"Mother to Mother": A Maternalist Organization in Late Capitalist America

Abstract

This paper asks how La Leche League, an organization begun in the 1950s to promote breast-feeding and the value of maternal nurturance, continues to attract women in the 1990s. The League represents an interesting case of how conservative groups change in response to changing family norms and practices, most notably the increased employment of mothers of very young children and the acceptance of some egalitarian feminist tenets. In contrast to other groups promulgating nostalgic family advice, the League philosophy is not focused on religious tenets but solely on maternalism, exalting women's motherly traits. Using three sources of qualitative data, (fieldwork, in-depth interviews, and content analysis of publications), the paper discusses how the League has responded to mothers' increased employment, and to the increasing insecurities of the white, middle-class mothers drawn to the organization, as they are caught in late capitalist economic retrenchment. Finally, the paper examines the League's maternalism as an alternative morality, and the ways this meshes and competes with feminist discourses as have maternalist arguments in earlier historical periods.

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