Stories About Breastfeeding by Haitian Migrant Mothers in Chile
Keywords:
interculturality, migration, intersectionality, lactation.Abstract
Introduction: For a decade now, Haiti has been one of the main countries sending migration to Chile, given the country's economic and political stability. This migration, with a strong tendency towards feminization, means an increase in the births of children to Haitian mothers in Chile. From that place, Haitian mothers face a cultural disparity when deploying their parenting practices that involve breastfeeding, in Chile that promotes homogenizing child rearing policies that, in addition, constructs a stereotyped discourse regarding Haitian mothers as indifferent and ignorant mothers.
Objective: To describe the experiences and meanings attributed to breastfeeding by a group of Haitian mothers residing in the city of Santiago de Chile.
Methods: A qualitative study was carried out, with an intersectional approach, which describes the asymmetric relationships between Chilean society and Haitian mothers dedicated to raising their children in Chile in terms of the characteristics of class, gender, ethnicity/race that in these women incarnate.
Results: Three categories of analysis were obtained: breastfeeding experiences, the meaning attributed to breastfeeding and the forms of socialization through which Haitian mothers have learned to breastfeed.
Conclusions: Regarding breastfeeding, the Haitian women interviewed go through various experiences and attribute positive meaning to breast milk as a vital food for the strengthening of their children, and in whose practice, they deploy their own knowledge and also the knowledge learned from the Chilean health system, in a kind of mixture. Although these findings do not differ from the results obtained in research with other groups of mothers of non-Haitian origin, the essentiality towards the breastfeeding practices of Haitian mothers would be based on their ethnicity/race and their belonging to vulnerable social groups placing them in a social position of subalternity and, therefore, likely to be devalued and governed.
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