Is breastfeeding just a middle class thing? Radio 4 Women's Hour

[Witchycat]

Interesting feature on Women's Hour today. Suggests women from lower socio-economic backgrounds don't usually even attempt b/f and interviews a number of women about why they didn't want to and what is being done to provide better information to encourage women to make an informed choice.

Think this will take you to the Listen Again page - go to the bottom & click Women's Hour on the Top 5 box (assuming your pc has speakers and you are not at work!)

Where I lived when I had Ds was a predominantly lower end working class area but where large new housing estates were being built. From our ante-natal class (of about 15) 8 went onto successfully BF for atleast 5 months. Unfortunately we were all the educated, returning to well paid job mums. The ones that were either young/single parent or not working all bottle fed. Our Health visitor was delighted- we all attended like clockwork the weekly bf support group and were apparantly the most successful group they had had. It was such a shame as the bottlefeeders didn't get any support group............-all efforts from medical personnel seemed to go the Breastfeeders.

Bit of an irony that it is the mums who are returning to work that are breastfeeding though. Remember that having to put my two on the bottle was the biggest trauma of going back for me. And if I had been better educated/supported I think I might have expressed rather than mixed fed at that point.

can anyone explain what the point was about being able to exchange the milk tokens for other things? i.e. that there was a financial incentive for formula feeding because your tokens would then be worth more to you.

(am prob being v unworldly here...)

There isn't a financial incentive to formula feed because of tokens, you still have to buy bottles, buy teats, buy replacement teats, a sterilizer, a bottle brush...

Then there is the odd time you get caught in town without a bottle, so then there is a pack of 4 pre-sterilised bottles, a carton of formula, blah blah blah.

But, I will say this in the defence of formula feeding. You can insist that your dp pulls his weight at night.

You can't exchange the tokens for anything other than formula milk or cows milk though.

you can however sell them. or if your on good terms with the shop keeper or milkman you can pay for other things with milk tokens.

hmm [furrowed brow]. If you aren't formula feeding, you wouldn't want formula at all, whereas cow's milk you can give to anyone (cups of tea, milk for older kids, whatever) even if you don't want it yourself. Am not sure what that woman's point was in the discussion then.

If you bf, you don't even have to get out of bed .

Anyhow, the benefits of bottles are available to bfers if you can be bothered expressing - the Woman's Hour piece made it all sound so either/or.

ah. that makes more sense custy.

I will watch this thread with interest.

I am from a working class back ground and in my late teens moved out and lived in various places with different classes.

Growing up in my area I never saw anyone breast feed or even talk about it. I always just assumed that when I had a baby i would.

People were shocked to see me breast feed and any mums i met or spoke to would say "Oh no, I couldnt do that, no way. Sucking on your nipples all day with no break?"

I live in a very mixed area now but mainly middle class and I notice alot of the mothers around here do breast feed. Actually a few of my close "working class friends" who had babies in the last couple of years decided to breast feed as they saw how much i enjoyed it. I think its more of a generation thing. But I do think mothers in low or mainly working class areas "today" bottle feed. I guess most follow what they see.
I think its all a culture thing too but dont know enough to comment just based on the areas i lived in.

oh, now its Muslim mothers. well, I know loads of Muslim women, and Ive never heard this myth.

as for Asian women envying white babies because they look plump and healthy, that's just racist nonsense Im sorry to say.

Nightynight, I haven't heard the colostrum thing from anyone Asian or Muslim, but then, I haven't discussed breastfeeding with anyone who was Bengali, who I think are the group who think this. I have heard it from midwives and BFCs. I don't think all Asian cultures have this belief, nor do all Muslim ones. Just at least one.

Islam is pro-breastfeeding. But some cultural beliefs aren't really helpful to breastfeeding, and this is a good example of one.

I think bottlefeeding is popular in many Asian/Muslim groups for the same reasons it is in White British culture - lots of misinformation, lots of (now illegal) advertising.

I forget why my b/feeding consultant friend gave as the reason why they were targeting Asian mothers (apart from the fact that they were the lowest uptake group locally, in percentiles - also targeted low income area locally which was the second lowest uptake area (lower down the thread - I brought up the ethnic mothers thread) She helps run coffee mornings ran as a support before and after birth where they give lots of b/feeding advice and help with b/feeding bra discounts etc - I will check with her

I have just listened to the programme on replay and I shall be discussing this with my Mum who I know would have listened as she is an avid Radio 4 listener she is also very middle class but failed to breast feed with any of her 7 children (she did attempt to) I who too consider myself to be middle class will be trying my hardest to breast feed but will not hesitate to change to the bottle if I need to.

