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Infant feeding

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Original poster

Is formula feeding a feminist act?

202 replies

FeelLikeTweedleDee · 09/01/2011 18:29

Excuse me as I'm high on Lemsip so my musings may seem unusual - I've been thinking about womens motivations for NOT breastfeeding.

Out of all the pregnant women I have spoken to who plan to formula feed from birth, the most common reason given is "I don't think it's fair that I should have to do all the feeds/shoulder all the responsibility for our baby's nutrition" which is an argument I can sympathise with. I understand the lactivists response: "there is so much more a man can do than feeding" but one must admit, feeding is pretty much the bulk of what a newborn needs. It also ties the mother to the baby in an exclusive manner which nappy changing, soothing, playing, etc does not.

I admit (online only because I'm a pussy) that women who chose not to breastfeed before even giving birth used to anger me. I couldn't understand why they would not put their baby's needs first. Why they wouldn't even give breastfeeding a shot? But perhaps sexual equality is sound reasoning?

What is your opinion on womens non-medical motivations for not breastfeeding?

If you're thinking "it's none of your business what feeding choices other mothers make", I disagree. Formula feeding costs the taxpayer a substantial sum every year re: NHS resources as well as its impact on the environment, etc. Thus womens non-medical reasons for not breastfeeding is an important issue.

OP posts:
legallyblond · 10/01/2011 13:13

Ok - caught up on the thread now! Everything startingafresh has said!

legallyblond · 10/01/2011 13:15

Oh, and in the masculine environment of my work, i often managed to acheive better results in certain circumstances than the men by NOT acting as a man would. And some of the senior men did recognise that...! Long may that continue when i go back to work..!

Petsville · 10/01/2011 14:49

Sorry borrowing wife's account again
(to wife: thanks for the great write up).

"Is formula feeding a feminist act"
As far as I can see you could as easily say
Is formula feeding a paternalist act - have you considered that actually some men feel somewhat disenfranchised by the fact that they cannot feed their baby? Indeed I think you could make a good case for saying that the inability for men to lactate is the nail in the coffin for intelligent design. (please note this is not male animals in general merely human males - I can't see they would be terribly unfitted by the ability to lactate and given the demands of Human babies it would be jolly convenient).

If one is focusing purely what is best for the baby nutritionally then all things being equal it seems pretty unlikely that anything could beat BF, but that is not a feminist issue either, though it explains why I didn't try to discourage my wife.

OK that's my penny worth

tiktok · 10/01/2011 14:58

More than happy to knock nails in any coffin for intelligent design, Petsville's DH.

Do you mean breastfeeding by women only is a 'mistake' in evolutionary/teleological terms? I think not.

I have some quits strong views on men who feel disenfranchised by not being able to breastfeed. Apart from saying 'oh, diddums' and rolling my eyes a lot, I think they are mistaken - they are equating the method of food delivery with attachment. It is the quality of the interaction that counts in attachment, not the milk containers.

It makes perfect sense for the baby, who has developed inside the body of a person, to continue to be nourished by that same person - we are born 'too early' in a way - half cooked! Our brains are large ('cos we are humans) but if they got larger in utero, we'd not be able to come out of the birth canal, so happily, we evolved to be born with only a small proportion of our brain completed. We need a lot of holding and cuddling and interaction for our social brain to develop normally. Breastfeeding, with its quick-to-digest formulation, and its connection with the familiar taste of the uterus, ensures frequent holding and so on.

Breastmilk also has 'brain boosting' ingredients, so it's all very convenient really.

toddlerwrangler · 10/01/2011 15:10

oh goo grief foxy, do get over yourself. I will try again and word it a different way - it concerns me when people start to dislike formula and formul caompanies based on books like the pobf.

If people have been concerned sine uni, FINE! thats got nothing to do with my point.

Anyway, the psot has moved on somewhat !

BuzzLightBeer · 10/01/2011 15:22

Posting from Smugsville, Foxy? Hmm

BuzzLightBeer · 10/01/2011 15:23

sorry, not foxy, legallyblond is what I meant to say, apologies to fox. Blush

foxytocin · 10/01/2011 15:40

"it concerns me when people start to dislike formula and formul caompanies based on books like the pobf."

I still don't see what you don't 'get'. The pobf did not start to make people round here dislike formula and formula companies.

end of?

what is there that you don't understand about that clarification?

The pobf may have informed some more individuals about the insiduousness of formula promotion in the developed and the developing world and may have consolidated the knowledge of others.

but it shourlsy didn't start a trend around here.

you really ought to get the book and read it btw. The library in Leciester can buy or order a copy in from somewhere else I should imagine.

foxytocin · 10/01/2011 15:44

shourlsy?

surely!

tiktok · 10/01/2011 15:49

I'm puzzled, too, foxytocin.

Why would it 'concern' anyone that some people read a book and then become aware of and even perturbed by the issue it describes?

That's ignoring the very simplistic notion that reading the book causes someone to 'dislike' formula - I think it certainly does lead to some people disliking the unethical activity of formula companiues, and why this would be something to 'concern' someone, I don't know.

Reading is one way that people become alerted to issues affecting other people. They stop being immersed in their own experience, and they cease using their own experience and feelings as starting points for their opinions.

I can think of several instances when this has happened to me - it's just part of maturing, innit?

PenguinArmy · 10/01/2011 15:54

did tiktok just say innit?

tiktok · 10/01/2011 15:55

Who, me?

No. Of course not.

I am always grammatical, me.

