Nighttime Breastfeeding

Cecília Tomori is Associate Professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing with a joint appointment at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Department of Population, Family and Reproductive Health. She is the co-author of the 2023 Lancet Series on Breastfeeding and is the co-editor of two additional books, Breastfeeding: New Anthropological Approaches (Routledge 2018), and The Routledge Handbook of Anthropology and Reproduction (2022).

Reviews for the 1st Edition:“Tomori’s research reveals that these two fields—breastfeeding and sleep—are intricately intertwined not only in practice but also theoretically through analysis that exposes the contradictions inherent in the cultural norms governing these intimate embodied experiences.” • Anthropologica“This work will be useful for medical anthropologists and professionals at all levels of reproductive health care and family medicine. It offers important ethnographic analysis relevant to feminist anthropology, women’s and gender studies, and cross-cultural and bio-evolutionary perspectives on kinship and family.” • Medical Anthropology Quarterly“In this beautifully written ethnography … Cecılia Tomori provides a broad‐ranging yet in‐depth discussion of numerous anthropological topics, including kinship, reproduction, and personhood … This book is a pleasure to read, and will be of interest not only to scholars of gender, kinship, and reproduction, but also to those who work on the subjects of embodiment, authoritative knowledge, expertise, morality, the house, and temporality. It deserves to be read widely, both within the academy and beyond.” • Journal of Royal Anthropological Institute“I have nothing but praise for this book and its worth. It is written in a flawless and effortless manner. I loved the tone and how it packs in so much factorial information without the reader knowing it, but at the same time explores in-depth intimate life decisions and care giving practices that we have never seen so closely and so vividly presented.” • James J. McKenna, University of Notre Dame“This is an excellent piece of scholarship that … draws upon a wide range of highly relevant literature which is used to make sense of the data. It illuminates a unique and compelling anthropological perspective on the lived, embodied practices of breastfeeding with particular emphasis upon the complex moral dilemmas related to breastfeeding and sleep practices.” • Fiona Dykes, University of Central Lancashire“The controversies prompted by nighttime breastfeeding touch on so many hot-button issues in American culture: sexuality, child endangerment, the importance of individualism and independence in American culture to name a few. And this author handles the issue with sophistication and clarity.” • Jacqueline H. Wolf, Ohio University

• List of IllustrationsPreface and AcknowledgementsIntroductionChapter 1. Embodied Cultural Dilemmas: An Anthropological Approach to the Study of Nighttime Breastfeeding and SleepChapter 2. Struggles Over Authoritative Knowledge and “Choice” in Breastfeeding and Infant Sleep in the U.S.Chapter 3. Making Breastfeeding Parents in Childbirth Education CoursesChapter 4. Dispatches from the Moral Minefield of BreastfeedingChapter 5. Breastfeeding as Men’s “Kin Work”Chapter 6. Breastfeeding Babies in the Nest: Producing Children, Kinship, and Moral Imagination in the HouseChapter 7. Time to Sleep: Nighttime Breastfeeding and Capitalist Temporal RegimesConclusionAppendixesBibliographyIndex