to think that hardly any mothers in America breastfeed?

[Monsterspam]

Watching "A Baby Story" and other such tosh trashy telly, I don't think I've seen more than one woman breastfeed. Is it the "norm" in the USA to bottle feed? Or is this misinterpreted by the media?

[marenmj]

LeonieBooCreepy, here here!

My lot are mormons and it's definitely the SHOCK that some imagined passer-by could be getting a het up about my tits.

I don't know any men who jerk off to women bf-ing babies, even the ones who are into the milk aspect

And surely, if there's a random perv who does, it's HIS problem?

[artlesschaos]

I have no idea what they do in America but DP's cousin (she's an Essex girl and was a "typical" one until she moved to The States) is obsessed with breastfeeding. She has a 3 yr old and a 16 month old and is proud that she is still tandem feeding them. She carries them around in these apron-like, floral sling things that look like something the kids from The Waltons would wear, refuses to but them any toys with batteries, are made of plastic and are not constructed from wood from a sustainable forest. Her kids have never had any junk food and a treat for them is a handful of rasins or a sugar-free organic jelly.
Strangely though she is quite overweight herself and stuffs herself on crap in private when the nippers are in bed....but anyway, I'm veering away from the point....which is, in her US community (in Florida) they all seem Bfing crazy.

[marenmj]

My parents' religion is the source of their paranoia about bodies. I mentioned on another thread that they told my (then approx 6 year old) sister that God didn't want to see her belly button

But their church has a dedicated breastfeeding room for the ladies where the sermon is piped in over a PA so they can feed the babes in soft chairs away from the menfolk without missing anything. Moms of toddlers use it a lot for a 'quiet' room so that they don't disrupt the meeting. I used to hang in there because the chairs were more comfortable and I could avoid the judginess of the flock.

Prudes, but really intense about women BFing.

I think, based on anecdotal evidence, that the more religious the women are the more likely they are to BF (and be supported to the HILT - they won't talk about it, just quietly pass the new mom some lanolin and breastpads), then as they become more secular it drops off a bit, but upticks again once they reach the 'hippy' end of the spectrum.

That's just my experience from California/Utah/Arizona/Idaho/Washington - pretty much all frontier, which is in itself a very different culture.

[HarrietTheSpy]

I think most of my friends in the US breast fed for a period of time(I am a Yank.) But formula is BIG for sure, and I actually believe it is related somehow to the Yank obsession with GERMS. You can't get a bottle so clean, you know. All of those mothers BF-ing w/o showing first? Eeew. I was absolutely whisked off to those rooms when visiting my parents after DD1 was born. My mother had them all mapped out, wherever we were likely to go.

I don't know. One thing for sure is they're into their C sections. But this is off topic.

[tadjennyp]

Most people I've seen here in Oregon breastfeed. Even when we are doing baby boot camp, I have seen some of them feed while jogging! Formula is also very expensive here so BF is by far the cheaper option. This is quite a right-on community though, we even have a man giving birth!

[mangosTrickyrice]

Bf while jogging? Is that some kind of extreme sport?

[SofaQueen]

Maternity leave? What's that? A colleague of mine took 2 weeks off (which was counted as vacation time!). When I jokingly was talking about getting pregnant, I was told "Not on our time!)

I was a Registrar at a major academic medical center.

[mathanxiety]

Taking time off sacred work for delivering a baby is considered wildly self-indulgent. Most women are lucky to get their own job back after unpaid 6 weeks maternity leave. You can be moved to any other job while you're away painting your toenails and stuffing yourself with bonbons for your 6 weeks. Vacation time is usually one week per year and you can also get about 6 sick days and the same number of personal days. So if you want to bf, you have to be really determined and pump like crazy. Workplaces over a certain number of employees are obliged to provide a room where you can pump undisturbed, but anywhere under 50 employees you'll find yourself pumping in the loo. My observation of bfing in the midwestern US was that it was a middle class and upper middle class thing that only SAHMs could really accomplish. The US is just about the worst place in the world to be a mother, imo.

[jabberwocky]

I live in the Southern US and have found it to be more common to bf than bottle feed. Working can make it tricky for some I guess but most companies have policies regarding time and a comfortable place.

[jabberwocky]

lol, mathanxiety, have never heard of anyone speak of maternity leave as "wildly self-indulgent". I took off 6 weeks with ds1 and 11 with ds2. Haven't known anyone take less than 6

[SofiaAmes]

No different than in the uk. The more educated, the more aware of health benefits and the more culturally trained to bf and therefore the more likely to bf. Surely you are not really basing your opinion of Americans on a "trashy" tv show and instead just trying to be provocative. That would be like me basing my opinion of the english on the Sun.

[ParanoidAtAllTimes]

I am very and at the lack of maternity leave, disapproval of using childcare, attitudes about bf in public and formula pushing.

