• ISBN13: 9781032768243
• Binding: Hardcover
• Subject: Medical, Nursing and Health Sciences
• Publisher: T&F
• Publisher Imprint: Rout India
• Publication Date: June 12, 2023
• Pages: 290
• Original Price: INR 1295.0
• Language: English
• Edition: N/A
• Item Weight: 500 grams

Modern Maternities: Medical Advice about Breastfeeding in Colonial Calcutta brings to light rare textual and visual materials on medical opinions about breastfeeding by memsahibs (European women), dais (indigenous midwives and/or wet nurses) and the bhadramahila (here the focus is on ‘respectable’ Bengali-Hindu women). With the help of archival resources, the author discusses themes like: modernity, maternities and medicine intersections of ‘race’, gender, class, caste, community and age in diet artificial foods versus wet nursing ‘cleanliness’, corporeality and culture ‘clean midwifery’ versus ‘dirty midwifery’ customary breastfeeding practices child-mothers and childcare breastfeeding, mothercraft and modern clocks exhibitions, baby shows and baby weeks colonialism and anti-colonial nation-building