Breastfeeding, women's bodies and feminism

[Polynerd]

A male friend just posted a link on FB about breastfeeding reducing a woman's risk of stroke. I was surprised to see that he got a furious response from his (largely middle-class, middle-aged) female friends. We're fed up of being told what we should do with our bodies.
I fed all of my children and frankly I wish I had gone with the bottle. How are we supposed to get to a position where men and women have equal responsibility for children if women are harangued into being the sole provider during a child's early life?
If as much scientific effort was put into reproductive health research as is put into designing cars and phones, we would have better milks and measures to offset any risks to women's health arising from not feeding.

How are we supposed to get to a position where men and women have equal responsibility for children if women are harangued into being the sole provider during a child's early life?

We're not.

Men and women are not the same, biologically.

We get into a position of equity, when women who choose to breastfeed are properly supported by society, and when providing milk for a baby given the respect it deserves.

We have low rates of breastfeeding in this country, but it's very often not because mothers didn't want to BF, it's because when they ran into issues, the support they needed wasn't there, or they were given bad advice by HCPs with crap training on BFing.

GPs, health visitors and midwives should have thorough, up to date training on breastfeeding that's regularly updated, along side well funded resources to help women with breastfeeding. This should be the case today, but mostly it is not.

Providing milk for my child from my own body was one of the most anti-capitalist and feminist things I've ever done, in my opinion, rather than feed my child a commercial product made by men, mostly.

Research shows that our own microbiome (which is part of our immune system) is unique and is passed through the maternal line through breastfeeding. Breastfeeding is a direct link with our mothers, and our mother's mothers, back through generations - our female ancestors protecting us against disease through their legacy, your family's microbiome.

We're breaking that link through formula feeding and we're only just beginning to understand the role breastfeeding plays. It's not just about food, it's also to do with health.

So, no. Men and women should share responsibility for raising a child equally. But that doesn't mean every individual task should be shared equally.

Men and women who are partners to new mothers should be given long "paternity" leave as standard, to support mothers.

The formula companies like to pretend formula is similar to human milk, but as we don't yet understand what all the constituents of human milk even do, how can formula compare?

More specifically, breast milk changes - it is adaptable to specific circumstances and to a cues from the baby. Formula will never be able to do that.

We do not need to put more money put into commercialising humans form the second they appear on the planet. We should put those imaginary resources (which I wish we had) into supporting mothers and babies.

What painted said. (Only she says it much more eloquently and intelligently than I would have managed!)

painted

I’m bf (hence the hour I’m up!) but your post reads as somewhat negative about formula feeding. I hope you didn’t intend this as that wouldn’t be very feminist in my opinion. There are issues around bf support but lots of women choose to formula feed.

If we actually cared about the well-being of women and children we would:

Invest properly in BFing support
Care about women's pain
Listen to women's syptoms
Make women's syptoms the 'norm' for diagnosis, since we're the majority
Invest in support and education and all the other things that promote women and children.

We don't. We want to harangue women for their choices and blame them for bad outcomes.

paintedwingsandgiantrings brilliant
Couldn't agree more.

There are issues around bf support but lots of women choose to formula feed

I'm uncomfortable with BFing / formula being presented as simply an individual choice. It's capitalist culture IMO - where an individual's right to choose products is celebrated, and the wide social landscape ignored.

Is it really a fair choice, when girls grpw into women without ever seeing other women breastfeed and learning what normal BFing looks like? Is it a fair choice in a society that sexualises breasts and makes women feel uncomfortable about feeding their babies in public? Or where it's normal for mothers to be cut off from the support network of family living close by and for the medical professionals they come into contact with to give advice that undermines BFing or even to encourage them to give formula.

Is it really a choice when the formula industry is making billions and has huge advertising budgets - but breastfeeding has none.

So yes, every woman should be able yo choose, of course. But I reject the idea of formula being the feminist choice.

Talking to some older women they describe being made to feel that their own milk wasn't enough for their babies by the doctors and midwives. Formula can be a positive choice but not always.

Rather than guilting women with health statistics I'd love to see realistic information provided about the lifestyle pros and cons to both methods.

