It puts me in a difficult position – emotionally, professionally, sometimes physically – when a friend asks for my advice about breastfeeding.

This is largely because any knowledge I have on the topic is of the theoretical kind – the product of fieldwork for a PhD that explored women’s accounts of breastfeeding in London and Paris. Having studied the public policy around it, evaluated the science behind it and spoken to dozens of people about their actual experiences, I worked towards a cultural analysis of quite why infant feeding has become such a Big Deal these days.  But I have never actually done it. I feel that I know both too much, and at the same time, absolutely nothing at all. (more...)