Read this knowing that ‘milkmother’ is just that particular author’s term for the early stage of mothering and has nothing to do with whether you’re breastfeeding or not.
So too, for women engaging in caring for their infants and young children, their bodies/selves become intertwined with those of their children. This involves what sociologists of the body describe as ‘intercorporeality’, or the blurring of boundaries between bodies. Milkmothers find themselves as embodied subjects, thinking through and with their bodies as they interact with their children. Their sense of self becomes intersubjective, or linked to that of another/s. No longer autonomous and individuated, milkmothers respond to their children in relational and interdependent ways. This blurring of subjectivity and bodies, however, can be confronting.
And..
Being a milkmother clashes with the independent, autonomous self that is so valued in post-femininist western societies. It also conflicts with the ‘Yummy Mummy’ persona that Douglas discusses in her article. The ‘Yummy Mummy’ appears to be supremely untroubled by any bodily or emotional effects of caring for her children and expresses the same autonomous self of those without children. Her body is slim, fit and attractive, not leaking fluids such as breast milk or rendered flabby from excess weight put on during pregnancy. Unlike the ‘milkmother’, therefore, this maternal archetype appears to be able to contain and discipline her body, and to individuate her sense of self and embodiment from her children. She appears serenely unchanged by the enormous physical and emotional alterations caused by pregnancy, childbirth and motherhood.
Douglas calls for more positive representations of the milkmother that goes beyond the unrealistic ‘Yummy Mummy’ persona. The emotional and bodily experiences of mothers of infants and young children, she asserts, need to be recognised and celebrated but not airbrushed. The blurring of bodily boundaries, the heightened emotions of the caring experience (including the frustration, anger and even hate that women may feel at times towards their children) and the physical changes, both reversible and irreversible, wrought by motherhood – all these should be acknowledged and accepted as integral to the experience of early motherhood.
Yes, it’s very academic but reeeeeally thought-provoking.
From This Sociological Life via @hordybumple. I am sure I saw Douglas give pretty much that exact paper at a conference a couple of years ago but my mind is a sieve right now.
blue milk 
Interesting timing – yesterday I rediscovered an amazing Sharon Olds poem about exactly this thing. Oh, I love this poem. Not posting it here because it’s very evocative, and it’s your blog, but I’ll post the link:
http://thepoetrycollection.tumblr.com/post/3724324010/new-mother
I really like this piece, bluemilk, especially because it emphasizes something I’ve been thinking to myself for a while but haven’t been able to articulate, which is the intensity to which I feel like modern women want to distance themselves from the physicality of motherhood. But I didn’t know how to talk about it without sounding like I was attacking women who didn’t want to breastfeed or something. This article provides a framework for that conversation. Part of it is living up to an idealized image of motherhood – now she can be sexy! but of course at the expense of everything else. I have this instinct that says, culturally, in the west, we are at this moment where we are deeply afraid of “blurring bodily boundaries.” (And maybe with good reason – I think this is a nuanced conversation to have, because if we lose ourselves what happens to us, especially if our selfhood is not that firmly established to begin with. Because women in a patriarchal society are taught from birth to vanish ourselves, to fold ourselves up into the smallest possible space, I sympathize with the fear that some women might have of disappearing.)
I am pregnant with number 2 at the moment and have noticed the change since my last pregnancy 5 years ago. I feel bombarded by images of these perfect pregnant stretch mark free bellies, so you have to be a yummy mummy from conception? I think I am old enough and wise enough to not be obsessed about ” getting my figure back” after the baby and I am glad I can see that this is just another pressure on women to be wearing skin tight dresses 2 weeks after they birth.
I dont feel as if I lost my sense of self as a milkmother but yes it was linked to another but I liked that! I loved that we were linked by my milk!
[…] Mummy” auf die Problematik von u. a. Postpartum-Körperdiskussionen hinweist (z. B. hier und hier). In Wien ist mir eine derartige Diskussion über ein bestimmtes als störend […]