The social production of early weaning: family farming, gender, and care inequalities in a "pomerano" community in Brazil
1
Programa de Pós Graduação em Saúde Coletiva, Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo, Vitoria, Brazil
Popul. Med. 2026;8(Supplement Supplement 1):A2360
ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION:
Pomeranian communities are recognized as part of Brazil’s traditional peoples and communities due to their strong relationship with territory, cultural and linguistic identity, preservation of the Pomeranian language, social organization, ancestry, and an economy centered on family farming¹. Agricultural labor structures the everyday life, gender relations, and practices of child care². With a prevalence of early weaning of 63.4%³, this practice is often interpreted through biomedical frameworks that privilege individual behaviors, to the detriment of the social conditions that produce care.
METHODS:
This study integrates a mixed-methods research design and presents an ethnographic focus based on interviews with Pomeranian mothers and the author’s lived experience within the community itself. Maternal narratives were analyzed through an ethnographic perspective that considers labor, gender, and territory as constitutive dimensions of care practices.
RESULTS:
Findings reveal that infants and young children accompany their mothers in agricultural fields, frequently placed in improvised boxes, as productive labor occupies a central position in social life. The absence of public childcare services and the impossibility of outsourcing care even in the private sphere—since other women are also engaged in family farming and overburdened with responsibilities toward their own families—limit the continuity of breastfeeding. Early weaning emerges as the effect of social arrangements that subordinate care to the demands of agricultural labor. The ethnographic analysis exposes the invisibility of women’s reproductive labor and the normalization of childhood experiences marked by the fragmentation of care, challenging breastfeeding promotion models that disregard gender inequalities, care networks, and territorial specificities.
CONCLUSIONS:
In this community, early weaning should be understood as a structural phenomenon produced at the intersection of family farming, gender relations, and public policies, requiring culturally situated and socially just public health strategies.
Pomeranian communities are recognized as part of Brazil’s traditional peoples and communities due to their strong relationship with territory, cultural and linguistic identity, preservation of the Pomeranian language, social organization, ancestry, and an economy centered on family farming¹. Agricultural labor structures the everyday life, gender relations, and practices of child care². With a prevalence of early weaning of 63.4%³, this practice is often interpreted through biomedical frameworks that privilege individual behaviors, to the detriment of the social conditions that produce care.
METHODS:
This study integrates a mixed-methods research design and presents an ethnographic focus based on interviews with Pomeranian mothers and the author’s lived experience within the community itself. Maternal narratives were analyzed through an ethnographic perspective that considers labor, gender, and territory as constitutive dimensions of care practices.
RESULTS:
Findings reveal that infants and young children accompany their mothers in agricultural fields, frequently placed in improvised boxes, as productive labor occupies a central position in social life. The absence of public childcare services and the impossibility of outsourcing care even in the private sphere—since other women are also engaged in family farming and overburdened with responsibilities toward their own families—limit the continuity of breastfeeding. Early weaning emerges as the effect of social arrangements that subordinate care to the demands of agricultural labor. The ethnographic analysis exposes the invisibility of women’s reproductive labor and the normalization of childhood experiences marked by the fragmentation of care, challenging breastfeeding promotion models that disregard gender inequalities, care networks, and territorial specificities.
CONCLUSIONS:
In this community, early weaning should be understood as a structural phenomenon produced at the intersection of family farming, gender relations, and public policies, requiring culturally situated and socially just public health strategies.
| eISSN: | 2654-1459 |
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