Intersectionality family, generation and breastfeeding

Abstract

Breastfeeding, sociocultural complex and multifaceted process, allows women of the same or of different generations within a group, parental experience and/or develop multiple meanings that can be modified or not depending on the social time in which they lived. Therefore, breastfeeding contributes to the interaction between family members, especially grandmothers, daughters and granddaughters when new generations appreciate lessons learned from the wisdom of a more experienced group. Therefore, it is a qualitative study, descriptive, exploratory-type literature review that had timeless selection for books, dissertations and theses, as series of articles from 1998 to 2008. The objective was to discuss the interface between family, generation and breastfeeding, underscoring the importance of aging and experience of older generations in the process of teaching and learning about breastfeeding to new generations. The literature review was done in the databases SciELO, LILACS and MEDLINE plus books, dissertations and theses, with the keywords: breastfeeding, family and generation. We identified 20 articles, 14 books, dissertations 4, 6 and 2 academic papers theses that were submitted to content analysis. In the analysis, it was noticed that the generations have a close relationship with each other, revealing that aging and maturity of the first generations contribute to greater acquisition of knowledge to be transmitted to younger generations of mothers who breastfeed. We conclude, believing that this study will look amplified, not only of health and related fields, but for those who want to analyze the possibilities of breastfeeding from intergenerational understanding it from the perspective of policymaker’s agents.