"You guys don't have a better plan than this? I'm just a mom on Facebook": How mothers mobilized on Facebook to feed babies during the North American infant formula shortage


Elisabeth Rondinelli, Saint Mary's University; Lesley Frank, Acadia University; Jane Francis, Acadia University; Ruby Harrington, Acadia University

The United Nations Sustainability Goal of Zero Hunger is targeted to “end hunger and ensure access by all people, in particular the poor and people in vulnerable situations, INCLUDING INFANTS, to safe, nutritious and sufficient food by 2030” [1]. Yet research on infant food insecurity in high income settings reveals current threats to all mode of infant feeding that are rooted in weak income and social protections [2]. Exacerbating this, in February 2022, the Michigan-based Abbott Nutrition factory, a key infant formula producer, temporarily shuttered instigating a crisis-level formula shortage in the United States. It wasn’t long before the U.S. shortage arrived in Canada in its own fashion. Despite government measures to stabilize supply and health authorities’ advice to families, there was an absence of practical and timely solutions for families in both countries. Converging with record high food inflation and rising rates of household food insecurity, the evidence shows that we are moving further away from the Zero Hunger target. How did mothers and other caregivers experience, think about, and cope with the formula shortage? What were the social relations at play, and how did they complicate or facilitate families’ everyday lives? Guided by instiutional ethnography as an overarching methodologcal approach [3] married with digital ethnographic methods and visual storytelling, our project seeks to advance knowledge about infant food insecurities, specifically the infant formula shortages everyday impact on families lives in North America. This presentaion will share findings from the first phase of our project that mapped 500+ ‘Finding Formula’ Facebook groups that were created (primarily by mothers) across North America to cope with this feeding crisis and offer mutual aid to others. Based on 15 interviews with group administrators (5 in Canada, 10 in the US) conducted in the fall of 2023, we detail an exorbitant amount and array of inventive and collaborative carework to feed babies. This included foraging for formula (across retail, state services, from health practitioners, and through informal networks across international borders), distribution to those in need (personal deliveries, shipping, and developing transportation networks), online group management (responding to posts, developing and moderating rules, navigating scammers), public awareness and advocacy campaigns, media work, volunteer coordination, and emotional labour. Facebook groups and those that administered them, were even part the official advice of health authorities and government agencies for where to turn when you cannot find the formula you need. This work reveals how mothers, and others, used social media and their unpaid work offline (often while maintaining paid employment), to provide a social safety net that was informal, voluntary-based, and local, yet highly organized and networked. This moral economy of care became essential for infant food access when public policy and industry failures undermined caregivers’ ability to feed their infants through regular channels across socio-economic divides. Yet these same mothers warn us that little has changed to prevent such problems from continuing, and that long term strategies are needed for infant food security.

Non-presenting authors: Merin Oleschuk, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign; Arieilla Pahlke, Independent Consultant

This paper will be presented at the following session: