Is breast feeding middle class?

[Charingcrossbun]

A few comments I have received recently have started me thinking, not that it matters at all but, is breast feeding like having humous as a staple of your weekly shop?

Was breast feeding in pub yesterday and DS was crying as I winded him. A women came over to me with a 6/7month old and told me that was why she bottle fed and it was much easier. She made me feel like I was being a bit of a martyr. Obviously she was trying to be helpful so I just smiled and thanked her. I overheard another comment from mums waiting outside the sure start centre "you can tell it's the breast feeding group by all the posh prams".
Just wondered if other mumsnetters had noticed
this?

I don't get how you're first anecdote about the exchange in the pub relates to class at all.
The second one? I thought sure start centres were all shut down.

Yep for sure. Dunno why as bottle feeding more expensive!

There is some sort of correlation between the mother's level of education and bf I think. Also, bf past 6 months is tough if you need to go back to work before a year. And formula is free if you're on certain benefits.

I suspect there's a higher rate of bf in women who met at NCT groups, but only from what I've heard from friends and their groups. These groups are expensive to attend so could be labelled "posh" I suppose.

In what way did the woman think that ff would help your windy baby?!

I don't think it is at all.

Formula is used across the classes for a variety of different reasons. Not all of them a choice.

I come from a family of breastfeeding women. We are all very middle class. I didn't want to breastfeed either of my dc because I just didn't want to and I wanted to share all the night feeds with dh. So I didn't.

I live in very middle class south norfolk and see lots of women formula feeding and lots of women breastfeeding.

I don't think it's a class thing at all. It's to do with lots and lots of different things. Not education either - most women know and understand about breastfeeding (I did) and make an educated choice not to if that's what they decide to do.

It's a really complex issue.

Yes, it is. Just google breastfeeding survey.

However, lower socioeconomic groups tend to eventually start doing what the middle classes are doing. So hopefully we'll see less class-based cultural resistance to breastfeeding within the next two decades. Although with increasing pornification of society it's hard to tell.

I think there's a higher percentage of mc and educated women bf. I thought that's why bf advice is targetted to areas of deprivation etc.

certainly in the toddler group I run its usually the mc or educated mum bf. Its rarely the young low income mums.

Not really IME....

Myself and 4 friends from work all left it really late to have our first dc. I guess we would have looked like the bugaboo meets stokke brigade....

We all took a year off. Long maternity leave.

Only one of us chose to bf....for a couple of months.

Formula is not free for anybody anymore.

I think there is a correlation, from what I've experienced. In the area I live, which is regarded as quite rough and chav-ish, there are a lot of "young mums". The typical chav type who smoke when pushing their young children and swear at their older children in the street who I see formula feeding. The few I know never even considered breast feeding because apparently it was disgusting

But they all had the posh new prams with the fancy silver dummies attached and the frilly blankets.

I'm not exactly middle class but I'm not a chav and I chose to breastfeed. Probably because I was educated on the benefits of breastfeeding and I was comfortable with it. And my pram was borrowed from a friend and isn't very posh. The town next to mine which I sometimes go to (for my favourite cafe) is like the opposite of the one I live in. Very posh and full of "yummy mummy" types and I see a lot of breastfeeding there, which makes me think that SEC has some sort of correlation to breastfeeding.

I am working class and I breastfed all of my children until they were 2 years old. So did my sister(her own kids, not mine!). My in-laws did too, and they are working class.

Yes.

This thread won't end well

In my in laws case, they breastfed over 20 years ago so don't know if it's a case of the working class learning from the middle class.

jumlebee- their older children do the formula feeding???

Of course there will be thousands of exceptions.... But on a population level, bf is strongly correlated with class. That's the facts.

Yuck.

No, I am working class, last time I checked I had breasts that produced milk and not diet coke.

There is a lot of research which suggests that there is a correlation between breastfeeding, the amount of time a child is breastfed and class situation of the parents with a higher likelihood of a mother breastfeeding for 6 months if they are middle class. This isn't to say that to breast feed you must be middle class or if you are middle class you must breast feed, just that socially this is the pattern.
So in short yes, breast feeding is quite dominant amongst the middle classes but not exclusively!

So many assumptions.

Just because someone is on a low income does not mean they are poor or uneducated.

Wasn't there a study recently which demonstrated that bf rates are lowest among white, low income women? The researchers suggested it was related to social stigmas amongst that group.

The research was presented on the BBC late 2013; I forget the context of it though.

This is definitely true for my area though. We are on a border between an estate and a really posh middle class suburb and our baby clinic serves both areas. It's definitely been the case that the middle class mums are the ones bfing.

So many assumptions.

Just because someone is on a low income does not mean they are poor or uneducated.

Sorry I meant does not mean they are working class. You can be middle class and on a low income due to circumstances.

I have friends from different classes and there's no correlation, in my experience, anyway.

If there are thousands of exceptions surely they become a significant percentage?

My oldest sil would have been breastfeeding over 35 years ago, when many middle class women bottle fed as it was seen as 'liberating'.

Maybe the middle class took the lead from the working class?

It's a fairly recent phenomenon, the middle class evangelism for breast feeding. Working class women just got with it.

Mrsruffallo no ha, sorry I didn't phrase that well!

I have never thought about it. I think Breastfeeding is for those who want to and can do it really.