Relationship between emotional labelling of breastfeeding situation and intention to breastfeed/support breastfeeding among French adolescents and young people

Aim Our cross-sectional study was conducted to explore the emotional factors influencing the intention of breastfeeding (or not) among French adolescents and young adults, to the extent where some attitudes toward breastfeeding are developed during these stages. Subjects and methods A task of word production was proposed to 437 participants (females: 56%; males 44%), with a mean age of 17 years (14–25), while they were being presented with a picture of a woman breastfeeding. Results A predominance of words related to happiness was clear (83% of the emotional words produced). Among the negative emotion corpus, disgust was the most common (71%). A significant main effect of age is observed, with university students producing this term more than those from high school. The participants who reported disgust were less likely to breastfeed or encourage breastfeeding than those who did not, regardless of how participants had themselves been fed. Conclusion The participants who had intended to breastfeed (or to support) represented 47% of the sample, which reflects the French specificity in Europe (low breastfeeding rate). This study indicates that the emotional aspect is involved in the intended breastfeeding behaviour. Breastfeeding is an embodied experience which involves a physical contact which is often associated with feelings of love towards the baby, but it is also linked with the emotion of disgust for some participants who are moving away from the intention of breastfeeding. The potential reasons of this relationship are discussed, as well as the question of the nature of disgust in our Western context: the breast being seen as an excretory organ, interpersonal relations, adolescence and sexuality.