Feminist view of breastfeeding

[NotQuiteSoDesperate]

Sorry it this has been done to death already, but I'm really interested in what the feminist view is of breastfeeding. Now, it's nearly 18 years since I last bf my DS2, but I find many of the threads about bf on MN really absorbing. I thought that we had it quite hard all those years ago, but I'm astonished to read that things seem even worse these days.

All of these Mils and DMs who don't support their daughters, DH/DPs who don't support their wives/partners. Women on MN who find bf disgusting etc., and don't support other women feeding in public or feeding older toddlers.

I just wonder how we have managed to get to a place where our society makes it so hard for women to do something that should be a normal, natural skill. But it doesn't seem to be! Is it simply capitalism in the form of the FF companies? Is it the undermining of a womanly art/skill? For what reason? If it were something men could do, would it be supported/praised/in the Olympics?

I'm simply puzzled.

Now, I am not up to scratch on all of this, but my very uneducated viewpoint is that breastfeeding does a) not make any money/profit (well, it does with regards to health benefits vs. healthcare costs) and b) sexualisation/objectification of women.

"the more I see a choice to breast feed as an ethical choice "

bully for you, for many women it is not simply an ethical choice, it is a lifestyle choice that involves massive personal sacrifice

Formula companies invest in advertising in developing countries because they know they can make a profit there. Not because they happen to have the extra cash and want to use it in a really evil way.

Well, actually Wholly formula companies have strategies to actively undermine breastfeeding both in developing nations, where not breastfeeding is live threatening and therefore it is an actively evil act, and in the developed world, where one could argue it is solely about profit but not 'evil'.

They are well aware of the fact that they need to create a Market (and not breastfeeding creates that market) and they are ruthless and Machiavellian in doing so.

I quite deliberately didn't mention whether or not I have made sacrifices in order to breast feed, because it was shaping up to be a long enough post already!

Yes, they do it to make money. In a manner which causes the deaths of many infants. I'd love to see fairtrade formula and I know a few women who have either needed to supplement or to formula feed who would have loved to see it too.

I am not saying that a mother who used formula is unethical at all. just to be clear.

I think there is a real expectation that BF is something you do 'to a baby' and as a child gets older, the expectation is your priorities should be shifting elsewhere. When I had my Ante-Natal class the MW presented a statistic about BF rates falling off the charts at 6 months and why did we think that was - well, it was pretty clear to our group as most of us were all working women and most of us had anticipated some form of return to work at 6 months.

And what do you know? I did go back to work at 7 months and in preperation for that I had to start using bottles and DS found he preferred those. At that point I felt that my economic work was more important than my mother work - and I'm sure I've not been the only one in that situation.

I think there are also issues about caring for newborn babies in general - the amount of time it takes. There are loads of threads in the BF & FF section from new mothers who feel trapped with a young baby and blame this on BF rather than the fact that young babies need a lot of cuddles and closeness in the early weeks. I remember vividly the shock I had (after being a professional career woman in my 30s) to go from the work environment where I controlled my day, to the home environment with a tiny baby, where that tiny scrap controlled my day!

This culture seems to expect us to carry on as we did before having children with childcare being seen as a "blip" in our otherwise busy day. Many people don't have wider family nearby and they find themselves on their own in the house with a newborn, perhaps with no knowledge of babies and expected to carry on as they did before childbirth. There is so little support for new mothers to allow them to just sit down and feed/cuddle/nurse their babies whilst someone else gets on with the houswork/cooking etc. At least for the first few weeks.

I certainly knew nothing about babies or bf when I had our first DS. My sister and mum came for a few days, DH had a few days off and then I was left on my own - I have never been so scared in my life! We seem to lack the support of other women - and I imagine it must be a lot worse these days as people go back to work much more quickly than we did 20 years ago.

BF vs FF is, I feel, one of the greatest tools the patriarchy has for metaphorically beating us up.

BF and your tits will sag, it's painful, it's bloody hard work, it's easy so if you can't do it you're a bad mother, you won't get support, you're tied to the baby, you get horrible comments in public, your DH will feel left out, your DH won't bond with the baby, you're selfish, your baby becomes a rod especially if you feed to sleep...

