Breastfeeding and feminism

[user123098]

Hey
Not trying to be a GF or here to discuss merits of bf or ff but just interested in views - someone said to me tonight that bf is inherently anti feminist as it means men and women can't share domestic and caring load of looking after baby. It's a really interesting point as bf does mean men can't be as involved in feeding, potentially bonding etc
What do you think?

Co sleeping is still strongly discouraged. Because public health professionals believe woman are not intelligent enough to follow safe co sleeping guidelines. So the message is always it’s unsafe. That means tired mothers do unsafe things like fall asleep in a couch feeding the baby.

Not so much in the UK any more, as I understand it current guidance is based on risk management recognising that tired parents will sleep with their children, and so if they can discourage that from happening in the most unsafe manner, then that's good. The US is still violently anti-cosleeping in a way I think is unhelpful.

Batteries I absolutely agree with what you're saying, and there was a fascinating thread a while ago called something like "Trying to get an A+ in parenting".

I would say that isn't a feminist issue, but dads don't do it in the same way do they? Dads don't constantly worry and wonder if they're good enough, compare themselves to other fathers, etc.

I agree with batteries. I’ve been mulling why my friendship group seem to mostly have had a difficult time with BF and other associated parenting minefields.

I think it’s because we are older mothers (thirties), all grads or post grads, all professional women used to paying our own way and doing things to our own schedule.

We all did the classe, bought the books, read all the advice etc. Essentially studied for parenthood like it was a test.

For intelligent women we were essentially easily caught by every parenting fad going. We broke into factions based on which method we preferred (gentle, attachment, Gina Ford).

And then the babies actually arrived and it started to dawn on us that there was no control. This wasn’t really the test we’d prepped for and that we’d been sold a load of shit by a number of ‘experts’.

BF was the most starkly marked out of all the areas of half truths and white lies. Ten of us started EBF and only one made it to a year. If the rest, myself included, their BF experience was so awful that it caused massive emotional upset and physical issues in the first months of motherhood.some of the stories they tell are pretty horrifying.

What annoys me is that all the BF support I’ve seen is preaching (or brow beating) the converted- the middle class NCT mums.

Bertie

I think fathers do feel it and I think that’s the reason so many blokes don’t bother with babies and get involved once they can walk and talk - ie once the child can validate them, and give them a A+ in Playdoh (for example )

Mothers are much less likely to say this baby is boring, you look after it until it can reward me for my time. I guess the fact men can choose to walk away more easily is a feminist issue. But the underlying dynamic of wanting reward from a baby is the same for men and women IMO.

You say dads don’t compare themselves to other dads but the whole ‘competitive dad’ thing with kids sports is definitely to do with other dads, not the kids!

In those early days not one single hcp required DH to be present when issuing instructions / giving info about DD2 (e.g about jaundice and appointments related to this). On top of major abdominal surgery, no sleep, trying to establish bf, major bleeding, I was expected to deal with everything else (despite being in terrible pain and on pain meds). Why? My DH is a functional adult and parent to the baby. This is a feminist issue.

DH did have the gall / total selfishness to complain once that the hcps didn't ask him how he was feeling. I wish they had, it would have saved me being responsible for his emotional wellbeing on top of everything else. I wished they'd stopped bloody asking me how I was feeling because unless they were going to help me it's a bit pointless.

The focus on looking for pnd is misplaced imo if you're not going to do anything about the conditions that might cause depression. They offer counselling or meds when what you really need is someone to hold the baby while you sleep / have a shower. There was a very good thread on this at the time about how pnd was a rational response to an intolerable situation. That thread helped me a lot more than my useless HV. Once I started cosleeping and getting more sleep I started feeling a lot better mentally. What a surprise! Incidentally, no one ever said anything pro co sleeping to me with dd2 (one midwife did with dd1) they were all resolutely anti. I practice safe cosleeping but had to find that info myself.

True!

Oh that’s good to hear that it’s relaxing a bit in the UK. Australia seams to be ramping its negativity to cosleeping even more

Pay my memory might be wrong here but I’m sure I remember menopause used to be much more of a popular topic to write about / mention in comedy shows. Back when HRT was being pushed at every menopausal women, big pharma saw £££ and it was all over places like the daily mail that HRT would mean you could keep your libido and thus save your marriage / keep your man happy.

