Helen Joyce interviews founder of La Leche League

[MsNeis]

I just wanted to share this interview, from the magnificent Helen Joyce:

She speaks to Marian Thompson, one of the original founders of La Leche League: admirable woman and fascinating story of another historical organization now apparently rotten. It's so sad we've come to this...

Super! Thanks for posting. Will listen now!

This was great!
I am an ex-LLL leader.
It saddens me so much that this wonderful organisation has lost its focus on women and their babies and essentially become an ego trip for men on hormones. I cannot imagine having to navigate helping a man to breastfeed. Or to have one in a group setting where women are struggling and are there for support. It’s absolute nonsense. As Helen rightly says at the beginning, if you are that far into fantasy land who knows what you will believe as they must seriously think these men are women and not just fantasists.
More disturbing for me is in helping a man breastfeed we are preventing an actual mother breastfeed that child. Where is she when he is sat there with the baby at his chest? I’m actually getting angry typing.

So many interesting points - like why do men who identify as women want to breastfeed, why do editors rarely commission articles on breastfeeding, the LLL philosophy of the mother/baby dyad and how that was a really radical thing when LLL was set up.

I left LLL over this issue in 2021, having tried to raise it through the proper channels and been rebuffed and fobbed off. So I was also very interested to hear that even Marion Thomas has no idea how the voices in favour of including biological men have triumphed so throughly. From her description, it sounds very similar to the Dentons playbook.

It was so humbling hearing Marian's own story and those of her other contemporaries re breastfeeding. I just can't think of anything more execrable than a man trying to impose his presence (let alone his perverted desires) in such a vulnerable and numinous space as the mother-baby dyad.

So interesting reading your posts @MaggieBsBoat and @WomanInGrey, having been part of LLL both of you! 🙏
What you said, Maggie, about the fact that while they are focusing on helping a man to "breastfeed", there's a baby who's not getting what she needs most: it is so disturbing that I can't imagine what goes through the heads of those enabling this.
To me we're clearly entering child abuse territory: am I alone in thinking this?

This interview was great. Filia have also recently done a podcast from the LLL GB side

podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/filia/id1461524178?i=1000681391979

Oh, thanks for sharing!

Thanks for sharing that, I just listened. I’m really interested in the new mother to mother breastfeeding organisation they plan to set up, it’s the one thing that might draw me back.

I find the whole discussion on the science of breastfeeding amazing. There is so much we don't know about how women's bodies work

The science is fascinating. There used to be a fb group for recruiting bf women who wanted to be part of studies.

Unfortunately as there's no money in it there's not actually that much research.

They do think that breast evolved from the immune system though. Hence extra antibodies produced to help baby fight infections etc.

Fascinating interview thanks @MsNeis and I agree it would be so helpful to have more research - I also hadn't spotted the media's reluctance to publish any straightforward accounts of breastfeeding. So true.