Society is creepy (not breastfeeding)
Sunday, June 27, 2010 The lactivist community is up in arms over an editorial by Kathryn Blundell that appeared in the UK magazine Mother and Baby. The editorial, called I formula-fed. SO WHAT? is a personal rant by a woman who chose not to breastfeed. When I read it, it immediately made me think of two other articles that I've read. The first is Katrina Onstad's article Breastfeeding Sucks in the Canadian women's magazine Chatelaine. The other one is Hanna Rosin's infamous article The Case Against Breastfeeding that was published in the US magazine The Atlantic (which I responded to here and here).
What all three of these articles have in common is that they describe the societal pressure to breastfeed and include a woman's explanation of why she didn't want to breastfeed. They all focus on bullies (real or imagined) that make women feel bad for formula feeding. Where they differ is that while Katrina Onstad managed to talk about the horrors of her breastfeeding experience and candidly discuss implications of bad breastfeeding advice and sometimes insensitive mother-blaming forms of lactivism, she never comes to the conclusion (as the other two do), that breastfeeding doesn't really matter.
When looked at objectively, breastfeeding does matter. The health outcomes of breastfed children and breastfeeding mothers are better. There is no doubt about that. When looked at subjectively, within the lens of any individual mother's decision about how to feed her child, breastfeeding may not win out. While I think each mother has the right to decide how to feed her child, I do think that there are way too many societal barriers to breastfeeding and those barriers are what keeps breastfeeding rates much lower than they should be.
One of my beefs with Kathryn's editorial is that it was peppered with breastfeeding myths. If women believe the things that she believes, it is no wonder that so many of them choose not to breastfeed. She said that she "also wanted to give my boobs at least a chance to stay on my chest rather than dangling around on my stomach", perpetuating the myth that breastfeeding makes your breasts sag (not true at all). She also questions whether some women who didn't breastfeed did it because they "felt like getting tipsy once in awhile." If a breastfeeding mom really wants to get drunk once in a while, she should get a babysitter (because caring for your kids when you are tipsy is not a good idea whether you are breastfeeding or formula feeding) and pump and dump until the alcohol is out of her system (to maintain supply and avoid plugged ducts - pumping and dumping doesn't remove the alcohol, only time does). Or if she just wants a drink or two here and there, she can do that safely while breastfeeding. A fact checker, even for editorials, is pretty important in my opinion (as I previously told Margaret Wente and the Globe and Mail).
But the biggest problem I had with the article was her characterization of breastfeeding as creepy. One of the biggest societal barriers to breastfeeding is the attitude among much of the public that breastfeeding is creepy. This is why women are constantly told to go nurse in the bathroom or to cover up. It is why women are embarrassed to feed their babies in public and feel like they need to hide at home or in their car or take a bottle with them when they go out. Our society doesn't see breastfeeding as something that is natural and normal. Our society sees sexualized breasts as natural and normal. So attitudes like this one expressed by Kathryn Blundell in her editorial are not surprising:
They’re part of my sexuality, too – not just breasts, but fun bags.
And when you have that attitude (and I admit I made no attempt to change it), seeing your teeny, tiny, innocent baby latching on where only a lover has been before feels, well, a little creepy.
What if Kathryn had seen just as many breasts feeding babies as she had seen in sexualized imagery in her lifetime? Would she feel the same way? I don't blame Kathryn for thinking that breastfeeding is creepy. I blame society. But as an editor of a major publication she has, in my opinion, a greater responsibility than simply sharing her story. I think she has the responsibility to try to change how breasts are perceived. I think that her personal account, within a larger story about why the way breasts are perceived in society needs to change, would have been appropriate. But I think that her personal account, in an editorial about why formula feeding is fine, is damaging because it perpetuates and legitimizes the perspective that breastfeeding is creepy.
Breastfeeding may not be for everyone. But breastfeeding is not creepy. Our society is creepy for thinking that breastfeeding is creepy.
Image credit: scariepants on flickr
Reader Comments (110)
Thank you for replying. I realise that this boat (in terms of the coversation) has sailed, so it's nice that someone paid attention.
You SHOULD be proud of making it work, if it was hard for you. I understand how big an achievement that is and I am pleased for you and your baby that you did it. Go you! You have earned that pride. I didn't mean to imply that self-congratulation and judgement necessarily go hand in hand and I think it is probably less likely to in people who have struggled. That wasn't the kind of self-congratulation I meant.
But I have found that this is like so many areas in parenting, where some people who find breastfeeding (or whatever it is) easy tend to think that those who don't just can't be trying hard enough. It's like women who have never experienced a child who runs looking down their noses at the woman with the toddler on reins. I find it disappointing that women who would never dream of commenting on another woman's career path feel perfectly free to judge them - and not just practically, but morally, and without any care for walking in their shoes - for their actions as mothers. My hope is that we can get past this. We will never achieve higher rates of breastfeeding while women feel that it is just another thing that they can fail at and be judged about. While the judging is out there, the embattled mentality will also be out there and we will continue to waste time and energy flinging abuse at each other, when we should be supporting each other.
