Book Review: Viral Mothers

Bernice L. Hausman. Viral Mothers: Breastfeeding in the Age of HIV/AIDS (U Michigan, 2011).

What a great book! It’s academic, for sure, and not for the casual reader, but it’s a great, perceptive look at so many issues surrounding breastfeeding in our culture. Hausman considers the famous pro-breastfeeding ad campaign of a few years ago, which focused on the risks of not breasftfeeding rather than the advantages of breastfeeding, and which garnered such a critical response; she addresses the way that breastfeeding features in media reports about AIDS and West Nile virus; and she offers perceptive, feminist-based criticism of how our society in general marginalizes breastfeeding because it is actually threatening to what she identifies as our underlying cultural values. Really just a smart, thoughtful, and interesting read!

–Christina