Breastfeeding - a Feminist Issue http://www.wearsthebaby.com/benjamin.htm by Dawn Friedman

Two women I know recently gave up on breastfeeding. One simply decided at three days post-partum that breastfeeding was too difficult. The other struggled for a month before succumbing to bad pediatric advice to supplement and eventually weaned altogether. 

I was surprised at how deeply sorry I felt upon hearing their news. My anger, sorrow and frustration seemed somehow out of place when confronting a situation that had little bearing on my life. I found myself ranting to friends and family about these breastfeeding failures: why they had happened, how they could have been prevented, what problems potentially lay ahead for the children. One exasperated acquaintance said to me, "Listen, it's not like they're beating their kids. Why are you making such a big deal out of it?" 

Why was I? Before becoming a mother (and committed breastfeeder), I worked as an advocate for children escaping domestic violence. The problems I dealt with there seemed so overwhelming, so terrible, that I couldn't understand the intensity with which activists talked about raising breastfeeding rates. "At least these babies are getting fed," I thought. "So what if it's formula." And yet here I was, as passionate and angry as any of the women I once criticized. What in me had changed? 

What I came to realize is that the fact that breastfeeding is generally unsupported by our culture is an indicator of how devalued women and children are in our society. That so many women are either ignorant of the dangers of formula feeding or have their breastfeeding efforts sabotaged speaks to how little honor our society gives new mothers and their babies. 

Too often, information is withheld from mothers in the guise of being sensitive, thereby making it incredibly difficult for women to make an informed choice. There was a great deal of noise when the American Association of Pediatrics announced their new recommendation that mothers nurse their babies for at least one year and for as long as both baby and child want thereafter. The media (and the National Organization for Women who should have known better) made much of the pronouncement and the concern that it would make some mothers -- especially working mothers -- feel guilty. This is the same kind of reasoning that magazines use when they are sure to present the positive side of formula whenever they talk about breastfeeding. How dare they attempt to keep information from women just to protect our feelings? Isn't the health of our babies more important than how we feel? Mothers turn to formula not knowing that it is a decision that will impact their babies' entire lives because they are not told that this is true. Our power as mothers is stolen from us when we are unable to study the facts ourselves. 

In our country, money speaks louder than the health of our children. The formula companies do all they can to undermine a woman's breastfeeding relationship with her child. From buying doctors' patient lists to sending extra formula samples to those women who join "baby clubs" and check the box marked "breastfeeding only" they attack every child's right to breastmilk. Marketing themselves as mothers' friends, they care little for the health and well-being of babies and mothers. Money may not be able to buy health and happiness, but companies that have enough of it are surely able to take it away. 

If our culture truly understood the importance of sound nutrition and solid nurturing that a child gets only through breastfeeding, then many of the risk factors that children currently face would disappear. Imagine if breastfeeding were so valued by our culture that it was a priority to make sure that every baby got mother's milk. Imagine if every mother was valued for her unique role as a nurturer of children. Assertion of the importance of breastfeeding would mean healthier mothers since it would mean better prenatal care to minimize interventions during labor and delivery since such interventions may interfere in a nursing relationship. It would mean cultural expectation of support for new mothers monetarily (in the form of extended, paid maternity leave) and physically (in the form of similar leave to partners and other family members so that they could care for the mother as she cares for her baby). It would mean that mothers in poverty would not have to shell out huge amounts of money to feed their children or to secure medical treatment for formula-related illnesses. It would mean that a baby's cries would be taken seriously and frequent nursing (along with the holding, co-sleeping and baby-wearing that facilitates that) would be the norm lest the mother's milk supply be compromised. Without the pressures of trying to clean her house, get back to work or force her baby to sleep through the night a new mother would be free to simply fall in love with her baby. Lactation would be an honored state and so a mother would feel it to be in her best interest (as well as her child's) to nurse as long as possible. Having an intense relationship with a nursling would be respected and, perhaps, even become a status symbol. 

We know that women deserve the same opportunities of career advancement and achievement that men do, but we need to remember that she deserves to have this (as do men) without compromising her children or herself. 

I cannot imagine a better world for a child and the woman who bore him than one in which he is born healthfully, nursed lovingly and given the luxury of his mother's arms until he chooses to leave. Breastfeeding may not solve all of society's ills but it certainly gives children a better start. 

Published 
December 1, 1998