None of which excuses the editor that this was originally about. I have edited a magazine and I took the responsibility of that position seriously. She dropped that responsibility ball badly in this instance.
Thank you Imelda for your honest and well-written account. I'm the "one who doesn't think formula should exist" and just wanted to let you know by no means am I implying a death sentence for your child. If formula weren't invented, just as in the eons previously, any woman experiencing any kind of difficulty nursing her child would have been supported by wet nurses or other lactating family members. Of course now there is a taboo against any woman other than an infant's mother nursing them, but if we broke through those taboos then at least all children could receive human milk. Or re-institute breast milk banks, like blood banks, rather than use a sub-grade commercial product.
Imelda, please know that I hold no judgement over individuals for how they feed their babies. We are all products of the times we live in, and as you aptly put, the breast is oversexualized and having children has become medicallized (is that a word?), so as a society we have lost touch with the natural way of caring for our children. My war is with this overall mindset, not individuals. I just hope to spark thoughtful and respectful debate on the issue. I commend you for your courage to post on this somewhat biased forum!
Thanks No Cones (although my goodness it's hard to actually address someone by that 'name').
It's nice to have the clarification and in some ways, I like the idea of joint nursing or breast milk banks.
I have some reservations about the implications of such a system, though. In times gone by, wet nursing was not something that was done out of the goodness of a woman's heart - at least, not exclusively. It was frequently a position provided to women of lower class and money by well-off women who didn't want the 'inconvenience' of nursing their own children. The ideas that nursing babies interferred with men's pleasure, caused sagging breasts and interferred with a woman's social or professional duties are not new. Nor is the desire in some women to avoid all of those problems. The difference is that now, those who feel that way can purchase convenience in a can, rather than in the form of another person.
(Please note that, given my story, I am the last person to suggest that all women who don't breastfeed do so for convenience. And if they do choose to formula-feed for convenience, I am not going to condemn them. Breast milk is better. This is a fact. But I don't feel it is my place to judge. Moving on...)
Transferring wet-nursing to the modern world would mean, I fear, adding yet another low-paid, low-status job to the lot of poor women of the world. And yet another job that would be outsourced to the poorest, most vulnerable communities. How many rich families in America have illegal, underpaid South American maids and nannies because those people are desperate? Asia's the same. People cross borders to work in households with poor pay, poorer conditions and no hope of recourse because they need the money. Too often, for the women, it is a poor, but better, alternative to selling their bodies. Do we really want to create a different kind of body exploitation to add to this mix? If the mother who was wet-nursing didn't have enough milk for both babies, whose baby do you think would go hungry? Maybe the women would be better fed while they were feeding their employer's baby. Maybe. But what happens when they stop? What's to stop them being dumped in their street with their child once their usefulness is over? This idea is fraught with social justice issues which can't be ignored.
And as for family members and friends helping, I, for one, would happily overcome that taboo, as I'm sure people did in times past. But in the modern, western world, how could we make that work? I have three sisters and 5 female cousins - a fairly good haul, by modern standards - and all but two of them has had children. But none of them was lactating while I was. Neither were any of my close friends. In times past people married or paired up much younger and we didn't have birth control - meaning that there were a lot more women in any given community lactating at any one time than there are now. So sharing the feeding of babies would have been easier, as well as more common and accepted. Maybe it's something that the new forms of community provided by the internet could help with. Maybe we could use the ability to form like-minded groups that it provides to link people who were able and willing. I think it's a lovely idea, but we would have to overcome more than taboos to make it work.
Anyway, I've probably said enough, except to say that I think you hit the nail on the head with the word 'respectful'. The problem I have always had with these discussions is they too easily descend into name-calling and judgement. If we could all remember that, even when we are discussing a subject in which we feel there is a clear 'right' and 'wrong', we are talking to other people and they deserve of our respect, I think we would get further.
Hi again Imelda! My name is actually Marla but I'm using No Cones on a lot of forums and comment pages as I'm trying to "brand" the blog/Twitter/Facebook I manage under that name. It comes from "Silicone = silly cones = No cones"; my hope (in a nutshell) is to re-acquaint Western culture with the natural form and function of the human breast. There are TONS of resources and organizations doing a great job at supporting breastfeeding, but I haven't come across any that go deeper into the over-sexualization of breasts which IMO contributes so much to why bfing rates are so low, and why this debate even exists. When you have 16-year-olds asking for implants for their birthdays without a second's thought to how they are later going to feed their children, or the fact that they are laying out thousands of $$$ on a potentially harmful surgery thinking it will improve their self-esteem - things are pretty out of whack with our society's priorities!
