Breastfeeding: Only Middle Class Now?

[redbedheadd]

Was debating this with my DP - he is of the belief that breastfeeding is a mainly a middle class thing. I'm not sure if I agree, wanted other opinions.

We live in a very MC/posh area of London and I'd say 90% of mums at my Baby classes BF. This is his evidence.

We both grew up in working class environments - him in a council estate in London where no-one breastfed and me in a Northern town where is was normal to BF.

So.... thoughts?

If both mums and baby want to breastfeed after 1 years old, of course do it.
SoHotaDragonRetired But I have never read any actual evidence that as late as 1 years old, that breastfeeding offers any health advantage to the baby. Yes I have read lots of statements saying this, but no actual evidence.
Breastfeeding can reduce a woman's risk of breast cancer by about 2%. So great if you want to continue breastfeeding after 1, but this is of a small health benefit to you personally.

The reason to continue breastfeeding after 1 has to be because both you and baby want to. Any other benefits are either exaggerated or there is no evidence for them.

I was 35+ ftm, mixed race, raised on a council estate, university educated, married, management role. I breastfed dc1 to 2yo and am breastfeeding dc2. Most of my friendship group also breastfed unless unable to. 23-42. Working class/middle class. Single mums/partners/husbands. Prior children/ftms. Nct/no classes. We're just all on the same sort of wavelength with similar parenting ideas.

I don’t know how to class myself. I’m university educated and my parents were university educated but I grew up with a single mum and now I’m a young mum with low finances.

I’d say my challenging birth and bad advice had a lot to do with not breast feeding. I had an emergency c-section and felt very unwell after so his first feed was from a bottle. I then mix fed while in hospital but pumped when I got home because I was extremely sore. I told the midwife on the 3rd day visit that I was ready to start again. She advised me not to as it was over Christmas and I should attend a breastfeeding class or else I may be put off if it doesn’t work again! We then stayed with the in laws before baby was even 2 weeks old (big mistake). Everything combined with sleep deprivation put me off. I wasn’t thinking properly, I was just trying to get by and so stopped pumping and much to my horror I dried up quickly. I very much regret not breastfeeding and think I’ll always feel a little guilty. I’m determined to get it right if I have another.

Plenty of things we do for our children are not necessary for their survival, but we do anyway because they are nice/comforting/beneficial. Reading stories to children who can read themselves, fo example. Why is it only bf which needs to b justified as necessary? Why can't it just be nice (for child and mother)?

Why is it only bf which needs to b justified as necessary? Why can't it just be nice (for child and mother)?

Exactly this.

Mixed working/middle class background here. My DM is working class and she never even considered BFing my brother or I. She wouldn’t entertain it, thought it was ‘weird’ and didn’t want to ‘feel like a cow’. My DF is very middle class but even he was bottlefed, my DGM also didn’t like the idea of BFing.

I have EBF’d all of mine. I’m a younger Mum but do have a degree although gained the degree after the birth of my first three DC. No idea where I fall on the class scale, don’t really care. I breastfeed because it’s free and a lot easier than formula .

So great if you want to continue breastfeeding after 1, but this is of a small health benefit to you personally

It has a huge health benefit to me to bf my 18month old... my parenting relies on it so it keeps my stress levels lower thank you very much.
Getting arsey on the plane? Nope, here’s the boob
Tantruming and needs calming down? Being out the boob
Teething and needs comfort? Bring out the boob

Etc etc etc

I’m sure there are national trends but at our local b/feeding cafe we have people from very mixed backgrounds /levels of wealth.

In the interests of the thread, I am working class.
Well, working class background anyway!

Never occurred to me to not try breastfeeding.

I don’t think the point that ‘MC class people can afford consultants’ is at all valid either. This is based on the assumption most women want to breastfeed and those that don’t, couldn’t because they didn’t get enough support. I would say that actually a lot of women simply don’t want to or understand the benefits of it.. or the benefits aren’t important to them.
Most of the girls I know who had children around the same time as me didn’t breastfeed as they thought they wouldn’t be able to have alcohol (based on chats at baby groups)

Not girls - women - sorry.

Don’t be so rude Claire.
And this - yes in some countries that have very large vegan populations, giving milk to toddlers is rare you do realise that bm is perfectly fine for vegans, vegans don’t run about telling cows to stop feeding their calves, milk designed for your own offspring is not un-vegan.
I’m not seeing why a “sensible diet” couldn’t include milk as part of that. I could seek out other sources of any nutrient (I have to ensure protein for example as a vegetarian) but why would I? I resent people pretending to be pro breastfeeding and then imposing their own entirely arbitrary limits on when it’s right to do so.

My mother and mother in law were both working class, both breastfed at least one baby. I've known quite a few working class teenagers who breastfed for at least a few weeks.
I breastfed my first one for 3 weeks, if it had been easy and convenient for me I would have carried on and breastfed my other 2 babies, but it wasn't. I think what people consider 'convenient' depends on their own experiences and how they want their lives to be.

I think more middle class people sign up for things they NCT (which is something you obviously pay for- so ‘lower’ classes are excluded). So they have a group of women who can support eachother through breastfeeding.