FF and you can never fully bond with your baby, you're poisoning him, you're damaging your DCs virgin gut, you're not doing the best for your baby, it's cruel, it's against nature, you're a bad mother, you're poor, you're stupid, you're ignorant, you're selfish...

I really wish we could just let women get on with it in whatever way they feel is best for them.

I honestly had many of these thoughts during the time I bf. I (eventually and thanks to the support on MN) loved bfing but I must admit I'm quite happy now DD's on formula too.

childcare seen as a blip - that is so true, while we get on with our 'real' job of being economically viable.

The right to breastfeed is a feminist issue, but in some countries the health of a nation is depending on it. The has been a complete turn around on the advice given, which just goes to show how little was known about breastfeeding. I think that this just reflects the lack of investment and research into womens health and bodies.

There has just been a turn around on policy in Africa after much campaigning.
SOUTH AFRICA: Policy turnaround on breastfeeding Reuters AlertNet

news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6507309.stm

This is something that has been interesting me since someone mentioned on another thread the idea that it was anti feminist to BF because you are tied to your baby, FF it was said gives you choice.

I have to admit that view had never ocurred to me. Interesting.

Certainly my DM - and most of the DMs I know - was very 'amazed you have the patience Wilson, with you always being so busy and driven' - I always put it down to guilt, but maybe there is a point about choice and freedom?

Sorry to barge in, but I've been thinking a lot recently about motherhood-as-martyrdom and feminism, and how my own practice of feminism was compromised or even erased by my instinct that good motherhood means destroying parts of yourself. I exclusively bf both kids, one for 2 yrs and one for 3, and I disliked every minute of it. I was really, really bad at it, felt that my failure as a mother was re-confirmed every single time I unhooked my bra and got it wrong again (because it always hurt, and always took ages, and I never learnt to do it in public and so sacrificed everyone's social and outdoor lives to bf). But I thought it was the one bit of motherhood I could get right by force of will, and I didn't want to give in to the mainstream and the formula companies and all the other crap-merchants by giving up. A few years on and I think that we have to find ways of freeing mothers from that kind of cultural demand, although I'm also always happy to see someone bf. I don't know the answer.

Hyena this is going to sound glib and I don't mean it to - but if one of the reasons you were so committed to BF was because the alternative meant giving in... to the formula companies would a fair-trade type formula have changed your thinking?

Hyena, your experience mirrored my own, except that after six months I suddenly found breastfeeding very pleasant, something changed and my breasts no longer got engorged. I'd waited that long to give myself permission to stop doing something I hated and then continued for two years because my DD loved it and there was no longer any reason to stop.

However reality is that breastfeeding does reduce mothers' freedom. It is much more time consuming than formula feeding, complications are more likely and it is impossible to know how much the baby is getting, which is a real problem when a baby is underweight. It means you can't take some medication, and you can't easily leave your baby with anyone else.

Obviously there are advantages to breastfeeding - on a population level there are measurable health benefits and it is something many women feel so passionately in favour of because they feel it was an integral part of bonding for them, and they want other women to experience that. But I think there is an element of motherhood-as-martyrdom in the lack of regard for the pain some women experience and the way that health care providers are forbidden from suggesting formula as an alternative.

When I had thrush, I was in agony. It took three weeks and four different GPs for anyone to take me seriously and respond with anything other than a shrug. And that was because one of my nipples had split open and kept bleeding. It wasn't any more painful than it had been before that.

I don't think I was really thinking, and some of it clearly wasn't really about feeding. But it's interesting to think about a fair-trade, organic formula that would generally tick boxes for someone like me (though sometimes it's just another way of branding, isn't it). Or about what it would have needed to make bf seem like a positive choice rather than a prison sentence handed down in punishment for ?motherhood ?being a woman. There's something wrong about making yourself spend 5 yrs doing something very intimate that you really hate. I used to wish for a wet-nurse (and yes, I am fully aware of the politics of that one).

And another thing: while I don't like the 'it's your duty to your husband to use formula' argument, actually dh, who is now sahd, is much better with babies and very young children than I am, and bf certainly reduced him to second parent. At the time it felt right and necessary that the baby and I weren't separable, but now they're older and I'm saner and we're all happier I wonder about the interaction between biology and politics there.