MoonUnitAlpha · 10/01/2011 16:04

I have never read Politics of Breastfeeding but am still able to question the practices of the formula companies Hmm

Indeed I was made aware of the Nestle boycott by my DP (who I doubt has ever read any book about breastfeeding).

toddlerwrangler · 10/01/2011 16:09

No, not 'end of'. Not quite sure who you think you are on that one.

my point is, people read books like pobf, the book reaffirms thier existing beliefs (due to its bias) and as such people do not question the information the book holds. Not saying the book is wrong, Im saying that questioning and thinking about what we read can only ever be a good thing. blindly believing what ever we read cannot.

I am talking generally here as on my mobile so cant type a long reply. of course i need to read the book to comment, but i am talking about the dangers of blinddly believing what we read, not the dangers of one book.

StartingAfresh · 10/01/2011 16:14

Have you read it toddler.

It's not much more than a list of published research in accessibly form, cleverly put together to form a story through history.

And, whilst the title has 'breastfeeding' in it, it is to me much more a writing of womens history of which breastfeeding and childrearing is an intrinsic part rather than the other way round.

tiktok · 10/01/2011 16:23

Toddlerwrangler - you are expressing nothing but an utter banality here. No one sensible would think it is a good thing to read anything without ever questioning it, and to believe something just because it is in print somewhere.

I think it is fair enough to cite the PofB as a resource and source of information - you won't know this because you are unfamiliar with it, but it has been around since the late 80s and is internationally-accepted as a learned and well-referenced piece of academic literature. In the same way, you might well cite a well-known and respected biography, or historical study, if you were engaging in discussion in the relevant fields...while accepting that not everything is likely to be 100 per cent correct.

toddlerwrangler · 10/01/2011 16:27

No, not 'end of'. Not quite sure who you think you are on that one.

my point is, people read books like pobf, the book reaffirms thier existing beliefs (due to its bias) and as such people do not question the information the book holds. Not saying the book is wrong, Im saying that questioning and thinking about what we read can only ever be a good thing. blindly believing what ever we read cannot.

I am talking generally here as on my mobile so cant type a long reply. of course i need to read the book to comment, but i am talking about the dangers of blinddly believing what we read, not the dangers of one book.

toddlerwrangler · 10/01/2011 16:29

No, not 'end of'. Not quite sure who you think you are on that one.

my point is, people read books like pobf, the book reaffirms thier existing beliefs (due to its bias) and as such people do not question the information the book holds. Not saying the book is wrong, Im saying that questioning and thinking about what we read can only ever be a good thing. blindly believing what ever we read cannot.

I am talking generally here as on my mobile so cant type a long reply. of course i need to read the book to comment, but i am talking about the dangers of blinddly believing what we read, not the dangers of one book.

wallscarpetclothing · 10/01/2011 16:29

This is the bf catch-22. If you don't know much about breastfeeding, or the issues around infant feeding, then you find it bizarre that other people might be angry about things or see it as a political issue. You tend to assume they're obsessive, interfering, judgemental, lack perspective, etc.

But if you learn more about it and decide that actually there are some pretty shocking things going on (like with formula marketing), then you might have changed your own opinion, but nothing you say about breastfeeding from then on will carry any weight with anyone who knows less about the issue than you: you are now clearly 'biased'.

It's catch 22 - the only trustworthy people are the ones who don't know much about breastfeeding; the ones who do know a lot about it become by definition untrustworthy because that knowledge often makes them express views associated with 'militant bfers'.

tiktok · 10/01/2011 16:46

wallscarpetclothing - good point well made. I remember a thread on mumsnet where someone (may have been me!) cited a paper from the International Journal of Lactation, and it was dismissed because any journal with that title 'must be biased'.

NinkyNonker · 10/01/2011 16:57

YES YES to StartingAfresh Mon 10-Jan-11 03:06:44

PenguinArmy · 10/01/2011 17:08

oo oo I've fed DD in a work office, in both my UK and US jobs

(sorry realise that goes back a bit)

Petsville · 10/01/2011 17:14

Not disagreeing that babies need to be loved, cuddled and securely attached to their parents (both parents, not just the mother), but I don't think FF babies are necessarily less so - only that nutritionally they're not being fed quite as well as they could be. In our particular case, I think what we lost on the swings of FF rather than BF we would have gained on the roundabout of a better and more responsive mother in other ways. And I'm not sure that "diddums" is necessarily a fair response to a father who wants to be able to share the care of his child and is worried about his wife cracking up from exhaustion. (I can imagine circumstances where the man is being a jerk and it would be a fair response, I admit.)

On a related point, it seems to me that part of the point of feminism is getting the world to acknowledge not just that women can be and are intellectual and ambitious, but that men can be and are nurturing. Our ability to parent a baby well doesn't depend on having two X chromosomes.

This is me again, not DH, by the way!

NinkyNonker · 10/01/2011 17:15

Bum time out.

Anyway, meant to say that I haven't read PofB and still feel the same way about formula companies, esp Nestle.

DD is 5 mo and BF, and will be indefinitely...I haven't decided yet whether to go back to work in Sept or not yet. I may be middle class (whatever that is) but have no help...why would I need it? I would need to sit/stop to feed from a bottle, it would take more time as I would have to make it up etc. One of us would always have to stop and sit, yes, it always has to be me but why would that be a problem unless DH was a lazy arse who didn't pull his weight elsewhere?

DH is a fully bonded, amazing father regardless of never having fed her. He is completely supportive of BF, and to be honest, is very proud that I do. He would have gone down in my estimation were he to have been so insecure that he begrudged or been jealous of my feeding capabilities.

toddlerwrangler · 10/01/2011 17:22

Sigh. Never going to get anywhere, so am adding this to my (large) agree to disagree pile!!!!

I think it is my job that makes me so mistrusting of information presented to me as fact, however well researched, official and allegedly trustworthy the source. I dont like any one document book, howeve well resourced, being put on a pedastal but thats a whole other thread I suspect!