourse”, as mentioned by Eliseo Verón. In other words, they act as the one that brings the illusion of truth by hiding the production of social conditions. Therefore, there is the need of understanding how the spoken object is constituted in these discourses and of revealing how these discourses construct subject positions and power relationships among State, mothers and society.
Downloads
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
The Revista Brasileira de Pesquisa em Saúde (RBPS) adopts the CC BY 4.0 license, which means that authors retain the copyright of the works they submit to the journal. Authors are responsible for declaring that their contribution is an original manuscript, that it has not been previously published, and that it is not under simultaneous review by another scientific journal. Upon submitting the manuscript, authors grant RBPS the exclusive right of first publication, subject to peer review.
Authors are permitted to enter into additional contracts for the non-exclusive distribution of the version published by RBPS (for example, in institutional repositories or as a book chapter), provided that due acknowledgment of authorship and of initial publication by RBPS is given. Authors are also encouraged to make their work available online (for example, in institutional repositories or on their personal pages) after its initial publication in the journal, with due acknowledgment of authorship and of the original publication by RBPS.
Accordingly, under the CC BY 4.0 license, readers have the right to:
- Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format for any purpose, even commercially;
- Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially.
The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms. Under the following terms:
- Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
- No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.
