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?

I think the disgust that women birth, lactate, menstruate is behind a lot of the misogyny that still exists today and is still very prevalent in some societies today (e.g. some societies think colostrum is ‘dirty’ and many societies seclude menstruating women).

I also think it massively suited capitalist, industrialist societies for women not to bfeed. The person who mentioned the rural Lancashire communities that didn’t wean for ages. When those same women moved into the mill towns, the expectation for the first time was to leave very young babies for 8 hour shifts. So paps and gin substitutes were common.

We’ve barely owned and spoken of these things and I think we are oppressed as women due to them. Remember most women in industrialised societies- despite public health campaigns don’t bf.

But in complex, societies with advances in bodily autonomy- we are going to have a multifaceted discourse and in the context of safe and readily available healthcare. So of course a range of different choices are there and some women will despise bfing - using sexualised body parts to feed, the idea in some communities that it is cheap to bf, the idea in other communities that it is cost neutral to ff as you get to go back to work, can afford the milk, etc. It’s complex.

I still think for some women it’s as greater battle to bf and feel comfortable with that as it is for some women to ff without guilt. I was asked more times why I was still
Feeding a one year old than I would ever have mentioned or asked why someone stopped feeding a 4-12 week old.

No easy answers in either side.

And ALL women need excellent postnatal care and the right to go back to work with childcare and the right to recover from
pregnancy and childbirth. That’s been a common bond among all my common female friend and not infant feeding decisions.

Tiktok What I’m saying is that it is not cool in a reasoned debate to take one thing someone said out of context and smack them with it repeatedly. That is what I find wrong with your posts.

I can see what Lass is saying. How can we be all behind bodily autonomy but then push women into using their bodies to do something they don’t want to? Or, even worse, set up a system that makes women feel like failures for not being able to perform easily a biological function they have very little control over.

The milk cow analogy is about thinking about the role of human women in modern society. It’s a bloody fine line to walk to find your own way of being a woman (because there should be no gender stereotypes to perform) and new mothers are often faced with a whole barrage of expectations (feeding choices amongst them).

With all the curren focus on PND, I think it is time to address the kind of rhetoric that makes new mothers feel pressure to feed their child in a certain way. There is enough pressure around taking care of a new baby without the added societal expectations (for particular groups of women) that they BF as a matter of course, without reference to their individual circumstances.

The points made earlier about the prevelance of mixed feeding amongst different ethnic groups was interesting. Mixed feeding saved BF for me in the long term. But every BF advisor I spoke to treated it like the worst idea they’d ever heard. If I’d listened to them I would have given up BF entirely at two weeks.

Anecdotally I know a lot of similar stories. Perhaps there needs to be a rethink around how this is discussed.

Getting back on topic here :)

Historically in many societies women's bodily functions have indeed provoked disgust and contempt. In addition BF has sometimes been controlled by men, in order to control women's reproductive life. So yes - feminist issue :)

I find these attacks on Tiktok very hard to stomach, because she has given so many women such excellent support over the years. I have never seen an uncompassionate post from her regarding infant feeding, nor one that casts any kind of blame on the mother for her feeding choices. The best breastfeeding supporters are unjudgemental. I would count Tiktok as one of them.

Bfing is obviously an emotive issue for any woman who has struggled with it, but it’s actually pretty emotive for many women who on the surface were bf “success stories”. I bf in the end for what felt like a million years (helped by Tiktok more than once) but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a struggle/joy/something I’m proud of/something that felt like a curse. You feel you have to justify yourself for not bfing but you also have to justify yourself for bfing - you’re doing it for yourself, what about your husband, there’s no nutritional benefit etc.
What I am trying to say in a rambling way is that it’s not just those who had bad experiences of bf for whom
it is an emotional topic. So it’s not only “one side” who get to express views in an emotional way.

I picture suits at Nestle rubbing their hands in glee when they read these arguments.

Thanks, Never :)

Iggi you are right - plenty of women have strong emotions surrounding infant feeding and may feel judged or challenged.

And I'm afraid you are insulting to BF women - milch cow, ffs

If you had read that comment properly you would see it was not directed at women who breastfeed but at the evangelists like Cherry and others whose idea of bodily autonomy stops short at this. I was not calling women milch cows - I was objecting to this notion that bf is the greatest thing we can do, that anyone can do it if they try hard enough (other than the few random "exceptions" acknowledged by Cherry)


I picture suits at Nestle rubbing their hands in glee when they read these arguments

I can't recall which company made the formula I used but I'm glad they did.