Well that's another good point - if the OH is definitely better suited but BF (obviously) makes you the primary parent...

Actually I would argue that not being able to know how much they are getting is more of an advantage. It only seems like a disadvantage when compared with bottle feeding, before then, what did it matter if you knew how much the baby was having? If they are hungry again later, you have more milk right there on tap. I think this pressure to know how much they are getting is actually quite detrimental - left to their own devices, and assuming no major problems, it does not actually matter whether a baby is consuming the same amount of milk at every feed, or following a growth centile chart accurately to the line (and this isn't actually how centile charts are supposed to work anyway, as far as I know) - failure to thrive has other, more obvious signs anyway quite apart from weight gain. And there is a lot of worrying in general about whether babies are getting enough which in most cases is unfounded and based on misinformation, such as books telling you that babies should only feed for X number of minutes and any more than that is wrong.

The main difference to my mind is that with breastfeeding, you really have to be there feeding the baby yourself. With bottlefeeding it's much more flexible as anybody can do the feeding. But whether either of these are advantages or disadvantages are down to the parents themselves. I quite liked being the only one who could feed DS when he was tiny, but I can see how for someone else it might feel stifling.

In a funny way, though, I felt very free when bf had settled down. I was lucky enough to find it easy and enjoyed it a lot, after an initial "wobble" with DS1. I could go out and visit other people during the day and didn't have to take bottles with me. I went into town shopping and could feed the DCs wherever and whenever they needed.

They were fed everywhere - parks, shops, pubs, cafes etc. No-one ever made negative comments, in fact I only ever had positive ones. To be honest, I am amazed that things seem to have regressed from my experiences of 20 years ago. Perhaps the fact that I was a confident person in my 30s helped. I don't know.

Just musing along these lines. We made a conscious decision that I would stay off work until the DCs started school and I just mentally gave that time up as "theirs", so didn't resent this or feel trapped. My time has come in recent years with returning to work at 40 and re-building my career since then with DH being at home.

Of course it did help that I was in a profession that positively embraces the image of middle-aged women (librarianship!!!) - irony there! But I did not feel that my career stalled in any way. Times have changed though and there seems to be more pressure on women these days career-wise and also financially in general.

I think the thing about having to be present to breast feed is more of a disadvantage because society in general is not set up for mothering in public. If more large workplaces had crèches so mothers could pop in to nurse during breaks, if the under ones were more accepted in pubs and restaurants, if breast feeding in public was the norm, I wonder what difference that would make to how many women felt tied down by breast feeding?

I think actually that those kinds of changes would make mothering in general more compatible with modern life, regardless of feeding method.

where I live, the under ones are accepted in restaraunts and pubs, but once they are mobile, they want to be mobile, and such places are neither fun nor safe for them.

Bertiebotts - failure to thrive is not that rare - I personally know two women* who believe that they starved their babies to the point they risked their lives due to determination to breastfeed. No urine being produced, massive loss of weight. At my local breastfeeding group there were also plenty of women who despite their best efforts found that their babies were falling off the charts. Too often, there were women in tears after having their baby weighed.

If the baby is clearly thriving, there is no need to keep having them weighed. But there are too many horror stories out there, and worry about poor weight gain is a sensible reason for switching to formula.

• I started writing mothers, and then I realised that was something I found weird - from the time my DD was born, I suddenly became X's mother, rather than a woman in my own right, with my needs and wants expected to always come second to hers. The best example of that is how strongly I was encouraged to breastfeed despite my pain, and to feed on demand even though the demands came every half hour.

It sadddens me greatly that how women feed their babies is even an issue, I don't remember any of this type of fuss 21 years ago when I had DD, breastfeeding was encouraged but choosing to FF wasn't seen as something shameful either.
I gave up after a month, DD seemed to hate breastfeeding and wasn't keen on being held when she was fed, she was much happier feeding from a bottle while sat in her pram, weird child that she was, whereas my nephew didn't like to be put down for a second and was attached 24/7 to SIL for at least a year.

There is no right or wrong with feeding, as long as a baby is thriving, what does it matter how they are fed?
One of the most digusting posts I've ever seen on MN was from a man who stated that he would never have let his wife breastfeed in public, it was a deal breaker in his eyes, how does a person get to be such an ignorant fool?