There was a scene in “The Let Down” where one man was telling another to encourage breastfeeding so he didn’t have to help with the baby so much. I wouldn’t be surprised if this is the motivation for pushing breastfeeding for some people.

As I sit here night feeding, as I have done month after month, I am convinced it’s a feminist issue. Breastfeeding is a particular sort of commitment to keep supply going: can’t have a proper/complete break (incl no pumping) for a few days and then get back to it. For me (and I expect many like me) it’s been month after month of being tethered to the baby and needing to feed in few-hourly intervals, because only I can provide the milk (baby refuses formula & refuses bottles).

If breastfeeding is going to be pushed so strongly, the particular commitment it is for such an extended period of time needs to be supported properly. It can’t just be another sacrifice that women make (because men can’t do it) for the greater good and to hell with the consequences for the woman. Things that ONLY women can do need support NOT exploitation.

Breastfeeding is part of gestation. It is not feminist to imply that there is a neutral choice. Breastfeeding is beneficial for our health and our baby's health. Society should change to accommodate it. I'm in a different culture than the UK which seems to have a bizarre attitude to formula as a yay hey capitalist career woman choice. Generally everyone breastfeeds here unless they have medical or psychological issues with it.

I’m not saying formula is the feminist choice. I’m saying that respecting whatever choices women make about feeding their child is feminist. This includes breastfeeding support but should also include ensuring formula feeding mothers are taken care of.

When you say we should put any scant resource into “supporting mothers and babies”, instead of to offset any health disadvantage to a mother who hasn’t breast fed as suggested by the OP, I find that problematic because it implies only breastfeeding mothers and babies are worthy of support and excludes suppprting formula fed mothers and babies. Given what breastfeeding can do to a woman’s body, and given it commits her to be solely responsible for feeding the baby, it is imperative any woman who doesn’t want to do that is respected and supported in that choice.

Moreover though, formula feeding mothers are disproportionately of a lower socio-economic status. Therefore to prioritise funding breastfeeding support for disproportionately middle class mothers over trying to reduce the health disadvantages for formula feeding mothers (as suggested by the OP) would be wrong in my opinion.

For all you say as to it being or not being a neutral choice, that’s a separate argument. There will always be formula feeding mothers for a whole host of reasons. They shouldn’t be left behind.

For what it’s worth, I am breastfeeding and had it pushed on me throughout pregnancy, from the midwife, on the postnatal ward, from the health visitor... no one told me it would be as difficult or as big a commitment as it is. It’s made me utterly miserable at times. I do not believe it is feminist to say women should feel they have to do this. Women should not be sacrificed at the altar of the public health benefits (which I’m not getting into an argument about on this thread but the extent of these benefits in a developed nation is not clear from the conflicting evidence).

There is also an issue about the mental health of women who want to breastfeed but for whatever reason can’t. One side of that is better support but again, there will always be those who aren’t able to, or could only do so with sacrifices (pain/time/whatever) they consider intolerable. Posts like your first one are not helpful to the well being of such women. Such women need to know it is perfectly fine to formula feed and they are doing a great job with their baby, not to be told by breastfeeding mothers how shit formula is.

What painted said.

I think McTufty has a point - although I am in agreement with painted

Moving from the ideological to the specific, I remember my health visitor spending literally hours at my house when I was trying to establish bf. The pain for me was literally unbearable but she'd plug away trying to show me different holds, none of which really worked. She never once looked in DD's mouth. Not once. She did however pile on the pressure with a non stop spiel about how important bf is.

When I could take the pain no longer and switched to formula I didn't see her for dust. It felt like DD was no longer important because HV couldn't keep her on her list of bf stats.

My experience is that the knowledge simply isn't there with health professionals but the emotional blackmail of mothers to keep bf is appalling.

I don’t think that anyone is saying that a woman’s right to choose how she feeds her baby is anti-feminist, (although you could argue that some of the reasons some women have for choosing ff is anti feminist - breasts being viewed as sexual for example)
But the op is saying is that choosing to breastfeed is anti-feminist, and that formula feeding is the feminist choice. Which is just rubbish.

Is it really a fair choice, when girls grpw into women without ever seeing other women breastfeed and learning what normal BFing looks like?

