"Breastfeeding is oppressing women" (from The Guardian)

[morningpaper]

Let the breastfeeding rebellion begin

"In the 70s, many women protested that they were shackled to domesticity by the unreasonably high bar set for housework. Now, some say, it's not the vacuum cleaner that's oppressing women, but another sucking sound ..."

But but but but

This is a depressing article.

A British academic wouldn't give her name "because she is concerned about attacks from the pro-breastfeeding lobby"

I also fidn it really annoying when people say "I really tried to breastfeed for six days and it didn't work" - By six days lots of women will be in agony. The message that if you haven't got it cracked by six days then it hasn't worked - is just wrong.

And if there is such enormous pressure to exclusively breastfeed then why are only 3% of mothers still doing it at 5 months?

Yes women will feel guilty if they don't breastfeed. Women have the chance to feel guilty if they don't do a million things that are 'optimal' for their children's health and wellbeing. We can all agree that women need more support in the transition to motherhood, by setting up this monster of a pro-breastfeeding lobby is utterly unhelpful.

Having children BLOWS for women - your fanjo is shot to pieces, your career goes down the shitter, you piss yourself every time you sneeze, you lose your pension rights, your brain turns to mush, you have no social standing, boys stop grinning at your in the street - but BREASTFEEDING IS STILL THE OPTIMAL WAY TO FEED YOUR BABIES. You can't un-do that boring fact. And handing women a bottle isn't going to make everything better.

I am all for the 'breast is best' campaign. There should be more of it. 13 years ago with my first, I was a struggling teenage mum and had bf for 10 days. The HV advised formula as DD was not gaining weight. I just accepted it and switched, it seemed everyone else ff around me and there was no info on bf groups etc, it just wasn't as promoted as today.

8 months ago when I had DS, there was loads of info given, it really seemed the hospital encouraged bf, I was sent bf support info through the post, rang by a counsellor etc. I saw many leaflets etc with 'breast is best' on and I think all these things helped me to still be bf now, despite many many difficulties. I wish I had known back then what I do now, but am very glad I tried at all as many don't.

I don't judge those who don't bf but am saddened when people don't even try as they say things like 'it's pervy,' etc as society has sexualised the breast and taken something which should be a babys right and given it to men.

I very much think bf should be the norm. Have just read a wonderful book, ' The politics of breastfeeding,' really opened my eyes and apparantly in African countries almost all women bf. Hopefully it will be like that here with bf in the near future.

What serious health implications Starlight?

ILMD, professional support for BFing is a rather new fangled invention, and support for BFing was traditionally from mums and sisters and aunts and frineds and neighbours, so I don't think that having to ask one's mum for help means that the woman is embarrassed. In a society where BFing is the norm and done by everyone, one's family and friends are the natural choice for support.

Eleanor totally right. Its just not that important imo..
quite frankly 'Breast is best'.. for some women and not all.
Same sort of crap as natural birth.. who cares.. have drugs if you want to and dont if you dont!!! doesnt make you a better or worse mother..

And Starlight.. my eldest was born in the 80s and I religiously lay him on his tummy as that was the doctors advice at the time.. proved now to be dangerous... too many specialists offering too much advice imo..

I think that normalising it would make it easier, not harder. Like you say, Skidoodle 1) the pressure passed you by, and 2) you had an incredibly supportive network to help you.

To start with, if it were the norm, perhaps expectation would be more realistic - I did NCT and NHS antenatal, but still didn't get a real sense that breastfeeding could be hard perhaps because I knew so few people who had done it. I certainly knew (and now know, even) few who have tried and perservered as you did, Skidoodle. I now know many who gave up - and who beat themselves up about it.

Then, with most people breastfeeding and many working through hard times to do so - with incredible, constructive support - those who couldn't would be helped to deal with their dissapointment. As you say - support would be there for people who are sad to have not established breastfeeding. And other people would be sympathetic rather than judgemental - or at least the person who hadn't managed to breastfeed would feel others were sympathetic and not judging them.

As it is, if mothers-to-be are asking themselves 'shall I, shan't I?' and 'How long for' they are more likely to drop it at the first hurdle, and more likely to beat themselves up about it, and feel guilty every time they pull out a bottle at feed time.

Breastfeeding isn't oppressive - it's certainly not the most oppressive thing about being a mother or indeed being female - it's the way society is heavy on pressure to be a certain way but light on support.

I have been thinking about what some posters have said regarding having babies being what oppresses women.

Do people really and truly find childcare oppressive? I admit I don't find it fun dealing with a particularly horrible nappy, but I don't find it oppressive. I just get on with it.

And what, exactly, is it about breastfeeding that makes it oppressive? The article does not make that clear. Is it the pain, especially at the beginning? Is it the fact that some women feel they are 'tied' to the baby and cannot take a break? Why should the baby's dependence be seen as oppressive? My exclusively breastfed baby could not be left with other people, but this just meant that I took her with me - it didn't mean my life came to an end. I could still go for walks, see my friends, go out to restaurants, go to the library, do whatever. It did get tiring sometimes, but then lots of things in life are tiring. It doesn't make them oppressive.

And I agree with those who have said that a lot of the pressures we feel come from the inside.

I think the analogy with childcare is a very good one actually

I put my babies into childcare - and I accept that it probably wasn't the optimal thing I could have done for them. It wasn't BAD, it wasn't DESCTRUCTIVE, but it probably wasn't the ideal, BEST thing for them to be doing during those hours. But I made that decision (largely for myself) and I accept that decision. I don't bang around shrieking about SAHM-Nazis. Frankly if I felt the need to do that then I would realise that I perhaps had ishoos that I needed to resolve with someone before I gave myself a stroke ...

