death of their offspring. When Alto women see other women crying and being emotional over a
death of an infant, they laugh because they knew that child wouldn’t survive in life.
(Scheper-
Hughes , 1992; 271) There are multiple reasons why women don’t care about their infants
dying. Since there is already a lack of food and nutrition for everyone, women look at their older
children and believe they should be fed first because they’ve seen life; babies are not too
important to them because they do not know life. My question is, why don’t they breastfeed?
For the most part, women do not want to breastfeed because their bosses will not let them;
bosses do not want to see the mother lactating in-front of their customers. Mothers also do not
want to breastfeed their infants for religious reasons. They believe if the child was to drink their
milk, all of their sins will be transferred over to the newborn baby. (Scheper-Hughes , 1992; 326)
In the culture of the United States, it is certainly looked as natural for mothers to love
their children from beginning of birth to the end of their life. We as a country, expect mothers
to nurture and protect their babies, as it is their “natural instinct”. How can this “natural
instinct” be shifted if looked at in a third-world country? Scheper-Hughes had to back herself up
to very convinced feminists about mother’s love in Bom Jesus. The author believes mothers love
is based on country’s political stance and culture. Scheper-Hughes states, “Mother love is
anything other than natural and instead represents a matrix of images, meanings, sentiments,
and practices that are everywhere socially and culturally produced”. (Scheper-Hughes , 1992;