This is a thing - like so many others in motherhood, is it really a free choice when you've not seen anything different? I BF because when I thought about feeding a baby, I thought of my mum feeding my sister, and she BF - I knew nothing of bottles (and not much money spare for formula anyway), I had a vague idea how to BF from watching my mum as a kid, so that's the route I took (I actually don't remember a single comment from midwives about it - but perhaps my confidence (faked) and my giving the 'right' answer the first time they asked meant they left me alone)

My mum though - as much as I say all this about doing what you see, she stopped feeding us at about 3 months because that's what she was told to do. We were all on instant puree stuff (like fish flakes!) before moving onto real food. Women get it from every side - it's no surprise that we get a bit bloody annoyed with that.

I wouldn't worry about money being invested into helping middle class mothers breastfeed. Most of that support is provided by other women (highly trained and that training is paid for by the women themselves mostly) providing their time for free or for very little via charities like NCT and La Leche League. We need to be looking at why there is a class divide in my opinion. Although the stats tell us that although most women begin to breastfeed the amount that still are rapidly falls off a cliff and at 6 months, the percentage if babies still having breast milk in the UK is tiny.

Formula is not the answer to more equal parenting either given that research has shown that formula feeding mums get no more sleep on average than breastfeeding mums because their partners, on average, do not step up and do those night bottle feeds.

Breastfeeding immediately establishes a narrative that looking after the child is women's work. Of course there are biological differences, but we are now able to transcend biology using science. I know so many women who thought they were going to share parenting, but because they were unable to do so in the early months due to bf the narrative became established that the children were their domain.

Are you honestly saying that because we can make formula we should discourage breastfeeding? Because that’s what it sounds like.
There are plenty of other ways a man can parent a baby besides feeding.

But I certainly agree that much more can be done to support breastfeeding mothers.

MrsTerryPratchett

I agree

Women get the worst of all possible worlds - pressure to breastfeed and then a lack of support if it fails.

I am 18 years on from feeding babies - from failing to BF one child post-emergency CS and being really really devastated by that, and the awful lack of care I was given to help me, and then deciding not to BF the next because I didn't want to go thorough that again.

Polynerd/EvilEdna

That's an interesting point - whether partners of FF women do more childcare. I would like to see that research.

Anecdotally, I'd say it makes no difference

There is also an issue about the mental health of women who want to breastfeed but for whatever reason can’t. One side of that is better support but again, there will always be those who aren’t able to, or could only do so with sacrifices (pain/time/whatever) they consider intolerable. Posts like your first one are not helpful to the well being of such women. Such women need to know it is perfectly fine to formula feed and they are doing a great job with their baby, not to be told by breastfeeding mothers how shit formula is

I agree with this.

I used to get really very resentful at the time when it was very raw to me. I now believe that feeding is a small part in all of the parenting decisions I have made and I think it's unconvincing to people to me that the health gains of BF outweigh all of those things.

Well said painted.

I mostly skimmed read the politics of bf and do now see it as painted described.

It's tough but I think that's where real feminism comes in; it's not about equality and equal sharing of the load. True team work recognises individual abilities and works to accommodate them for longer term benefits.

I must say I gave occasionally thought this time round I'd like to reach for the formula and I suppose knowing I could helps. But I've sought and fought for support to be able to. Plus the biome stuff fascinates me, I find it mostly easier, I know how much ds1 loves it and baby was elcs.

Equality doesn't mean exactly identical.
Feminism shouldn't be some by word that means women become pretending men.
Mother's are women and the biological norms for female mammals is breastfeeding.
We NEED society and the government to change their repressive attitudes, so that mother's are able to do what they feel is best for their individual child without 'sacrificing' themselves.
Instead of developing artificial milk - how about pouring that vast amount of money into actual support for women? Instead of artificial wombs how about pouring that vast amount of funds into a health system that allows women to give birth safely and is women centric, so that massive trauma is seen dismissively as par for course?

*is not seen as

Ladybirds I too would like to see research on this point but would imagine that the feeding effects would be swamped by social class effects. Amongst my circle of friends, I only know one woman who didn't breastfeed at all.
I'm not saying that women should be discouraged from breastfeeding, I'm saying formula should be improved and not demonised. Judging by the response to my friend's FB post, I would say women are fed up with being 'encouraged' to breastfeed.