Breastfeeding Privatization in Public Education

Dr Meral Apak is a critical education researcher chasing the odds in the “normal” within the realm of educational life and thought. Her work focuses on gender issues in education in the field of power, empowerment and “dis”powerment in a sociological sense. Apak has taught at various levels in public and private schools. During and after her Master’s degree in Women’s Studies, she actively participated in the establishment of women’s solidarity organisations and critical education associations. During her doctoral study in the field of Educational Sciences, she contributed to the establishment of BEPAM (Bogazici University, Center for Educational Policy Studies) and led the center from 2013 to 2017. Apak has taught at various universities in Istanbul and in Germany, and continues her research in Berlin.

1. Introduction.- 2. Historical, political and social background: The neoliberal times and education.- 3. Unpaid care labour, voluntary work and motherhood.- 4. Forms of capital and parental involvement.- 5. Classroom mothers: A reserve army of labour behind the school system.- 6. School as a territory of power and classroom motherhood as a power position.- 7. Classroom motherhood as a power position.- 8. Classroom mothers and the neoliberal education : A match or a mismatch?.- 9. Bibliography.