Breastfeeding: Was there ever a golden age? Interesting article...

[MissRatty]

I just spotted this and thought it was interesting from an anthropological perspective...

www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25629934

I'm a big admirer of Suzanne Barston, who was quoted in the article. She writes about defending and supporting women who formula feed.

Wine at 6 months...maybe that's where I got my taste for the good stuff!

It does quash the old flawed argument about only having breastfeeding as an option before formula which is often also used to make formula feeders feel bad.

I agree crafty. Formula has saved lives, and it should receive credit and recognition for that (or the founders should) but babies are still made ill today by incorrectly prepared formula and in extreme (but rare in western world) cases are dying due to formula.

I think the difference, which is not highlighted clearly in this article, is that before formula, mothers would seek alternatives to BF when they COULDN'T breastfeed (because otherwise their child would die, and some of the alternatives appear to have been a cause of infant death) but today women are choosing formula and not even considering breastfeeding because formula has been marketed aggressively as equal/better than BM. Or maybe my very pro bf views have skewed my reading of the article.

I agree you do what is best for your child.

Formula isn't dangerous unless it isn't legit formula (which of course wouldn't happen in a country like the UK).

It's a choice you can make and sometimes it isn't even a choice if the choice has been taken out of your hands.

I think the important thing is to remember that we all want to do what is best for our baby whether that be breastfeeding or formula feeding it's at no odds, it's what is best for the baby.

I agree petty. I blame the ff culture for the complete ignorance of bf issues which prevented me from bf my 2 older children. Even now bf rates in Ireland are abysmal compared to nearly any other European country. Formula is now doing damage where previously it was doing a service. I for one wish its promotion in any fashion would be completely banned.

Breastfeeding is always best for baby if mum & baby are able to bf. In modern times, it may not seem best for mum & dad.

It's the biological. way in which mothers nurture & nourish their babies. Heavily processed cow's milk is in no way healthier than breast milk. It has no benefit over breastfeeding besides mum being able to take time away from baby to work or whatever.

Formula milk will never be on par or better unless mothers devolve from producing milk/adequate milk & or having mammary glands.

missratty , not sure what you mean. If people state that until formula came along, there was no alternative but to breastfeed, how does that 'make formula feeders feel bad'?

In fact as the article points out there is evidence that there have been alternatives to breastfeeding in many cultures, though for most of human existence, breastfeeding was universally the norm.

Other methods were sometimes unsafe and even wet nursing was unsafe for many babies - babies in eighteenth and nineteenth century France and Germany were often sent to baby farms where they were starved. It's not the case that women only ever used alternatives when they physically couldn't breastfeed either. Social strictures on upper class women in some societies prevented breastfeeding. This led to the serial pregnancies, miscarriages and stillbirths of eighteenth and nineteenth century royalty.

I didn't explain that very well...I meant that often when people choose or have to FF then some who disapprove will infer that anything other than BF is a modern "lazy parenting", that before formula there was no choice and you simply had to BF.