In these times, rather than talking about maternity as an archetype of what it means to be the perfect mother in different cultures – in Mexico, for example, in some contexts it still means being a self-sacrificing mother – we talk about maternity. It would seem that today the diversity of what the experience of maternity means in different societies and contexts is so different that in inclusive terms, maternity today can offer a wide variety of nuances.
Maternity, or in essence the care, upbringing and development of a child, offers an infinity of experiences that cannot be classified today, to mothers in a single “should be”. However, the range of options on how to maternity still seems to be reserved for those people who have the privileges to be able to exercise maternity. More and more, motherhood is considered a series of experiences that are lived in a different way and not the result of a mythical image of the mother.
What continues to prevail, perhaps due to the conjunction of the biological with the social, is the essential role of the mother as a figure of essential primary feeding of humans when they are small (this regardless of the choice of exclusive, deferred or delayed breastfeeding). formula feeding).
On some occasions, caring for or ensuring the development of a person in charge is equivalent to feeding, for example, in English, the verb to nurture, which is the care of the baby’s development, is simply translated into Spanish as “nutrir”. In the same way, “to nurse” which translates as breastfeeding, can also refer to the fact of lavishing care on a sick person. Thus, care and food sometimes go by the same verb without distinction. The figure of the mother is linked to food even though she is not the one who provides food all the time, for example, to a baby.
Therefore, it is not a coincidence either, that the issue of feeding children is one of the main stress factors for mothers from the moment of their birth: from a young age, if they are going to be fed by milk formula or by breastfeeding exclusive maternal care (with the social burden that such a decision entails), then due to the introduction of food and when they are larger, due to the fact that in Mexico, in most homes, a female person is the one who manages the food of a home. Social expectations around all these facts vary from culture to culture, but it is clear that the link between food and motherhood occurs as a biological fact that is later shaped by the social context.
Depending on the context, even the way of feeding is equated with the way of maternity and with the judgments that are made. However, it is necessary to locate that although the fact of being the one in charge of this responsibility is a biological fact, the conditions around the mother are the ones that are decisive for the nutrition that the children have, for more love and desire to do things in a specific way. The context, the help and support of their close network and the economic and working conditions are what affect the way in which mothers feed, often not by their own decision, but pushed by the immediate needs of their environment. .
