Narratives of maternal emotions: Opening dialogue on working and breastfeeding in multicultural healthcare and working environments

Abstract

As the voice of medicine continually propagates the ‚breast is best’ discourse worldwide, in this article we lend our ears to the voices of mothers who struggle to breastfeed after returning to work. We analyze online discussions on the topic of Working and breastfeeding on forums from France, Sweden, and the United States of America. The paper is organized around two strands of research aiming at a complex narrative analysis. Greimas’ narrative semiotics informs the insight into the narrative structure of the threads (posts and replies). The ‚emotional turn’ in geographies of maternal and child health illuminates our insight into the narrative substance of the forum discussions. Essentially, the actuarial analysis reveals maternal emotions against different cultural, healthcare, and working backgrounds, with mothers struggling for the same object, namely breastfeeding after returning to work. Looking through the lens of Hofstede’s cultural dimensions, our underlying aim is to map maternal feelings across different cultures and to reflect on cross-cultural understanding of maternal emotions that may open dialogue in multicultural healthcare and working environments.