The Backlash to Breast is Best
Why exactly is breastfeeding under attack?
by Jennifer Block
April 21, 2009
But the majority of U.S. maternity wards are not "baby friendly," let alone mother friendly. Physiological childbirth itself isn't supported, and thus part of the reason women find breastfeeding so difficult is because they are recovering from C-sections, or their babies' esophageal tracts have been preemptively suctioned, and irritated, or they've been induced too early and can't breathe on their own; and the cord was cut and the baby has been whisked away rather than getting the recommended immediate skin-to-skin
contact, and many hospitals still routinely give formula rather than facilitating a breastfeed within the recommended first half hour; and most obstetricians don't get involved, and most pediatricians don't either, and nurses are busy, and lactation consultants
are disparaged and cut out from insurance reimbursement, and here's where the dissonance begins.
We tell women that breast is best, we tell them to breastfeed exclusively for the first six months, we even tell them it will raise their kid's IQ (and we should give that a rest), and then we send them home with formula samples, or with a baby whose throat
is too sore to suckle, or a mom whose milk is delayed because of surgery, and we don't teach technique, and we are offended when a woman breastfeeds in public, so we make her feel housebound, and we don't give a mother and her partner paid leave, and we send
her to go back to a workplace without on-site childcare, and so her only alternative to formula is to plug her nipples into a machine, and if she's lucky she gets periodic breaks and a "non-bathroom lactation room" in which to pump, and if she's not she gets
a toilet, and so on and so forth.
It's no wonder women are ready to burn their
nursing bras.
Where there is paid leave, there are no "mommy wars."
But it's not that these public health recommendations are grounded in some return-to-the-1950s conspiracy, as Rosin suggests; they're grounded in physiology. And science is validating the physiology of the mother-baby dyad — that is, both are healthier when
they remain close to each other during the first several months postpartum. It's not simply the milk that's inimitable; it's the mothering. (Indeed, "We actually don't know if feeding infants human milk has the same benefits as breastfeeding," says Labbok.)
And mothering is something that our culture does not value enough to support. It is this dissonance between physiology and culture that has women so frustrated, and feminists like Rosin grasping at the bottle as a proxy for equality.
But is that really what we want? Powder rather than real power? In a
brilliant New Yorker piece about the rise of the breast pump, Jill Lepore questions the direction of breastfeeding advocacy, which seems to be settling on
the pump as a compromise to this conflict, with tax incentives for businesses with "Mother's Rooms" in which babies are explicitly not welcome ("pump stations," Lepore calls them) and Baby-Friendly hospitals sending women home with manual plastic pumps,
and the president of the National Organization for Women calling for more "corporate lactation" programs. "It appears no longer within the realm of the imaginable that . . . 'breastfeeding-friendly' could mean making it possible for women and their babies
to be together," writes Lepore. "When did 'women's rights' turn into 'the right to work'?"
What a great question. Why did American feminism evolve in such a way that we think of biology as destiny, and that destiny as a prison? Why are we so willing to surrender the parts and processes that makes us female rather than demanding that society support
them? We've broken down doors and cracked glass ceilings, when what we need to do is redesign the building.
Labbok, who's worked in some fifty countries, tells me the feminists in northern Europe have done this. "In northern Europe, women fight for the right to breastfeed," she says. There, feminism isn't just about "making women act more like men," the right
of women to be full citizens and the right of babies to be given best possible care are not at odds. "There's an understanding of human rights outside the U.S. that includes the right of women to breastfeed. And that means women shouldn't be expected to do
it unless everyone is fully supporting it — her family, her society, her workplace, everybody all the way down the line to her government." And where there is paid leave, it should be noted, there are no "mommy wars."
In the podcast accompanying the
Atlantic story, Rosin reveals her pessimism: "We are never going to be Norway," she says, rolling her eyes. "There will never be a situation in America where women . . . will have six months time to exclusively breastfeed their children." Really?
Did we ever envision an organic garden being planted at the White House by the nation's black first family? This is the real tragedy of the mommy wars: they drag us down where expectations are so low, where we don't value mothers enough to fight for them. We're making a case against ourselves.
About the Author
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Jennifer Block is the author of Pushed: The Painful Truth About Childbirth and Modern Maternity Care (Da Capo 2007), and the blog Pushedbirth.com. Her articles and op-eds have appeared in the Village Voice, ELLE, The Nation, Mothering, the L.A. Times, and the Guardian. She's based in Brooklyn, NY. |
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