Beware The Scorn of the Dutiful 'Breastfeeding Malcontents'
‘Breastfeeding Malcontents’ are everywhere these days. Those of us who advocate for breastfeeding need to come to terms with this reality. The scorn of the dutiful women who have breastfed but ended up feeling disempowered or unhappy with their experiences must be addressed.
These mothers are typically well-educated, well-heeled women who have literally bought into breastfeeding; they have attended classes, purchased books, pumps, gadgets and other products designed to facilitate a positive breastfeeding experience. Many of these mothers may have even paid lactation experts to help them, but still ended up being dissatisfied with the pressures and constraints associated with breastfeeding in the 21’st Century.
The core idea of La Leche League, mother-to-mother support, which fueled the renaissance of breastfeeding over the last half century, is beginning to backfire. There is a new wave of mothers whose angst is channeled into active discouragement of their friends and peers and an ever increasing need to disprove the value of breastfeeding.
Helen Rumbelow, the author of “Exposing the Myths of Breastfeeding” is one of these women with a need to ventilate. She claims that she wrote this exposé because she wanted, “…to get to the bottom of the medical evidence”.
Her thesis centers on this quote from Joan Wolf, an American academic writing a book on breastfeeding in the West, “The evidence to date suggests it probably doesn’t make much difference if you breastfeed.”
There is no doubt that this comment has stuck in Ms. Rumbelow’s craw as she shares this personal note, “For someone who prolonged my breastfeeding more out of duty than desire, this made me feel slightly nauseous.” Apparently she is not alone. She adds, “Many women — the ones who feel that they jeopardised their jobs, marriages, or sanity for the boob — have a right to feel angry about that”
Ms. Rumbelow does not directly tell us about her own experience with breastfeeding. I am left wondering if these comments might give us a clue:
“…under the weight of this advice from the Department of Health, doctors, midwives, and breastfeeding activists, millions of Western women bow their heads and unclip their Elle Macpherson Maternelle bras.” or “Dark thought at 3am, when one’s nipples feel like shards of glass. ..”
She can’t seem to make her mind up. She criticizes the public health authorities for “heavy-handed encouragement of breastfeeding and then facetiously asks us, “the medical establishment can’t be wrong, can it?”
Lest we forget, breastfeeding is the biologic norm. Whether or not “Breast is Best” has not been a concern of women until the past 50+ years. The existence of relatively safe, commercial artificial baby milks to be used in lieu of breastfeeding does not negate the fact that human milk is species specific and designed by nature for human babies. голова болит секс
Apparently the Chinese Melamine debacle of 2008 was not relevant enough science to be included in the discussion. The “confounding” effect of which Ms. Rumbelow and her “experts” speak could just as easily be applied to an analysis of formula-feeding with regard to its safety and value in human nutrition.
Medical science is only as good as those funding it and doing the research. It is interesting to note Dr. Kramer was a speaker at a Nestles conference on infant nutrition held in Beijing, China in 2004.
If doctors were truly that influential in inspiring modern women to breastfeed, why then are the global rates of breastfeeding so abysmal? Being risk adverse, many doctors do little more than pay lip service to the idea of breastfeeding. Operating in a managed health care system that stresses conformity, they are often more comfortable managing the intake of formula.
Breastfeeding promotion efforts could learn much from this lesson taken from retail marketing, “…a brand’s worst nightmare is of being hijacked by disgruntled customers with plenty of attitude, heaps of time, and a high-speed Internet connection.
The rancor expressed in Ms. Rumbelow’s article should be a red flag for all of us who support breastfeeding families. The issue of concern is not about good, bad or indifferent science being applied to breastfeeding vs. formula-feeding. It is about the experience of breastfeeding in our modern world.
How would you describe your breastfeeding experience?
6 comments
Excellent points. There’s certainly a part of me that feels like, saying boo-hoo, to all those breastfeeding malcontents. If you don’t like it, so what. But leave the rest of us alone.