Flutterbee

I don't know anyone who didn't find it hard! Get a name of a good NCT b/feeding consultant so that if you are having problems with it you can contact them, a godsend for many people I know

Midwifes get 4 hours training on b/feeding on their whole course so don't expect them to be a mine of information! Check to see if your hospital has a b/feeding consultant and if so, try and see them before you are discharged to check on positioning etc

Good luck!

NQC & fimac, thank you, - The point I was really making is that a truth (such as that many mothers from a particular area and social class hold a certain belief) can so easily be repeated as a generalisation (such as "Muslim mothers believe X"). And none of us, whatever our background, want to be tarred with a stereotype based on a generalisation.

Very interestiong. Thanks for that link. No time to read thread just yet. Hope to later.

i'm very middle class in a lefty/brown rice kind of way and always assumed i would bf even though my mum didn't. but when pregnant i was surprised to find some contemporaries declaring they would bottlefeed from the start. i totally understand switching to fornuka if bf is not working out, but not to even try... i find that weird. and yes the demographic completely backs up the theory - the more working-class/council house/less educated, the more likely to bottle feed.

however even among breastfeeding middle-class contemporaries i see a real squeamishness about bf - many express and use a bottle when out, so no one sees their norks. i find it really odd! i don't give a damn who sees mine and even if i did, expressing/sterilising etc is such a palaver.

i live in a very baby centred and extremely middle class area. starbucks is teeming with bf mommies. loveit!!
i think it is an age/cultural/financial thing too, sadly. my sister formula fed her two bbies, her ds2 was 10.5lbs at birth and in special care unit, and she was too embaressed to express for him, then thought he was too big to feed on her own so didn't really get started.
i struggled with it at first with ds1 but got tons of support and managed to bf for 14 months with ds1. my mother was getting worried about it and i used to lie an say i'd finished feeding him as it seemed to offend her somehow. she thought any sleep/behavioural issue we had with ds1 was urely down to " extended" bf.
She siad she hoped i wouldn't feed ds2 for such a long time as ds1.
i think it is all about being repressed with her generation. i was adopted so most def formula fed.
BTW ds2 is feeding so well and growing so well compared with ds1, i think it is because i am more relaxed and bf is so much easier this time. i don't expect to finish feeding before 14months with this one either.

I think it's more of an education/informed thing which can be linked to class, but not necessarily. Of the approx 6 people I know who had babies recently (a mix of middle class with working class and/or working class parents of their own) I'm the only one still breastfeeding. Really have to bite my tongue at times when hear the same old myths churned out. And I mean "education" wrt breastfeeding, not in general.

Oh just being nosey kama,and sort of trying to see where you fit in with the demographics.

Thanks. Curiosity satisfied!

Nightynight, I'm sorry if you thought what I'd written was offensive, but just because you don't know anybody who thinks that, doesn't mean it doesn't happen. The woman in the bed opposite me gave it as her reason for not bfeeding until she'd left hospital - she was going to, she thought, but not until her milk came in - because "in her culture, they don't feed colostrum to newborns".

So she wouldn't have gone on the numbers for "breastfeeding on discharge" - and she may have found that breastfeeding was difficult after not doing it straight away and continued bottlefeeding.

I was on a long haul flight once with my baby who I was b/feeding. We were alone in a block of four seats apart froman Asian girl with a very small baby.
She kept on going to the loos with a weird breast pump that looked a bit like a bicycle pump,then returning and pouring it into a bottle to give him.
Thought it was taking modesty to the extreme especially as it was a night flight andnearly everyone was asleep.

But...I have seen pictures of veiled and headscarved women b/feeding in a way that shows quite a lot of boob. I was lead to believe that when feeding generally (very generally) Muslims don't overly 'sexualise' the breast.

I grew up in the Pacific where there were nothing but bare breasted women,whether or not they were b/feeding! I've even seen awoman breastfeed an orphaned piglet (very important acquisition in this part of the world.)

a couple of comments on this thread have surpirised me. Firstly the whole notion that it is a middle class thing seems like a misnomer to me because bottle feeding is more expensive fore the working classes to be able to afford. Surely we go for the cheaper option. And secondly ks' comment that some people don't b/f because: 'that it was painful (well it is a bit sometimes at the start,' completely dismisses the fact that for many it is VEY painful throughout, not just at the start