I've posted a comment - are they moderated?
It's here in case it doesn't make the site:
I'm struggling to word this in a way that might make the author of this post pause momentarily and consider that he might not have thought this through. I'll give it a go!
Brendan, I am in regular contact with hundreds of women who feel great sadness about not being able to breastfeed, for whatever reason. Often, they are let down by ill-informed health professionals who pay lip service to the Breast Is Best message and dole out formula if supporting these women to breastfeed looks like it might take a while.
The important distinction to make here is that it is INTERNAL sadness. Most women want to breastfeed when they are pregnant - more than 80%. 78% do indeed start to breastfeed, but 90% of women who stop breastfeeding in the first six weeks do not want to stop. Poor support is cited as the major reason for them stopping.
Why is support poor? Well, the health professionals whose job it is are bombarded for adverts for formula - infant formula, since it can still be advertised in health journals. That's part of it. Follow-on formula (a product created solely to get around the advertising ban - a product that often constipates babies due to the unnecessarily high levels of iron it contains) can be advertised across wider media.
You compare formula to alcohol and cigarettes - and yes, of course these are different products. But they're not subject to advertising bans for quite the same reasons. Infant formula is often the sole nutrition for babies in for the first six months of their life (and it goes some way to making up the diet of 92% of babies throughout their babyhood) - so isn't it only right that we should place restrictions on advertising? Why would you want profit margins, shareholders and advertising executives having a say in how women nourish their babies? Prescription medicines are also subject to advertising restrictions - you don't mention that.
If you want to create a supportive environment for women to feed their babies however best fits with their lifestyle, you don't write inflammatory, poorly researched pieces like this.
There are plenty of people out there who just get on with supporting women to do what they want to do - which, over 80% of the time is breastfeed. Yes, there are some gobby, insensitive idiots who don't understand the issues and say crashingly unpleasant things about women who are formula feeding, but it would be nice to think that you understand the difference between them and the people who are trying to make it better. From this article, it would seem you don't.
Also, it would be nice if you understood that those who are campaigning for formula advertising to be banned completely aren't trying to sweep the issue under the carpet. Those who want this to happen ALSO want there to be more factual information out there about the contents of formula, the safest way to make up bottles (especially from powder - the instructions on formula packs are incorrect and have the potential to make babies ill), the best way to feed, etc, etc. At the moment, there's a lot of misinformation out there about formula, some pictures of ducklings and building blocks on follow-on formula ads, formula helplines which give out incorrect advice and the "don't make women feel guilty" message - not enough, not for such a massively important issue as, as I said, the sole source of nutrition for babies in the first months of their life.
I'm fairly sure this won't make much difference to you - your motives for this article aren't clear - but have a quick scan of any parenting forum and you'll see the sort of very real grief women feel when breastfeeding goes wrong. Articles such as yours aren't helping future women avoid this sadness, which often lingers for decades (yes, really). Feel free to visit my blog and have a read around the subject though. I look forward to your comments:
www.howbreastfeedingworks.com
