Breastfeeding in Italy. How “the first 1,000 days” discourse molecularises social expectations of intensive mothering
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Introduction: Breastfeeding is one of the core pillars of the so-called "First Thousand Days" (FTD) discourse. By mobilising neuroscience, the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DOHaD), and epigenetics, this contemporary narrative establishes a causal link between various pre-natal and early-life lifestyle factors and health across the lifespan. By framing parental choices as social determinants of children's health, it aligns with broader contemporary parenting trends, such as scientific motherhood and intensive parenting, the expectation that parents, particularly mothers, devote significant time and energy to raising their children according to the latest scientific advice. Methods: A qualitative analysis of health information guides and policy papers circulating in Italy over the last 6 years was conducted following the principles of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). The aim was to explore how the promotion of breastfeeding within the FTD framework normalises biomedical imaginaries of childrearing and increases social pressure on mothers. Results: The analysed texts emphasise individual behavioral prescriptions for mothers, focusing on nutrition, bodily techniques, and information gathering, while largely overlooking structural barriers such as inadequate parental leave or poor work-life balance. Biomedical and epigenetic narratives portray the mother as a vector for the child's gene expression, development, and health. She is positioned as dependent on expert guidance, while embodied maternal knowledge is marginalised. Discussion: This discourse blends social and biological determinism, reinforcing intensive mothering ideals rooted in healthism, and underestimating the structural constraints that hinder full adherence to these expectations. In the Italian context, characterized by weak parental support policies and limited implementation of breastfeeding promotion, this narrative may contribute to a perception of motherhood as anomic, where the ideal of raising healthy children is promoted without providing the necessary means to achieve it.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.006 | 0.010 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.005 | 0.011 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.005 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".