Abstract
This study explores a new style of mother's breast-feeding care support through a case study of the Fukui Breast-Feeding Support Center, which supports mothers and children by interchanging bodies. In general, public supports for socially isolated mothers have the following three characteristics. 1) They assume the problems as lack of mother's parenting skills and parenting quality; then they aim at supplying the deficiency of mother. 2) Supporters regard mothers as objects of support, not as parties. 3) It goes without saying that professional supporters make asymmetrical instructional relationships with powerless mothers; this feature is as parallel as the feature of modern medicine.
The researcher had the opportunity to experience a certain type of breastfeeding support, which has the possibility to conquer the above-mentioned problems. In the activity, the mid-wife supporter doesn't take the stance to set mothers right by focusing on their problems; instead she aims to transfer the meaning of the breast-feeding care born from the relationship of interchanging bodies between a supporter and a mother to the relationship between the mother and her baby. Further-more, the supporter holds to a future-oriented attitude to explore a new life-style of a mother with a child and tries to develop the mother's confidence and her assertiveness. The future-oriented attitude is shared with the other mothers in the waiting room from the supporter and the mothers.
Finally I try to explain activities of the above-mentioned mother support theoretically using Osawa's theory of post-modern. In the course of my argument it should have become clear that the activity has three features. 1) The supporter and a mother interchange bodies through mother's breasts in three-section-relation of “supporter-breast-mother” and they were creating the "meaning of breastfeeding" for the mother. 2) The relationship of interchanging bodies is transformed into a three-section-relationship of “mother-breasts-child.” Then a mother and her child try to interchange bodies through her breasts. Their aim is the generation of the meaning of breastfeeding for the mother and her child. 3) The norm of developing mother's assertiveness, which was created by the interchanging relationship between the supporter and a mother, keep building and transforming between them and the others mothers in the waiting room.