So, likewise, we make decisions about infant feeding - and sometimes they might not be optimal. They might be best for us personally. And there you go. No need to get furious. Just accept that you did what you did and get on with clearing up the next pile of laundry. So far so meh, surely?

If we have that CHOICE taken away from us then YES, we DO need to get angry, and we do need to ask why, and we do need to campaign to change things (assuming it is not pure biology that holds us back). But otherwise, this rage seems (in the majority of cases) to be rather mis-directed.

And my point is, that we make those decisions that are perhaps not optimal, but that doesn't change what IS optimal, and we can't CHANGE what is optimal just to make ourselves feel better.

so if breastfeeding is oppressive, then presumably the most oppressed women in the world are those of Scandinavia where breastfeeding rates are highest?

poor little souls

my experience of Scandinavian countries (born there, grew up there, all my nephews and nieces born there) is

a) that most women have access to older women who have breastfed because it never went away

b) that it is far more accepted than here to give an occasional bottle and still call yourself breastfeeding (so statistics may be slightly skewed): have friends in the UK who switched to bottle feeding because they had caved in and given a bottle or two and then, because of what they had been told beforehand, assumed that they had blown their chances and would never be able to bf again

Yes, we put pressure on ourselves, so in that way it's our own internal pressure, but that, in turn comes from the many, many things that influence us and put pressure on us.

Childcare, like infant feeding, is a 'choice' we make, but whatever we choose, the pressure is still on. So, to continue your argument, Morningpaper, I'm the other side - a SAHM - a choice I made by weighing up the pros and cons, but I feel the pressure of the cons on a daily basis - being skint, going a little stir crazy, being a bit bored (I confess), not having much of myself, losing confidence in my ability in my work, strain on my marriage from us inhabiting such different worlds... Why do I feel the pressure of the cons? Because I wonder if I made the right decision, and because everyone else who, just like me, is wondering if they made the right decision, discusses the pros and cons ALL THE TIME.

It's the same with feeding babies. You make a choice, and each choice has pros and cons. My bottle-feeding friends say 'yes but my partner gets this amazing bonding experience of feeding our daughter' or 'my baby is so full and settled on her ff'. (One friend suggested exclusively breastfeeding my babies was selfish because it denied my husband something and was the route of my marital problems!) And so I did start to feel tethered to my baby night and day, and I did wonder when my second child was 8mo and not sleeping through and I'd been breastfeeding for two years if my decision not to give a bottle had been wise... But I loved breastfeeding (and I was lucky, I found it easy).

I think my point is that sometimes choice can be oppressive, and the discussion of choice (as we are doing here) is what exaccerbates guilt.

Starlight you didnt answer my question, you seemed to be implying that feeding formula has "serious health implications" What evidence do you have for that?
Are you saying formula feeding has serious health implications, is it really poison? Again evidence please.

thebody I had a natural childbirth
...the bastards couldnt get the ffing epidural in!

thebody: you say "It's all personal choice."

No, it isn't. I wish it was. Women (76 per cent of them) make the choice to breastfeed. Then many of them find it's hard, and hard to get help, hard to find support, hard to breastfeed in front of other people, hard to do it with confidence...and they stop. 9 out of 10 women who stop before their babies are aged 6 weeks wish they could have continued. It's no good airily saying 'women should just choose what they want to do' - they are doing just that, and their choices are scuppered.

And how supportive is it to tell a woman who is distressed and stressed about formula feeding that it actually doesn't matter that much anyway? Would you actually tell someone they are making a big fuss about nothing?

(I don't want this thread to turn into a 'does how you feed impact on your baby's health?' discussion. It does. Sorry about that, but it's not in the least controversial to say these decisions have a health effect.)

ElenorRigby - stating that there are negative health effects to formula feeding, that formula has risks, is not the same as saying that it is poison....

anything that quotes Julia Frogspawn just makes me go meh.

Ok, but it's hard not to sometimes wonder 'did I make the right choice'... whether you stick by it or not. And I'm definitely not saying discussing it is a bad thing.

My point is, in a way we have too much choice. In the case of feeding (and prob for other stuff)there isn't proper support and information - we get conflicting messages. If breastfeeding were normal and well supported (as it seems to be in Scandinavia) by health workers or - even better - by older female relatives - then we wouldn't even be discussing whether or not it was oppressive. In that way, choice is oppressive.

And what tiktok said: "It's no good airily saying 'women should just choose what they want to do' - they are doing just that, and their choices are scuppered." You can't always make a choice and stick to it.

I'm losing my eloquence....

I have to say, the only time I ever see/hear formula likened to poison is in the context of a defensive FF-er putting words in the mouth of the supposed 'BF brigade'. Maybe there are some nasty ignorant rude people who use this sort of language claiming to be pro-BF, but I have never met them and hope I never do.

If only the article could have focused on the real reasons women feel so harshly judged, the lack of support, the cultural and societal pressures that make BF difficult...

(I don't want this thread to turn into a 'does how you feed impact on your baby's health?' discussion. It does. Sorry about that, but it's not in the least controversial to say these decisions have a health effect.)
OK you got me interested, I really am, there must have been something I missed, go on convince me

ElenorRigby: how about you start a thread somewhere else, saying something like 'please share information here about the impact on health of infant feeding'?

I promise you will get answers.

To have it here is to highjack the thread .

As Hanna Rosins article stated, "it?s a no-exceptions requirement, the ultimate badge of responsible parenting. Yet the actual health benefits of breast-feeding are surprisingly thin, far thinner than most popular literature indicates."
Overegged and overblown. No one can quote overwhelming evidence because there is none.

Hanna Roisin chose to disregard much evidence on this. Merely quoting from her article does not bring any evidence to this debate.

Start a new thread.