I did not intend my post as an attack on tiktok and I apologise if it's one that is being included as such. It is an emotive issue all round - but I don't think it's really a level field although there is pain aplenty on all sides.

And Nestle suits can go screw themselves before I let fear of pleasing them dictate what I think women should be allowed to discuss. Actually I suspect they would be far happier with no discussion at all. Iggi, do you realise that your reference to that can sound like an attempt to squelch discussion? I really don't think it actually is from reading the rest of your post which is pretty reasonable, but the whole Nestle/capitalism/etc thing is weaponised against women so often that I find it an unpleasant reference in this discussion - do you get where I'm coming from? Happy to expand if it doesn't make sense. (Though might be tomorrow before I get a chance to MN again).

the whole Nestle/capitalism/etc thing is weaponised against women - this is a ludicrous point in the context of the individual woman at the end of her tether with a child who is not gaining weight and who is dizzy with lack of sleep.

I can well see from this thread that individual women don't matter as it is all about "women as a class" but it was not Nestle who were "weaponised" against me. Like NannyOgg my ire is aimed at the health visitor who gave no advice , help or understanding.

Ok, Lass, thank you for clarifying. You think BF supporters, or some of them, treat women as if they are milch cows.

It wasn't aimed at individuals though.
Nestle etc have been disastrous for women and breastfeeding worldwide, there is plenty of evidence to back this up. But this is on a population level, millions of women, not individuals. On an individual level of course it's fantastic that there's an option, because it can be too hard to BF on top of other shit going on, however, the choice is less autonomous because of the sneaky actions of Nestle et al, but this doesn't change that mothers make the choice that is best for them.
There was one clumsily worded post in this thread that I could see (about inferior product), but I think it was coming from a point of anger towards nestle for their historical actions which are very difficult to balance, seeing as formula is very much the mainstream choice now for feeding babies. I can't remember the figures for breastfeeding, but iirc there is a drop off at 6 weeks, then a steep drop off at 6 months, after which BFing is far more unusual. The few of us who continue after a year are then often hailed as lentil weaving weirdos who can't let go of their child.

Surely a FWR thread is the ideal place to be analysing women as a class.

Yes tiktok I do - treating women as if their sole purpose and greatest achievement is supplying milk.

I am well aware of Nestlé's practices in developing countries but I am in the UK- a country where formula advertising is tightly controlled and only permitted for follow on milk.

A country where my health visitor refused to give me any advice on formula feeding. She refused to give any advice on how to introduce formula despite bf clearly not working. So this idea that the blame lies at the door of evil, conspiratorial, patriarchical formula producers is not particularly convicing.

The figures you're thinking of though tend to be based on exclusive feeding, which for some reason is held up as a gold standard when there is really no reason for this. In fact a 1% exclusive breastfeeding rate at 6 months is totally and utterly expected given that our weaning guidelines recommend introducing solid food at/by 6 months. It would be very rare for a baby to only have had breastmilk with never a drop or a spoon of water or juice or formula or baby rice by the age of 26 weeks exactly, so a 1% exclusive breastfeeding rate at this age is about right.

IIRC the rate of any breastfeeding at 6 months is more like 33% which although a minority is still a large one.

They have stopped funding the infant feeding surveys so this info is 7 years out of date and won't be updated in the same manner, unfortunately. Before the surveys were stopped the trend showed an upsurge in BF every 5 years so as an estimate we can assume that rates are increasing, but it's impossible to tell by how much.

Formula advertising is tightly controlled, yet in the This Morning nativity scene Jesus had a tin of stage 1 milk next to him in the manger

It’s not that tightly controlled. Baby Milk Action do what they can but they are battling against seemingly infinite funds.

Funds that should be going into developing better formula, not paying ITV for product placement.

I think it is an important feminist point if women feel that they are merely a vessel for the milk product, and that all HCPs or supporters care about is that their baby gets the milk they are supposed to produce, and doesn't care about the welfare of the woman. I could well see that this could be a dehumanising experience. It wasn't my experience but it's important to collect all experiences and talk about them if we want to understand the mechanisms at play here.

Surely a FWR thread is the ideal place to be analysing women as a class

At the expense of being able to see how that applies to individual women? "Women as a class" seems to me to include the inability for some to see that women as a class in the context of how women choose to feed their babies is utterly bloody useless to an individual woman who is struggling and failing with and hating bf.

Talking about Nestlé as an evil capitalist entity in that situation is as unhelpful as it gets.

So , no I think this subject is far too personal for individual women for "women as a class" to be particularly pertinent.

