Women who don’t be believed for their reasons not to BF - a feminist issue?

I think it's so common to see and know of more examples of bad breastfeeding support than good that it's not altogether surprising that when someone says they couldn't then you wonder if they just didn't get the support they needed.

Unless I thought that someone was asking for help or information I wouldn't comment however.

DS couldn't latch at all, he had a tongue tie that wasn't picked up in hospital and until I went to a lactation consultant I'd no idea. Apparently its inherited and it turns out DH and I both have one. My DM couldn't breastfeed so it makes me wonder if that was the reason. So, while it's true she couldn't, it would be interesting to know whether she'd have been able to if she got the help I got.

Why is different to abortion and/or sexual assault?

I can see you’ve got some issues,OP, but I don’t think that idea you’re pushing is appropriate or helpful.

I agree that the questioning and dismissing of a woman’s answer are a feminist issue.
However, if you don’t want to discuss the ins and outs of it then I suggest you shut down the conversation. “Why don’t you breastfeed?” “I’d rather not discuss it, can we talk about something else?”

OP this is obviously a very upsetting subject for you and I get the impression you will only be satisfied if everyone agrees with you- I think that is unlikely.

Batteries yes it varies across the country. When I said I’d been questioned it was by friends, not a stranger (although that did happen once). That’s because breastfeeding is not particularly normal here. I think what we can learn from this thread is that RL reactions vary a lot for both ff and b/f.

I think it’s really wierd to question someone in a confrontational way.

I will say that when friends and family have said ‘I couldn’t breastfeed’ my response is to say oh dear, how come, how do you feel about that. Follow up questions. Because couldn’t implies wanting to initially, so they might be upset about it. And if you’re upset it’s nice to talk about it and have someone listen.

My problem is when I bf at baby groups and women come over to tell me they couldn’t bf. I never know how to extricate myself from that without causing offence. I don’t get why they take my feeding as judgement, I think because I’m a ‘showy’ feeder (latch issues, tt, high palate means I need whole boob out) people assume I’m making some kind of point? I dunno, the judgement goes both ways often. Probably varies hugely across different parts of the country though.

Bluedog you’ve been questioned on why you didn’t b/feed, ive been questioned why I did b/feed. Surely the ideal would be for no one to question anyone else on something so personal? But that would shut down all debate and discussion about breastfeeding and probably what would happen is that more women who want to wont because it’s more normal to ff in the U.K. I’m not sure what sort of people you circulate with if they literally ask why you didn’t b/f. I would never dream of asking anyone that unless it was a close friend and it came up in convo.

Interestingly my best friend who decided antenatally (well actually decided as a child) that she wouldn't breastfeed her babies says she was never directly advised or pressured to try. There were obviously cultural pressures and posters on wards etc but midwives just let her be.

That leads me to believe that it really is well-meaning but hitting the wrong note.

I feel a lot of the approach is holistic nor is it conducive to mental health of the mother. I hate the way policy dictates that HVs and HCPs have to be seen to encourage "next steps", it can never be that "all looks fine here well done." So if you are struggling with BF it's focussing on remedying that, if you are ok wih breastfeeding let's work on sleep, if you nail sleep let's talk about weaning and on and on and on.

I think it's about how we talk about infant feeding, which is a feminist issue because it concerns women and many of those women feel judgement, shame and/or lack of support.

If a woman states that she could not breastfeed, what business is it of anyone else? There are many reasons why women can't. It could be down to their body not making milk, it could be because of their physical or mental health, it could be due to the baby having problems. These are all valid reasons why some women can't breastfeed.

While I understand why HCPs wish to go into these reasons in depth with each individual woman, when it comes to questioning strangers on the Internet, what is the purpose? Too often it seems that the purpose is so the questioner can say, "so you could, but you chose not to". And the women who answered honestly feel unlistened to and that they are being judged and called liars.

That's a good post okmaybe

If one person says to me "I couldn't breastfeed" then I wouldn't ever challenge them, I might assume they had wanted to and therefore ask them in an "oh what a shame, what went wrong" sort of way, but that's all.

If over the years dozens and dozens people say to me "I couldn't breastfeed" then I'd respond to them in the same way individually, but I might look back and suspect there could have been a fair few cases of poor support/not really wanting to in there. But that's a statistical thing rather than any kind of individual judgement.

I wonder OP if having BF other children and knowing stuff about BFing means that you might actually have tended to think the same thing in the past, and now it bothers you to think other people may be thinking that about you? Even though that thought is not really judgmental at all of any individuals?

Bluedoglead: I understand where you are coming from. Whatever answer a woman gives to a question - doesn't matter if it is "couldn't" or "didn't want to" that should be the end of the questioning. The only follow up answer to persistent questioners is "mind your own business".

