To think that "97% of women can breastfeed" is a load of crap

[elliejjtiny]

I've been seeing this phrase a lot over the years, about how 97% of women can breastfeed and all the rest of the people who say they can't just need support.

I would guess that 97% of women can probably produce milk (although I wouldn't be surprised if it was lower) but there is so much more to breastfeeding than the mum producing milk which never seem to be mentioned. Mums with disabilities/medical conditions, babies with disabilities/medical conditions, babies who are born prematurely, mums separated from their babies and mums on medication that means they can't breastfeed.

When people gaily spout that 97% of women can breastfeed I find is so annoying and inaccurate. It's usually the same people who want the number of c-sections reduced as well and think that everyone can give birth with no interventions, they just need to stay mobile and ignore the nasty doctors.

Great post.

Last week my Mil called breastfeeding 'trendy' and that's why I'm still doing it with 8 mth old DD 😂

the Economist magazine has a leader and podcast on this topic this week.

The title is: "Mothers who cannot breastfeed have been given terrible advice"
From that article:
A search for “low milk supply” or “low milk production” returns a meagre 14,000 academic papers on PubMed, a database of 40m medical-research papers. “Erectile dysfunction”, which afflicts perhaps 300m men (mostly minimally), elicits 32,000 studies. This neglect matters.

And:
For years doctors assumed this problem was rare: that no more than 5% of mothers suffered from inadequate milk supply.Recent research, by scientists who have bothered to look, suggests that the true figure is closer to 10% or even 20%. The causes of low milk supply are often linked to complicated biological pathways beyond a new mother’s control, as we explore in our “Weekend Intelligence” podcast. Some are genetic. Others may involve conditions like obesity, diabetes or autoimmune disorders, which expectant women cannot just wish away by willpower alone.

Why can’t it be true? I can assure you my milk didn’t come in. I tried so hard to feed my baby. But there was just no milk. No engorgement. Nothing when I pumped. I was devastated. Women should be supporting women not kicking them when they’re down.

Considering that around 18% of women don't have children at all, I don't see how they can arrive at those figures.

Agree. Why can’t it be true?

I think the problem is people assume everyone’s experience is similar to their own, and so if they found BF hard at first but it worked out for them, they think those who didn’t manage to BF just didn’t try hard enough or did it wrong.

I must read this

Autoimmune disease was the main contributor to my low supply. I had no idea it would affect my supply.

On the note of the ED studies comparison, I found it so frustrating when researching supply and milk quality issues that I found studies regarding lactation in farm animals for agriculture purposes much easier to find, and they explored areas that I’d never found human studies on.

And finally one similar point, I only recently learnt that iron deficiency affects supply. A frustrating rabbit hole to go down is what the nhs will say normal ferritin levels are compared to what specialists say is ideal for health.

@JustGotToKeepOnKeepingOn

a woman on the till at Sainsbury’s thought it was a good idea to tell me how bad formula is for a baby and how she was pleased that I wouldn’t get any Nectar points for the formula I was buying

what a disgusting thing to say.

FWIW I don’t agree with not giving points for that. It’s an item of shopping like any other. Some need it, some don’t. Like tampons. Shall we take the points off those too because it isn’t fair that male customers won’t get them?

At least you’re cool eh

Bloody hell. Use your brain.

I adore that your whole disagreement and debate on the issue of breastfeeding kids is based around whether you get supermarket points…..ffs

But this all just goes to show that with support - and knowledgeable experts who work with new mothers - that BF could significantly increase. Which in turn benefits the children and society as a whole

My baby would not latch effectively. I spent £££ on private help plus having lots of nhs help. And going to the support groups etc etc.

The only way we got a decent latch ever was with 4 pillows and a ridiculous position that only lasted 3 min.

I still manged to feed only breastmilk until 6 months with expressing but it was hell. In some ways now I regret it. Because I do wonder how much easier those 6 months would have been if I'd moved to combination feeding earlier.

Most women can but some don’t want to
some struggle and give up.

Some great posts on here and I think far more nuanced than a lot of feeding threads I’ve read. Especially @BertieBotts and @MrsAvocet.

This sort of thing though… ‘most give up when it hurts a bit’ - may the God I don’t believe in forgive the person who posted that.

And maybe remember that what a woman says to you about her reasons for doing something is rarely the full detailed picture, for multiple reasons, one of which is not wanting to walk someone she doesn’t know that well through a blow by blow account of weeks and months of feeding problems.

@JasminealiveI mean yes with regards to the iron bit. And lack of studies in general 100%. Not sure how any breastfeeding support (of which I had absolutely masses) could help an autoimmune disease

A big part of the problem is a lack of education about the reality of breastfeeding. A lot of women claim that their milk didn't come in - but your milk doesn't come in until several days post partum! Before that you produce tiny beads of colostrum, and that's all your baby needs.

