Breastfeeding Network new Vision & Aims

[Manderleyagain]

The BfN has made their aims, and other areas of their web site, less mother centred in language.

Compare the aims and vision taken from the web site today

www.breastfeedingnetwork.org.uk/charitable-objectives/

Our values are at the heart of how we work, we strive to always:

Listen actively
Keep a mum or parent at the centre
Respect a parent and support their choices
Share the evidence to inform early parenting choices

Compare to this same bit, taken from the wayback machine a year ago:

Our values are at the heart of how we work, we strive to always:

Listen actively
Keep a mum at the centre
Respect a mother and support her choices
Share the evidence to inform early parenting choices

There is more. BfN has been working with families and parents and families of different make ups for decades. But now they have chosen to water down the language, giving it less clarity and making it much less focused on the breastfeeding dyad - the unit of breastfeeding mother and baby.

I think bfn might be later than other orgs to take this type of step, but the mother centred approach used to be their selling point. It is impossible to reflect that focus using the new language.

Does anyone know what is happening within the charity? Was this put through the agm? Were arguments against it heard?

Women would be best advised to stay away from these ‘networks’. Seek advice from family and friends, do what works for themselves and their babies. I’m exhausted by the third sector.

Here is the archived link from June 2021
web.archive.org/web/20210613224855/www.breastfeedingnetwork.org.uk/charitable-objectives/

This other bit is really important because it sets out what the organisation is for. From June 2021:

"Our vision is a society where mums and families are able to make informed decisions about breastfeeding, to access help when they need it and to become confident in their choices. For a new mum deciding how to feed her baby, talking to a mum who knows about breastfeeding can make a crucial difference and the Breastfeeding Network strives to be the best we can be at providing peer support."

From today:
"Our vision is a society where mums, parents and families are able to make informed decisions about breastfeeding, to access help when they need it and to become confident in their choices. For a new mum or parent deciding how to feed their baby, talking to a trained volunteer who knows about breastfeeding can make a crucial difference and the Breastfeeding Network strives to be the best we can be at providing peer support."

The new wording loses the fact that the volunteers are themselves mothers who have breastfed.

From 2021:

Our mission is to offer independent, evidence-based information and support to help build awareness of breastfeeding to individuals and organisations and to support a mum in her choice to breastfeed.

Current web site

Our mission is to offer independent, evidence-based information and support to help build awareness of breastfeeding to individuals and organisations and to support a parent in their choice to breastfeed.

Which parent? They can't support a dad who wants the baby breastfed if the mother needs support to deal with the fact her milk is coming in and she doesn't want to breastfeed. The two parents might have different ideas, but it's the mother who will be supported.

I wonder if there has been a battle between those wanting to drop mothers entirely from the vocab, and go full on 'breastfeeding and chestfeeding network", and those who wanted to keep the original focus of mums supporting mums to breastfeed, and this is the compromise. I really think its a mistake to lose the clarity and the whole point. 'Parent' is not a good replacement word for the one who has to make those choices and actually do it. Both parents don't have the same role.

I have an affection fir this charity and wish it well. But i would be interested to know what's going on. Has the code if conduct been changed?

I think this is such a dangerous direction to go in.

A mother-baby dyad is such a precious thing to protect. And we are in danger of treating women as incubators then back to work. We will lose sight of that precious bond and importance pf supporting that of we can't even talk about it.

This makes me so so sad. Its no longer men dressing as women (fine!) But breaking down all the uniquely female spaces and supports.

That really comes across like they want to start supporting dads with breastfeeding, which makes no sense.

If they are going so “be kind” and “inclusive” why haven’t they changed their name?

I'm getting more and more disheartened at the number of organisations and business who deal with pregnant women and breastfeeding mothers using terms like birthing people and using the word parent when they actually just mean the woman that is pregnant 😔. I'm involved in this sector and it's almost everyone.

The ones that do use the word woman (on SM for example) tend to only do so deep into a post or as a hashtag at the end. I still appreciate it though, so if you are one of these people, thank you. I saw a business refer to 'pregnant ladies dealing with the heat' today and I almost cheered!

The irony is that no matter how much they flail and wail, it will still be women and mothers breastfeeding. And still only women giving birth (no matter what they identify as). So they're on a hiding to nothing cos that pesky biology will continue to demonstrate that only women and mothers give birth and breastfeed. Day after day, month after month, year after year and century after century.

Their site also has this sentence:

At the centre of our work are mums, parents and babies. We also work very closely with dads, partners, grandparents, uncles, aunts, health professionals and anyone else involved in a parent’s care.

So parents are listed as breastfeeders, but then 'dads' and 'partners' are listed separately. Clearly, then, they are not viewed as parents.

This is one of the problems when woke language neutralises some female process or body part by turning it into something 'people,' in general, can do or have: It widens the category in a way which loses information AND it creates lies about general information.

When woke language uses 'pregnant people' it widens the name for the group which has the capability to become pregnant in a way which disguises the very existence of that group, and then it also suggests that now any individual who is in the group 'people' can get pregnant, including male-bodied ones.

The real problem, of course, is that most women view 'women' as a biology-linked term, but once inclusive language is used that link is severed, so all 'women' are pretty much told that they are now women because they like feminine things or are appearance-conscious etc.

👏👏👏👏👏👏

Nepeta Yes that is what happens. I think people don't quite see it, or have difficulty articulating what the problem with it is. It doesn't come straight to mind, and it's easy to think 'what's the harm, when it means so much to this group who have it hard' but what do we lose?

I am sure that the peer supporters will think of their work as centreing the mum and baby. I hope the training still manages to get that across, but it's difficult to know how they will instill that emphasis & core principle without that language.

It might be they fear losing funding contracts to other organisations who use the new inclusive language. I wonder whether there's an ongoing struggle within the organisation.