Infant Feeding in Women’s Lives

Abstract

I asked women who had babies between 1920 and 1980 in a particular part of one city in the North of England to tell me about their experience. I did not treat their accounts as ‘true’ in some objective sense. Rather, I saw them as ‘stories’ in the sense of accounts arising from complex combinations of experience, understanding, reflection and discussion. There were various layers in the production of these stories. My interviews were interventions into a set of memories, beliefs, thoughts and feelings. The stories which were told were affected by: the accuracy of each woman’s memories; whether and how she has processed and understood her own experience; how much opportunity she has had, or currently has in her life for thinking about her own experience and feelings; what kind of use she wishes to make of the interview — social chat, reassurance, learning, influencing change; how she perceives my intentions and wishes; whether the interview provokes a tidy response to an area of life now finished or locks into complex ‘unfinished business’ in the sense of uneasy or uncomfortable feelings. My hearing and recording of the stories is also important; my biography and my perspective as a feminist affects what I hear.