Images of Breastfeeding on Instagram: Self-Representation, Publicness, and Privacy Management

As recent feminist studies have recognized, breastfeeding is an interesting area of investigation since it encompasses several\r\nsocial and cultural issues involving both the private and the public sphere. These range from how motherhood is lived and\r\ninterpreted, the representation of the body, how children are reared, women’s self-representation, breastfeeding support,\r\nand maternal work. The article illustrates a qualitative analysis of a sample of Instagram images tagged with breastfeedingrelated\r\nwords, with the aim of analyzing how breastfeeding is represented and the relationship between private and public\r\ndiscourses. For this reason, images coming from both mothers and breastfeeding promoters were analyzed. The analysis\r\nshows that breastfeeding representation on Instagram confirms, and also goes beyond, the common image of breastfeeding a\r\nnewborn, showing toddlers’ breastfeeding or mothers pumping breastmilk. It also shows that breastfeeding may be connected\r\nwith a wider approach to parenthood, based on proximity, and that children are active subjects of the decisions taken. The\r\nresearch indicates that the relationship between public and private discourses is an overlapping of shades. On one hand,\r\nresearch results showed several strategies enacted by parents for protecting their children’s privacy; on the other hand, the\r\nfunctions of images posted veer between fixing a private moment and creating public discourses using specific hashtags aimed,\r\nfor example, at normalizing public breastfeeding or offering new types of support. Instagram appears, then, as a platform\r\nwhere personal choices and beliefs can flow into public discourse and a place for investigating how public discourses and\r\nsocial and cultural issues (such as breastfeeding promotion and representation) shape the way that breastfeeding is lived.