Breastfeeding is the way I always imagined I would feed my babies. My grandmother breastfed her children and encouraged my mother but as a single parent at 17, she received very little support from health care professionals and did not succeed. She was however, always saddened not to have been able to nurse us. That being said, when I had my first son 8 years ago, I only had one friend who had ever breastfed and I gave birth in a hospital in Germany that put every obstacle to nursing in my way…no skin to skin after delivery, no rooming in, phototherapy treatment for Jaundice, a pacifier…they did try to give him formula but I refused and steadfastly pumped my colostrum, only to be told it was a pathetic amount. Thankfully, after 3 days my milk came in abundance and together my son and I muddled through and enjoyed our breastfeeeding relationship until he self weaned aged 2 1/2. My 2nd son was another matter entirely
He was born at home with the care of midwives, I was an active member of LLL and also an outspoken Lactivist. Our breastfeeding relationship was also 21/2 years but we suffered none of the early issues that cause so many women to fail.
I strongly feel that society is to blame for women failing to breastfeed at all and for their negative experiences. We are bombarded with the Breast is Best mantra and yet at every turn, healthcare professionals sabotage breastfeeding with their lack of knowledge and adherence to “the numbers” which are anyway based on formula fed babies! We need to offer real, consistent, accurate support to women. We need to see breastfeeding everywhere, in public, in movies, on television,in magazines. Breastfeeding needs to become, once again the biological norm for our species. Women need to point their anger and guilt in the right direction and not at other mothers who promote or succeed at the biological norm. Women who feel anger or guilt need to examine their own reasoning and apportion blame to those who let them down…including themselves!
@Pat Thanks for your comment. I also wish they would keep their malcontent to themselves. What I find most disturbing is that these women disputing the value of breastfeeding are not avowed formula feeders but rather are disgruntled insiders. They rage on to stir the pot and get attention, but admit to having breastfed out of duty or just in case. They can’t have it both ways.
@Helen Thanks for your comment and sharing your breastfeeding journey. We do need to create a paradigm where breastfeeding is the norm, not the exception.
Whenever there is a rush to judgement and the blame game is played, it does no one any good. Women do need to conduct honest evaluations of what caused their anger or guilt or feelings of being let down by their breastfeeding experiences. As you pointed out, they may even find that they themselves also bear some responsibility for the way it unfolded.
Some of these supposed disgruntled insiders are not as much in the in-group as they’d like to believe. Does squeezing out a few drops of breast milk and giving them in a bottle begrudgingly, topping up the rest of the feedings with formula while slowly but surely bringing in a dwindling supply really count as breastfeeding? OTOH I’ve know some committed lactivists whose babies mainly got formula- at the breast by lactaid.
I’ve also been part of an internet chat group where a woman who works for a baby food company was posing as a legitimate mother- and slagging off another baby food company. Someone from the other baby food company actually joined into the foray and exposed the whole sorry mess. So you actually never know who is behind these posts. When they say ” I am a breastfeeding mother- but- and procede to sound off against breastfeeding, one has to wonder.
I think the disgruntled types are in part reacting to the fetishization of breastfeeding by folks who think it is their duty to prescribe what is best for mom and baby. I think these folks are the same ones who came up with those 65 dollar ‘modesty’ bibs—as if to say “I’m not doing this because it is free, oh heaven’s no! I could afford formula if I needed to!” This stuff is not rocket science! Chicks have been doing it for 1000s of years! (And so have wet nurses…) But a lot of women have way too much of their identities invested in their ability to somehow ‘perfect’ modern motherhood. And, increasingly, breastfeeding is becoming a huge class issue. If you can stay home for 6 months and feed the munchkin exclusively boobtastically, that is superdeluxe. But don’t take your haughtiness out “educating” the frazzled barista at starbucks who gave up trying to express expressly on her 15 minute lunchbreak in the bathroom when she gives up in disgust and grabs the formula. A little more feminist solidarity about the difficulty of squeezing expressing in at work would be nice, you know? not everyone has upper middle-class choices.
@Milly Having read your comment many times I am trying to ascertain whether you read my post and the article which prompted it.
Your comment feels full of malcontent. I find your choice of words “fetishization of breastfeeding ” “feed the munchkin exclusively boobtastically” and “take your haughtiness out “educating” the frazzled barista at starbucks” quite intriguing.
I am left wondering where you fall in the continuum. Are you a modesty bib buying consumer or a frazzled barista? What was/is your experience of breastfeeding?
Sadly, the choice to breastfeed does seem to be increasingly correlated with education and social status in the Western world. It is ironic that it is now perceived by you and others as an upper middle-class choice. Not long ago, that was the view of formula feeding by immigrants to our Western shores.
In the interest of feminist solidarity, we need to create a positive and supportive breastfeeding culture that supports all mothers and truly fits into a modern lifestyle.
Leave a Comment