In fact a 1% exclusive breastfeeding rate at 6 months is totally and utterly expected given that our weaning guidelines recommend introducing solid food at/by 6 months

I can't remember the exact figure but the advice in the 1990s was much earlier than 6 months. According to Google, NHS advice in the early 1990s was 3 months.

Weaning guidelines have changed several times over the years. In the 1970s, studies showed that most babies in the UK started solids (usually in the form of rusks or cereal added to the bottle) between three and four weeks old. In the 1980s and early 1990s, the NHS advised weaning after three months, then in 1994, guidance changed to recommend four months as the youngest weaning age.

I disagree that it’s too personal to be looked at on a population level.

Someone else brought up the birth comparison - birth is very personal, but it’s still studied and looked at at a population level.

I had a crap HV too. She told me to put my baby on formula at 3 weeks to ensure a bedtime routine. Start a thread saying ‘who had a crap HV’ and you’ll be totally inundated with responses.

Breastfeeding is a feminist issue and can be looked at as such.

Someone else brought up the birth comparison - birth is very personal, but it’s still studied and looked at at a population level

I never said it should not be studied. It should not be used to bully women into doing something they do not want to do.

I wonder if the breast is best message comes across as bullying because there is literally bugger all can be done to match the subtle, pervasive marketing of nestle (etc) with their millions (billions?) of pounds.
Breastfeeding "advertising" is usually done by midwives and a few arty posters dotted around antenatal clinics, which can then come across badly as it's delivered by overworked professionals who have targets to meet and may not have the expertise and problem solving skills needed to help a new mother successfully breastfeed, if that's what she wants.
If a mother chooses not to, that is entirely up to her and is a valid option, no-one should be bullied into doing something they don't want to do.
It must be acknowledged though that marketing tactics mean there isn't a level playing field when it comes to choosing how to feed a baby (before even being at the point of finding it's not easy, or in some cases impossible). Advertising of follow on milks is done very cleverly to make breastfeeding appear less appealing (one I can remember showed a woman in a cold, sterile looking room, winter/snow scenes outside, breastfeeding, sitting bolt upright, hair tied up, all looking very uptight. Fast forward to feeding follow on milk, it's spring, the windows are open, hair is down, happy, snuggling, eye contact with the baby etc. The bottle feeding scenario looked much more inviting and carefree). From a feminist point of view, I suppose this plays right into the patriarchy's hands, women's choices controlled by big business, before a baby has even been born.

Have been pondering this question the last few days as have house guests who are bottle feeding whereas I breastfed. from what I can see it is easier for the mother without doubt. We were talking about it and the Dad said he doesn't know how anyone can breastfeed. He has been able to do so much childcare that just isn't possible when breastfeeding. I get the points about equality rather than equity and Dads taking responsibility for other jobs, but that still doesn't allow any element of choice. What if the father prefers to take on the bedtime routine and the mother prefers to cook dinner? It does seem to me the breastfeeding sets up a dynamic right from the start where the children are the women's responsibility and work is the man's.

That blog about formula wrote something comparing how we discuss feeding vs giving birth which was pretty interesting as we don't give c section mothers a hard time because we recognise the importance of deviating from ~natural.

I completely get why some might be put off by bf, I see friends still feeding their 9/10 month year olds through the night and there has to be a level of selflessness to do that and keep up with the daily feeds and childcare. Formula can easily be seen as an 'easier' choice as for many babies it does help them sleep and it does fill them up more than breast milk.

I also read on a different thread that the reduced risk of cancer is minimal, only applicable if you feed for longer than a year and only reduces risk by 4% whereas birth itself reduces it by 7% so that 'benefit' feels very over sold! It's still a benefit though I suppose!

It's very hard to discuss this topic I guess. To me feminism is about choice and bodily autonomy; if we support women in breastfeeding we should equally support women who don't for whatever reason. I know women who stopped because they hated the time constraints, others disliked the feeling and some felt like they had 'done their time' after long pregnancies and births. I also know women who love breastfeeding and the whole process and who found it easy to continue until babies were toddlers. It's personal and just like we support women in their rights to abortion, contraception, sex as they want etc we should extend that support to how they use their breasts.

I have thought many times while sat breastfeeding how much easier it would be if I lived with my siblings / siblings in law. We have children of similar ages. I could feed two at once thus freeing up my relative and vice versa.

Would communes be more likely in a radfem utopia? I’m sure Germaine Greer wrote something about that being a better / more feminist way to raise children?