Is there a link between the declining rate of breastfeeding and the normalisation of porn?

[Lio]

I've been mulling this over for a while but need to hear what others have to say as I'm not getting very far on my own.

The thread where crystalpony said that the thought of breastfeeding her children repulsed her (here ) was an eye-opener for me. Mears says on this thread that there are a lot of women who find the thought of breastfeeding repulsive (for the record, crystalpony said she didn't find it repulsive that other people breastfeed their babies, just that the idea of her breastfeeding her own was repulsive - I don't want to re-ignite anything).

Then I was again taken aback by the thread where a lot of MN-ers said they would post topless for a lads' mag for £50k (here )

Plenty of things on Mumsnet, such as this brilliant post from Monkeytrousers (sat 15 April, 18:05:36) had led me to assume (dangerous!) that the prevailing attitude towards lads' mags was that they were not a good thing, so I was surprised to read so many people saying they would consider being photographed for one.

So then I was wondering if there is any link between these two shifting attitudes towards breasts. It would be helpful to know whether women in earlier generations have felt that breastfeeding is repulsive, either in general or for them in particular. Anyone know a midwife/bf counsellor old enough to know about this?

I have tried googling this to see what (if anything) has been written about it, but once you type in 'porn' you get a bit swamped.

Lol Lio, you've outed me! (Don't pretend you've gone to do something important, I'll be checking isketch!)

As for b/feeding getting tedious: when I give ds his last feed, I'm also playing 'Golf' on my mobile phone to while away the ten minutes or so that it takes(pathetic card game of almost no skill). Erm, I would read but it's dark

I do think b/feeding is lovely and I had a great pregnancy but not all good memories of the birth which has affected me a little so I can now understand better why the whole thing can be such a sensitive issue. I do feel strongly that women should be leading the way in how we think and feel about b/feeding (etc) more widely and not some editor of a turd men's mag or gold-plated formula manufacturer.

That's fantastic Booby.

walnut shell - I don't know whether men genuinely find bf repulsive -but that wasn't my main thoughgt, not quite. I wonder whether some women who feel that their economic survival depends on their relationship with a man can come to believe - perhaps erroneously - that they are less attractive whilst feeding, and that they do not want to take the risk. Of course I don't want to generalise - and actually many things (like emotional vulnerability) make women feel they need to be atractive to men - plenty of women with no financial worries rush to 'get their figure back' and prove all thier sexual worth within an edition of Hello magazine coming out!

I remember one poster stating that she had specifically chosen to ff as her relationship with her dp was ropey and she felt she couldn't afford to pour energy into the baby.

I am so glad you found MN booby! And moondog, thanks for the steer, I will deffo get that from the library.

Gotcha. Sorry, had a lot of thoughts at once and probably not very clear.
I expect what you have just said is true to some extent at least, depressingly so.

my dh thinks natural and likes to stroke her head whilst i feed

but when i first started he was very embarrassed for me as was his bf best friend not boy friend espically if i was doing in front of other men but it was never a problem

it was worse when i was pg coz i was leaking from 16 weeks and he used to get squirted if i moved to quick

Oh god moon, that's sad. What crap choice of men do some women have? (simplifying, sorry, late)

She was (is) a very intelligent and lucid poster.

I meant that it is genuinely a sad thing to say, that you can't afford to pour energy into your lo. It takes so much, the last thing you need is a lack of support on what are essentially the basics.

Separate porn from sex?

That's interesting kama - I would really like to know how common it is for people to have such a clear separation.

ok im probably going to get shot by all the feminist anti porn lads mag types etc but i am one of those women who earnt a lot of money modelling for those type of lads mags. i readily admit i wear clothes that are low cut and revealing to show of my boobs coz i like them. the majority of my male friends are beer swilling porn loving rugby blokes but when i was pregnant and breast feeding none of them saw my boobs as a sexual object to them i was just a mum feeding her baby. they did however refer to my huge jugs as porn star boobs and they were all quite disappointed when they went back to there usual size.

i think its unfair to say all blokes see boobs and think porn maybe a fourteen year old boy but every bloke i know including gay men appreciate a nice set of boobs but at end of day they do know that they have another purpose!

i have probably made not much sense here i got a stinking cold and cant think straight but i know what i mean!

Everyone welcome here nulnulcat - hope you are feeling better soon

Interesting OP....but bf rates have been on the (v. gradual) rise since the 70s, and the newest figures show a big jump. 88 per cent of women in England (not the UK....) start to bf these days (with massive regional and socio-economic variations).

The big shift away from bf came when it was discovered that manufacturers could make money by telling women their product was better, and that their babies needed it.

Thanks tiktok, good to hear from you

I guess that the two are unrelated then, but I am now even more shocked about the power of the formula marketing people. I deffo need to get that book that moondog recommended. When I do hear from Aptamil/Milupa I'll let you know.

kama it sounds like a healthy attitude to me

thanks lio but i just got to grin and bear it! dd has chicken pox and we have the worst case of man flu going on here in fact it is now triple pneumonia with complications and he is sure the headache is something serious! funniest thing is he is meant to be a tough squaddie!!

hmm guess who is making the worst patient in this house!

history of infant formula

i found this quite interesting.

i have often wondered if the current obsession men in my generation seem to have with breasts has something to do with bottle-feeding being the norm when i was a baby.

i never felt comfortable bf ds1.i often ended up going into public loos etc to feed him,as i would have to spend time trying to get him to latch on and would have been mortified if somebody in the street had told me to put them away or something.
i have ff my other children,partly due to hating the feeling of having my body taken over in pregnancy(have suffered AND in each one)and partly due to being put off by my horrible experience with ds1.

there was an awful case in the town where i live,about 2 years ago,where a woman who was bf her 4 month old in morrisons cafe was told by the manager to go and feed in the baby changing room as some of the other customers were complaining.at that time,you were allowed to smoke in that cafe

i hope attitudes will change soon,and breasts will go back to being for their intended purpose,rather than just for mens' sexual pleasure.

I never come on bf/bottle feeding threads, but I am very glad I did, thank you for all the links, really great reading, how did MT fair with her course work?

I hope some other newbies get to see these threads, much more interesting than some of the drivel of the last few days.