"Did you ever go to bed and wonder if your child was getting enough to eat?" For food insecure mothers, the worry is constant, and babies are at risk of going hungry. Through compelling interviews, Lesley Frank answers the breastfeeding paradox: why women who can least afford to buy infant formula are less likely to breastfeed. She reveals that what and how infants are fed is linked to the social and economic status of those who feed them. She exposes the reality of food insecurity for formula-fed babies, the constraints limiting mothers' ability to breastfeed, and the lengths to which mothers must go to provide for their children. In a country that leaves the problem of food insecurity to charities, public policies are failing to support the most vulnerable populations.

Out of Milk calls out the pressing need to establish the economic and social conditions necessary for successful breastfeeding and for accessible and safe formula feeding for families everywhere.

Out of Milk reveals the experiences of mothers struggling to feed their children and the policy gaps that put babies at risk of going hungry in a high-income nation.

About the Author
Lesley Frank is an associate professor of sociology at Acadia University in Wolfville, Nova Scotia. She is a leading scholar of infant food insecurity in Canada, with publications in the journals Food, Culture and Society; Food and Foodways; Canadian Food Studies; and the Canadian Medical Association Journal. She is the author of the annual Nova Scotia Family and Child Poverty Report Card and a steering member of Campaign 2000, a cross-Canada public education movement that works to increase public awareness of the levels and consequences of child and family poverty. Her work has been featured on CBC's The Current.

Reviews

Clearly and accessibly written, Out of Milk has obvious and immediate value as a resource for policy makers and presents an urgent appeal for governments to reassume their responsibility in supporting the social reproduction of the next generation of Canadian.

-- Paolina Lu * Food, Culture, and Society *



Book Information
ISBN 9780774862486
Author Lesley Frank
Format Paperback
Page Count 192
Imprint University of British Columbia Press
Publisher University of British Columbia Press