Then the news about HRT being a risk factor for cancer / heart problems broke and popular culture went back to seeing the menopause as a shameful secret.

I’m probably wrong but I just have a suspicion that actually menopause is a target for big companies and once they find the next big thing we’ll all be told we must take it

Just wanted to add a few points sorry if discussion has moved on a lot

• just because some countries have higher bf rates, does not mean the women are enjoying it, wanting to do it or find it easy - they just might have no other choice at all. I think it is feminist to offer women choices and to support them in whichever route they go down. Leaving no option but to bf either because formula isn't accessible, literally or financially or because culturally ff is shamed and shunned out isn't a feminist win so I always shudder when people trot out countries with high bf rates as 'better.' Having been to Norway and worked there - lauded as bf utopia - I saw a lot of upset mothers struggling with pain and mastitis etc but told to get on with it.

• I don't think the narrative around bf is right; rather than shut down formula talk or bleat on about breast is best the realities should be shared; I don't know a single person who found it easy but I do know women who've had mastitis, cracked nipples, bleeding, abscesses, sleepless nights, engorgement etc by NOT talking about those things, when it happens you feel alone and more likely to quit as you don't realise they are common

Never considered it before but the internal pressure to be perfect is fascinating. I was raised very mc but otherwise the similarity ends.

My career/ every moment was spent in an industry where it's accepted that no matter how good you are, shit happens. And even those who are accepted as the best sometimes have complete cock ups. Perfection was not the accepted standard. Sure, look at mistakes and learn from them, but quickly move on.

Also having always been an animal person I based a lot of my parenting ideology on that. Alongside the imperfect, but truly amazing parents of my best friend. And most importantly to always do the opposite of my parents.

I was young and not remotely interested in parenting books/ philosophy or nct groups. And really had nothing in common with all the couples at antenatal class who were into that type of thing. They were going home to discuss birth plans, I was off clubbing. Possibly the arrogance of youth but I just assumed all the way through that I'd get stuff wrong sometimes and it would all be fine. I was also used to being good at everything I did so I assumed I'd find parenting equally easy.

Horizontal summed up my concerns about being an A+ parent. Hence I could deal with my lack of perfection and cheerfully ignore any useless/ negative external pressure.

ICjump agree with your point upthread too - it was the fact that I was falling asleep when sitting up to feed that convinced me to cosleep. I'm much safer cosleeping than doing that but no, women are expected to be superhuman and not cosleep OR drop the baby when getting up to feed several times a night for months on end. Breastfeeding and cosleeping are natural to do together, talk about setting women up to fail to expect them to bf without cosleeping too.

Another thing I haven’t mentioned is tongue tie denial.

If such a small easily fixed thing caused men so much pain you can bet your life you wouldn’t get bastard doctors writing snotty articles about how tt is all in the parents head.

All my kids had tongue tie. All snipped as babies. Short appointment, midwife with a bit of extra training, no more complex than a nurse practitioner offering the contraceptive implant. WHY THE FUCK is it so hard to get the referral in the first place.

Tongue tie being ignored as an issue while at the same time pushing breastfeeding is a perfect example of the NHS using bf as a stick to beat women with rather than actually providing decent support.

Tongue tie being ignored as an issue while at the same time pushing breastfeeding is a perfect example of the NHS using bf as a stick to beat women with rather than actually providing decent support.*

This. Absolutely. Of course judgemental messages about bf are cheap. Actually supporting women in their choices less so.

Also, why is it always bf yourself or formula? Lots of women milk share (increasingly via social media as I've recently found out) but there seems to be virtually no health service support for this at all despite the purported health benefits to infants. Why don't they support milk donation and free distribution of pasteurised human milk?

I thought they did take milk donations but for preemies, from carefully screened volunteers?

I agree with batteries on the perfect parent issue. I approached parenthood like I was studying for an exam - got all the books out of the library, scratched my head that they all said different things, then got stuck into anything evidence based I could find.

I was lucky that with my first child, breastfeeding was really easy. I couldn't understand what all the fuss was about, and patted myself on the back for 'doing it right'.

Second child wouldn't latch properly, nipples were raw and excruciatingly painful and I was engorged beyond belief. I would sit feeding, crying, and try not to hit out at something when the pain started. I had to be a right pain in the arse to see a lactation consultant as the hospital had officially discharged me and it was a long weekend and the only support I could find was a BFing helpline.

