شیر، مادران و معانی: تغذیه نوزاد در استعمال بنگال

The social milieus addressed by this prescriptive literature include “respectable” Bengali-Hindu women or bhadramahila mothers, who were often portrayed as the embodiments of “Indian” motherhood – a flexible stereotype championed and criticised in the contemporary prescriptive literature on infant feeding. “Scientific” midwifery also aimed to supervise the “ignorant” and “dirty” dais (indigenous midwives and/or wet-nurses). Comparisons have been drawn with the variegated perceptions of infant feeding in Britain and memsahibs as mothers in the “tropics”.