So glad to live in the UK.

Maybe Obama will do something about it.

[marenmj]

Like I said, all my experience is in the West, and I know it's a different culture there. I've never lived further East than Phoenix

My family are certainly not liberal, at all. In fact some of them are the "tea party" nutters. I think a teeny bit of their drive to breastfeed is fueled by an independant streak a mile wide and distrust of "the government". The tainted-Chinese-formula scare only reinforced that fear.

I know being raised in a mormon enclave (and they are there up and down the 'mormon corridor' of AZ UT ID and several communities in CA) means my experiences are in no way typical. The Church says that being mothers is what women are FOR, so of course breastfeeding is encouraged - provided NO ONE ever gets a glimpse of a breast.

I don't know how to translate that to increasing BF rates the wider community without introducing the repressive and judgemental aspects of it too.

The formula revolution (along with most of the 19th century IMO ) pretty much skipped over a lot of the intermountain west, so it's not surprising to me to hear that families in the East used formula.

[overthemill]

my ds lives in usa and has done forever, since school. when she had her first child she got 3 weeks off work, that was all she was able to get, so b/f was really hard. my mum went over and looked after baby for first 3 months and took baby to my sis at work every 4 hours for feeding

[abra1d]

I have two highly-educated and intelligent friends in their late fifties who live on the East Coast.

They are stunned when I talk about breastfeeding and not weaning until 16 weeks (the recommendation when my children were babies). They seemed to regard breast-feeding as somehow anti-feminist and inconvenient.
Neither of my other two younger friends: a lawyer in Baltimore and a PR in Houston, breastfed.

My friend in Michigan who's in her early 30s breastfed both hers, and so did a (western)Canadian friend.

Interestingly, it does seem to tie up with the East/West theory!

[BertieBotts]

I remember a comment on that cross-nursing documentary where two sisters cross-nursed each others' babies, in Southern America and they said that they were seen as very strange, because the general attitude where they lived was that breastfeeding could turn your daughter gay or your son into a "breast man".

Obviously this is extreme and I don't think all American people think that! But I would be very very surprised to find an entire community anywhere in the UK who held similar views.

Formula is pushed very heavily there. They send free samples (often an entire can) of powdered formula through the mail to expectant and new mothers. There may also be an issue with WIC (which is similar to our healthy start voucher system) being very prescriptive - I've seen mums on US parenting boards post questions like "I have loads of jars of X flavour Y brand baby food which my son does not like, how can I use it in a recipe or something?" In the UK breastfeeding mums can buy cow's milk for their own consumption with healthy start vouchers. In the US if you are breastfeeding I think the formula vouchers are "wasted". Although I did hear of one mum who breastfed and drank the formula herself

[BarakObamasTransitVan]

"breastfeeding could turn your daughter gay"

Good grief - that's a new one on me. Up there with "boobs are for blokes, not babies" (or however it goes). Although the former is a teeeeeensy bit funny as well as , whereas the latter just makes me

[Concordia]

I have found this thread very sad.
How can a society whose sitcoms and films push sex whenever and with whoever you want be so prudish about breasts feeding babies?
And to not give women the choice to stay at home with their babies for more than a few weeks is very sad too......
Mind you if MIchelle Obama found breastfeeding hard and she can do everything including hundreds of hula hoops and having a gorgeous powerful husband and everything i am feeling quite smug for breasfeeding 2DC successfully.

[viennesewhirl]

I lived in NY for a couple of years and regularly read US parenting sites such as youbemom/urban baby and know that there are tons of women breastfeeding there. Like SofiaAmes says, the level of education etc. plays a big role.

Don't know what you all think, but I live in Austria now, and from here, it seems like the UK is still lagging behind quite a lot in terms of attitudes towards breastfeeding. Here, it's really the norm and no one would refer to bf'ing beyond 6 months as 'extended'. It's just what you do. No one bats an eyelid if you bf in public, and there's enormous support if you're having difficulties bf'ing at the beginning (as I did with ds1).

[MrsTittleMouse]

I used to work in the USA and I was told at the start of my employment that the company was very "liberal" and "generous" because they allowed 12 weeks unpaid maternity leave. Although most women didn't take it as it was considered a bit lazy and selfish to use the whole lot. Anyone who was back in work in under 6 weeks was thoroughly admired.

I can clearly remember a new mum expressing in the toilets and looking absolutely knackered and miserable. She left shortly afterwards. I hope they had enough money for her to be a SAHM, but I know that the health insurance bills alone for three people on one income are crippling.

[undercoverelephant]

I have fond memories of being at a new moms meet-up in a starbucks in Brooklyn while a mother was walking around almost topless feeding her newborn twins! Cannot imagine that happening anywhere in London - even in my local Costa coffee, which bears (or bares?!) its "breastfeeding friendly" logo!