Another common claim is that they couldn't produce enough milk and their baby was starving, again, cluster feeding is completely normal. It's very hard, but if you're breastfeeding you should expect your baby to be on your boob most of the time day and night for the first few days/weeks.

I really struggled with breastfeeding initially - my colostrum was delayed due to a major haemorrhage, and my baby had an 80% tongue tie which meant latching was very painful, but thankfully I received absolutely fantastic support from the midwives both on the ward and in the community.

I stayed in hospital until breastfeeding was fully established, I was able to ask a midwife to supervise every feed to ensure the baby was latching, I was encouraged to latch frequently rather than giving formula, warned off dummies, reassured that cluster feeding was normal, fasttracked for a tongue tie release, and I had several home visits from the infant feeding team, and was encouraged to join their support group. I feel incredibly lucky to have this level of support, and without it, I would have given up breastfeeding within a day.

Tldr - Most barriers to breastfeeding can be overcome with sufficient support and education.

And the algorithm has just served up this to me… I have widely spaced breasts. And obesity, at the time, and PCOS. And a mother and a MIL who both crashed out of breastfeeding very quickly in the 60s. And a bloody awful time trying to breastfeed, though we kept going until we ended up in hospital.

You’ve been given free access to this story from The Economist as a gift. You can open the link five times within seven days. After that it will expire.

Why many women cannot make enough breast milk
https://economist.com/science-and-technology/2026/05/12/why-many-women-cannot-make-enough-breast-milk?giftId=Y2E3MmY0MTgtZjEyOS00ZGMxLWIyOTctNDk2ZTViMmRjYmFi&utm_campaign=gifted_article

I could too - but DS1 absolutely refused to cooperate. The senior mw with a group of students watching eventually gave up trying, and my very experienced community mw told me to crack on with bottle feeding as she had done with her middle child.

The advice used to be that if you breastfed a) you fed on demand (which I did - can always read a book) and b) you don't give a bottle as this decreases your own milk supply which is entirely attuned to your baby and fluctuates with their needs. TBH I couldn't be arsed to bottle feed, it seemed such a hassle. I never could express milk, but it didn't matter since I was at home (as were most mothers in the 80s) and had no problem feeding in public places if I was out and about, and did not return to work until my older DC was nine.

Just to be clear in case you were upset by my comment - I am in no way saying that the evolution is what we want today! Back in the day kids died of all sorts of illnesses and ailments it was dreadful. I think it's great that there are other options available for people who struggle with breastfeeding.

All I was saying is that if you removed the element of choice then I'm sure the study would be right and 97% of women could breastfeed. I don't think the study looked at whether the baby was able to take the milk. Cleft palette is 1 in 700 babies so that alone wouldn't move the needle too much but there are many other reasons too.

Hope your little one is thriving and please don't think anyone thinks we want to go back to caveman times!

Or maybe women “claim” things because they’re true?

It’s patronising to assume women who struggle with breastfeeding are just uneducated.

Women who judge others’ birth and breastfeeding choices are hypocrites of the highest order. It’s all “be kind” and “sisterhood” until women reach childbirth, and then some women seem to take the opportunity to compete in the motherhood virtue olympics.

A friend of mine was unable to breastfeed. She repeatedly went to the doctor, to walk in clinics, anywhere that could help. She tried all sorts of advice, she just could not get breastfeeding to work for her. She was devastated. In the end she accepted she’d have to exclusively bottle feed and in time dealt with her disappointment. But she was required to bottle feed her baby, it wasn’t a choice and it wasn’t an excuse. The judgmental comments on this thread would have made her feel even worse.

Even if women do choose to bottle feed, who fucking cares. Perhaps it fits better with her life if she goes back to work, perhaps the sensation is unpleasantly visceral for her, perhaps she carries sexual trauma that makes it difficult to feel her body isn’t entirely hers and pregnancy was hard enough. Maybe she just wants her boobs to herself. It’s no one’s business.

It’s also not as though you can tell which adults were breastfed or bottle fed, the benefits in the long term are pretty negligible.

My main take away from mine and my peers experiences with infant feeding was that many of us came away with a lot of psychological baggage from the breast is best push. Our actual experiences varied, succeeded to BF after some struggle, unable to BF despite lots of support, settled for mixed feeding etc. but we all had the baggage.

I swear I'm not a tin foil hat wearer but these experiences have made me struggle to trust anything that is said on the matter by professionals. There seemed to be this huge agenda to get mums to BF by any means necessary that left some of us quite dehumanised and like our own health and needs didn't matter. Even though I breastfed it's affected my trust. Not that I trust formula companies either, obviously they exist to make money.

In reality I suspect the high proportion of inductions and very medicalised births must affect how many women can realistically breastfeed. I also don't think that triple feeding regimens are realistic unless the mother has a very high level of support from family or friends.

This isn't just mt personal opinion - there's plenty of research that shows that antenatal education and support is lacking and this is one of the primary reasons women stop breastfeeding.