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Children, Food and Identity in Everyday Life pp 13–34Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

‘It Depends What You Mean by Feeding “on Demand”’: Mothers’ Accounts of Babies’ Agency in Infant-Feeding Relationships

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Part of the book series: Studies in Childhood and Youth ((SCY))

Abstract

This chapter focuses on how mothers construct, understand, and accommodate, their babies’ agency within feeding relationships. In particular, it explores mothers’ responses to feeding cues in early infancy and the implications of babies’ agency in everyday consumption routines. To this end, we discuss findings from our analysis of interviews conducted during 2006–2008 with 60 mothers from a variety of social and family backgrounds living in a large city in the north of England, some of whom were also managing diabetes or were ‘obese’. Half of our participants were established mothers,1 whilst the remainder, who were recruited in late pregnancy and followed through the first year of motherhood, were expecting their first baby.

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Authors
  1. Julia Keenan
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  2. Helen Stapleton
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Sheffield, UK

    Allison James

  2. University of Trondheim, Norway

    Anne Trine Kjørholt  & Vebjørg Tingstad  & 

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© 2009 Julia Keenan, Helen Stapleton

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Keenan, J., Stapleton, H. (2009). ‘It Depends What You Mean by Feeding “on Demand”’: Mothers’ Accounts of Babies’ Agency in Infant-Feeding Relationships. In: James, A., Kjørholt, A.T., Tingstad, V. (eds) Children, Food and Identity in Everyday Life. Studies in Childhood and Youth. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230244979_2

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