And if I hadn't had family who had all breastfed so it was the norm, and a midwife friend who offered to come look at the latch on a Saturday morning, and if I hadn't been a HCP myself who's taught the benefits of breastfeeding, I absolutely would have just used formula.

I know this thread isn't about individual experiences. But if men breastfed, I'm sure the services would be different. Women are expected to just be able to breastfed as part of their amazing womanly mystique, and if you can't do it, there can be an attitude that you haven't managed 'being a woman' properly, like with vaginal v. caesarean birth etc.

I think breastfeeding support can be very patriarchal in that sense, in that there's not enough of it and often it's delivered in a 'you need to learn the reasons why you should do it and then you will' way.

But we need an acknowledgement first of the actual mechanism of breastfeeding (the number of mums I know who are convinced they haven't got enough milk and stress about baking themselves lactation cookies when just sitting watching TV and feeding would do the job) and proper supportive knowledge from women who acknowledge it can be difficult and take the time to sort out issues. Each mum and baby duo need to learn together how to do it.

The phrase “illusion of choice” comes to mind reading the responses here.

On one hand, some posters have expressed the view it is best to support however a women chooses to feed their child. On the other you have women, saying that choice to bf was taken away from them because of any number of reasons (e.g. baby was losing weight, Medication not approved for breastfeeding needed, poor mental health). This lack of choice can be very emotive. It is very well to praise individual chooses but if someone feels like they never had a choice, this can feel insulting.

Reading the last couple of posts it's occurred to me that "lactation consultants" are not nhs trained and employed by the nhs. The nhs doesn't value this role as much as that of other consultants. They don't need to as formula is easy to switch to. There are surgical consultants who specialise in and treat tongue tie on the nhs but they're not trained bf advisors. There are trained bf advisors employed by the nhs but they become lactation consultants off their own backs (through the qualification) and then are qualified, like the nhs surgical consultant, to diagnose (and I think treat in a private clinic?) tongue tie, with the added benefits of all their training to give other advice on the mechanics of bf. So I do believe it's a feminist issue. I can't help thinking if more men were tuned into it, (or had to feed!) it would be on the nhs. It's swept under the carpet as a women's issue. It's also an earnings issue as many consultants charge a lot to see and treat bf issues if the nhs support isn't enough.

Yoga good point about choice. I think that applies to so much of women"s experience of conception, pregnancy, birth etc. I found the whole thing shocking in that my sense of control felt taken away. My body was doing strange things that i had no point of reference for.
If people don't know about, say, engorgement, and don't know whete to get help or people who should know don't as EKP says it is a class/structural/feminist issue.

Formula is not easy to switch to if you always intended to be EBF and have to do early on.

The whole process is fraught with issue. Both physical and mental. But as soon as you mention you are thinking about it then the support disappears and you are dropped like a hot potato.

Kind of hard not to feel judged and abandoned for making a choice for yourself and your child.

The NHS employed health visitor refused to give me any advice about how to switch to formula. This was long before the internet so I couldn't just look it up. I second Nanny's point about support disappearing at that point.

No doubt formula is easy to switch to applies to "women as a class" and tough luck on anyone who fails that class.

Human milk banks are too expensive to be worth doing I think, also you're not allowed to pay people for bodily substances in this country, meaning that there are likely to be too few donors to make it viable. This is why it's currently only done for premature babies in hospitals on a voluntary basis.

I wonder if some of it is a volunteer thing too? In my sector I occasionally come across would be/ actual volunteers who have fixed opinions on something that render them unsuitable, either across the board or for some situations. So you police it.

Whereas bf support is a lot more volunteer based. So not only is it more likely that it's a case of beggars can't be choosers, it won't immediately be obvious if someone also holds some unpleasant ideas about those who ff.

And the lack of organised support/ regulation makes it very easy for someone with very regimented views to set themselves up as a support group.

Human milk banks were much more common previously, and then HIV and all the concerns around that came to the fore - milk banks disappeared very quickly.

I watched a fascinating video about this, I'll see if I can dig it out.

Well, it's true there are risks - which is a bit of a liability in reality. This increases costs and reduces the number of suitable donors. Hence reducing viability even more.

Pasteurisation reduces a lot of the risks. And milk is screened too.