I think if you want breastfeeding to succeed you have to want to do it. I know everyone says there isn’t enough support, unless you have premature babies/ or tongue tie etc. I don’t (personally) think this is the case. You have to persevere and look at the health benefits etc. and have a bit of a plan. In the early days I had to watch a lot of videos on YouTube to help me get it right. You have to push yourself to get through those first few weeks and it’s hard but there is support usually if you research and look for it.

I don’t know how to class myself- I’m 27, degree, professional job but my parents are probably working class. BFing 10 month old and plan to continue for a while.

I live in a very MC area, and it is not the done thing to bottle feed here. We had support (bullying) coming out of our ears, and yet, despite 8 weeks of utter hell trying to nail it, bf didn't work out for us. I reached out to others in the same situation because I felt like an alien, people would gawp at me bottle feeding, comment 'hope that's expressed milk in the bottle!' 'Why did you bother having kids if you can't be bothered to bf?' etc. Other mums I met used to hide in the toilets to formula feed their babies, or just rush home for feeds. One mum I met said ' wow your kids actually look like normal kids, I expected them to be different being formula fed'.

Needless to say, it was a dark period of my life.

www.laleche.org.uk/breastfeeding-beyond-a-year/

Taken from the above:

“It is sometimes thought that there is a point where breastmilk no long offers any benefits but this is not accurate”

“It takes between two and six years for a child’s immune system to fully mature. Human milk continues to complement and boost the immune system for as long as it is offered”

“Research on the incidence of illness in breastfed or weaned toddlers reflects these dynamics. Extensive research on the relationship between cognitive achievement (IQ scores, grades in school) and breastfeeding has shown the greatest gains for those children breastfed the longest”

Breastfeeding is convenient once you get past the initial few weeks. I think a lot of people give up in the early weeks as it is bloody hard with cluster feeding and your nipples adjusting, and it's not surprising women might wonder how on earth it could ever be more convenient. In those early weeks I think formula is/would be more convenient for many women. But in a lot of cases it's short term pain for long-term gain. Once supply is established, cluster feeding calms down and your baby (and you!) become more practiced at feeding then it is very convenient.

I meant to add: if you've breastfed for the first few weeks then you've already done the bulk of the 'hard' bit in most cases. Those are the most difficult weeks by far IMO, when it's all new, you are both learning and baby feeds round the clock. But that's not the way it stays!!

Of course its partly a class and education issue - this is what the stats have consistently shown on breastfeeding.

People posting their own anecdotes - 'Im WC and I breastfed', or 'I'm MC and I bottle fed', doesn't negate the statistics at all.

It's a bit worrying/stupid that people do genuinely seem to think their personal experience means that all the accumulated evidence is wrong.

The evidence is there if you care to read it, Claire.

Meta-analyses (the gold standard in medical research) have found dose-response effects for the protective effect of breastmilk against childhood obesity and its link with higher cognitive ability scores, ie. The longer the child is breastfed the greater the effect. These studies control for maternal background.

It is well-documented that immune factors continue to be present in breastmilk beyond 1 year and that below one year these reduce the severity and shorten the duration of common illnesses. There is very limited data on breastfeeding beyond 1 in the West for various reasons, not least its relative scarcity, so it is difficult to offer conclusive evidence that it continues to have this effect beyond 1 year, but it's also difficult to see why it wouldn't continue to have this effect, especially since breastfed toddlers often revert to feeding like young babies while ill. It's also anecdotally observed that toddlers with D&V who still breastfeed take in more liquid as the act of breastfeeding is comforting to them and this helps protect them against dehydration. Breastmilk also doesn't irritate the digestive system of a child with D&V in the way that cow's milk does.

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4301835/
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/apa.13139

I'm Asian and come from a very very poor working class background. I still am poor and working class! and almost every Asian mum I know breastfeeds. I have a lot if African refugee friends too who also all bf. All working class/ council house/ no way near middle class.

Like another poster mentioned, I too find it weird that the figures for bf are so low in the UK as breastfeeding is very very common here.

I thought it was more of a generational thing. DS was EBF, but my Mum never considered bf in the 70s. My Nan’s generation all seemed to bf though (probably because there wasn’t much choice). My Mum said that she was told that bottle was better because science. My Nan and her friends thought that bottles sounded like too much faff when you could just “stick them on a tit” - very earthy wc lady 😀.

Research has been done many timed on this topic and it is true. Whilst there are BFers and FFers in every group, overall, wealthy, middle class and educated are far more likely to BF. Poorer, working class and young less education women are more likely to FF. the research is out there so no need to ponder this one.

'I do think some on here are of the opinion that if you don't BF you must be automatically WC (let's face it, honest translation for what they actually mean is a bit thick/chavvy) my reasons are to state how I felt as someone who is not WC. I might be a bit thick and chavvy though, who knows 😂I do hope not 😂.'

You've got it in one there. I do wish some of the anti FF posters in these bf/ff bunfights would realise FF mums aren't actually thick, we do realise what they're getting at when they allude to 'lack of education and living in areas with fewer resources' and so on

As for the poster upthread who reckons you just have to really want to bf and think about the benefits and it'll happen -

This research is based on British women, not recent immigrants. British women may or may not include different ethnic groups. I'm not sure.

cafelatte, you need to work on your self confidence. By all means , don't breast feed if you don't want to but to save your family the embarrassment is just plain weak...and putting their needs ahead of your childs.