For sure, I don't support reverting back to the wet nursing system of yesteryear which you articulately describe. I'm just trying to remind everyone who cries "formula is necessary for women who can't breastfeed" that that is not necessary the only option. I haven't figured out all the mechanics of how such a system would work or the potential pitfalls, but it is good to put forward ideas for those who perhaps even haven't considered the possibilities before. In her amazing book "The Politics of Breastfeeding", Gabrielle Palmer talks about the fact that women's bodies naturally create this miraculous liquid and, except for within their own families, receive absolutely no credit or reward for it. Imagine how cool it would be if women could get paid to contribute to a breast bank?!? Again, I haven't thought through this all and I'm sure there are lots of economic holes in the argument, but I just want to put it out there to make people go "hmmmm...?"
Supermodel Gisele Bundchen started a firestorm of controversy this past week by suggesting there should be an international law mandating that all women breastfeed for at least six months. Of course there were the usual cries of outrage..."You're a supermodel, what do you know?", "Don't tell me how to raise my child", "No every women can breastfeed", etc. I think it's sad that the essential meaning of her comment was lost, and so too the opportunity to examine and respectfully debate her suggestion.
Hi Marla
Thanks for giving me your name, it feels better! But I completely get what you are trying to do with No Cones and I agree wholeheartedly. The idea of a 16yr old having ANY cosmetic surgery is sickening, terrifying and horrifying. That their parents are paying for it is even worse.
I hope you didn't think I was raining on your parade. I wasn't suggesting that you had worked out all the details, nor that you should have. I guess I was just saying that there is a place for formula, an imperfect product, in an imperfect world. Maybe we can turn it around to being a support to breastfeeding, by making it a back-up, as it was for me, when I didn't have enough milk. If it can make people less frightened about trying to feed naturally, because they have a back-up, that's a good thing. I happily breastfed, then 'topped up' with formula and would have continued, if I hadn't had other problems which made it untenable. And if I had had the option of buying breast milk, rather than formula, I would have. But then, I can afford it. I still have reservations about who would be being paid for that breastmilk, in a bank system.
But you're right, we need to keep talking about options and I think the point you raised about how formula started (which I think was on your blog) is an eye-opening one and one worth raising regularly. We do tend to take the state of the world as a given, without questioning how we got to this point and that can be dangerous. A position is not necessarily right just because many people hold it, nor a state right because it is the status quo.
Good luck with the fight. This is a race we all need to run to the finish, for the benefit of our daughters - and sons - as well as ourselves.
Thanks Imelda - so nice to "meet" you. Amazing the power of the virtual world - which I'm still wrapping my head around! I so appreciate your comments and our interaction - it's been eye-opening. And honest, and I love honesty!!! Best for now, Marla
Hi Imelda, Maria and all,
I'm really appreciating your communications! Thank you for being so open and honest and non-defensive. I work supporting mothers as they learn to breastfeed and overcome difficulties - and I take my hat off to those who have horrendous pain, or babies not growing well, for all kinds of reasons, whatever they decide to do. Often, formula is really useful to help a baby who needs extra food - and yes, banked mothers' milk would be better, especially if the mothers were getting a decent payment for it. Or healthy, reliable wet-nurses.
The problem with formula is not the product itself - it's the way it's promoted. Can I say that again? It's the way formula is promoted that is the problem!
For example, the 'Protect' logo on Nestle formula tins, in big letters.
Other brands also have health claims, despite the World Health Assembly ruling against them in May this year.
There's lots of useful information on the Baby Milk Action website and links on the Nestle Boycott Baby Milk Action Facebook pages, including the page about protecting babies fed on formula.
I typically do not comment on blogs but had to agree with blue milk.
I am a survivor of childhood sexual assault. All 3 of my kids were born by c-section. My oldest, a failed induction. My middle, a failed vbac attempt. And my youngest? She is my first breastfed child and I knew I could only handle so much. My choice was either a vbac OR a successful-for-the-first-time breastfeeding relationship. I opted to nurse her, and am thrilled with my choice. For the first time, I feel like I've reclaimed my body for it's natural purposes. I have a dear friend who had a successful vbac and it really traumatized her. Our pasts do effect our present more than many of us care to admit.
Hi Arwyn,
That's sad that you don't feel supported. I don't know if you'll be able to get this book in the US (assuming that's where you are) but this topic is covered in the Ann Sinnott book 'Breastfeeding Older Children' and there are lots of comments in there from mothers that have felt the same way, maybe you'd find it useful if you can get hold of a copy.
I realise this comment is a year old, but I just thought I'd clarify. Breastfeeding mothers in the UK are protected by law no matter how old the child. The 6 months mark changes which law they are protected under. Before 6 months I believe it is maternity law that protects them and after they are protected by sexual discrimination law. I breastfeed my almost 2 year old in the UK anywhere and everywhere and never had any negative reaction at all.