@batteries I'm told my experience isn't typical and looking at the statistics for bf across the country it can't be - but I only have friends who successfully bf, and have never seen anyone bottle feed at the baby groups/classes I've been to. There's no one I know well enough to talk to about feeding that formula feeds. I wouldn't say I'm ostracised for it - but it is a bit isolating and I do feel very judged, even if that's inferred judgement rather than overt judgement.

Breastfeeding seems far more common place to me amongst the people I know than the statistics would have led me to believe.

Is breastfeeding really so prevalent that ff mothers are ostracised? That’s not my experience by I appreciate anecdote doesn’t equal data.

I believe you OP, I had masses of support, people at my house, midwives, phone support and I still couldn't do it. There was no medical reason. Latch was fine.

We got readmitted to hospital as he lost too much weight. Breastfeeding ruined the first few weeks with my baby. I'll never get that time back and there's no way I'm going through that again if I have another baby.

Two cases, let's look at similarities and differences.

Woman A: I was sexually assaulted.

Woman B: I couldn't breastfeed.

Similarity: in both cases, the statement could be interpreted in two ways.

1. As a statement about the woman's perception: her own internal truth.
2. As a statement of objective truth, that would be recognised by someone else who knew all the relevant hard facts.

In sense 1 we should probably always believe both women. It's conceivable that either is not telling the truth about her perception, but it's so vanishingly unlikely that we needn't really bother with that possibility.

In sense 2 we have to be more careful. We still have a legal process: if Woman A was alone with Man X, and there's no evidence but Woman A's word, we may not go so far as to jail Man X on her word alone, if he says he reasonably believed Woman A consented because blah blah. When we say "we believe you", sense 2 isn't what we mean. That's uncomfortable so we normally brush it under the carpet, but it has to be so.

The reason to be careful about sense 2 in Woman B's case isn't so obvious, but it's still there. The more times a woman says "I couldn't breastfeed" in the company of a group of women, some of whom are ignorant about breastfeeding, and everyone accepts the truth of the statement, the more people who haven't yet breastfed come to expect that they might not be able to breastfeed, and the more people who might have wanted to breastfeed and been able to give up because they were expecting that they might not be able to and so when they hit difficulty they assume that's what's happened. We've come a long way away from that in recent decades, but only because of all the work that's been done to emphasise that breast is best and most women can breastfeed. (The younger among you won't remember before all these initiatives.)

In the present environment, it's more comfortable to say "I couldn't breastfeed" than to say "I chose not to breastfeed", especially if your internal truth is something more like "I chose, but it wasn't a free choice, because the environment around me made it incredibly difficult to go on, and maybe if I had chosen to go on I might have been able to solve my problem, but maybe I wouldn't have been able to, and I'll never know because I didn't take that path, and really this is none of anyone's business". That's understandable, but you get challenged because what you said may not be strictly true in sense 2. If you don't like that, you might want to choose a different formulation, such as "At the time I perceived that I couldn't breastfeed".

My baby was early, in SCBU, jaundices, tiny etc...woman asks, "Yes but really that shouldn't be a barrier.."
No point trying to justify your decisions to a frickin, judgy asshole who has never been in where you are and if they were, they would make sure they were getting a medal for it and probably a parade.

I didn't breastfeed. I tried. I had clusters of very earnest BF experts round me with my tiny baby in the SCBU urging me on and I sat there, weeping with frustration and shame...
"If you just keep going..." and the simpering tone as if I was just being awkward.
Fucked them all out in the end and did a combo of things which worked fine and dandy.

I hate the BF tyrants and what they inflict on other women. Their casual superiority, their idea of themselves as forging paths to some end goal that I don't understand as evidence shows that when all is said and done, BF vs FF babies have little or no differences later in life.
Make your decision for you. Mind you, as an older mother I had enough confidence to do that but I saw younger women struggle with themselves and it was difficult to see.
As a subject it does wind me up.

I didn't breastfeed either and he's 27 and doing fine . . . says it all.

So is the issue that we need to explore why women feel they have to "justify" not bf? If as suggested on various threads there's no judgement ff mothers and we live in such a pro ff society, that really doesn't fit with so many women feeling they need to have "valid" reasons for not bf. If there's really no judgment and ff is the norm everywhere, why are so many women feeling they must give their reasons? Is it really choice that we're giving women if it's couched as "this is the best, you should do this, these are the reasons you really should do this" "but this thing also exists." Because that's how bf is currently presented. And where women are simply choosing not to (as opposed to trying - however hard - and failing) there are entire campaigns set up specifically to get them to choose differently, whether that's by financial incentive or whatever.

Also when I went to baby groups and talked normally and happily about breastfeeding (no Qs asked etc) people would always fall over themselves to justify why they hadn’t etc etc. I hadn’t asked I didn’t really care why or if they didn’t breastfeed but it was often felt that I was judging etc just because I was talking about my own experiences freely.

Urgh isn't it awful that women feel compelled to reveal their private reasons die to people not believing that they cant.