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Originally Posted by Da WIC Lady  We as a society have no problems with protecting our next generation from willful harm in other situations and shaming the parents for knowingly putting a child in danger. Why should it be different for something so fundamental as nutrition? I as a parent am expected to take personal responsibility for the choices I make regarding the health and safety of my children, or the state can step in and take them away if I fail in potentially catastrophic ways. If I fed my children nothing but cans of soda, bags of chips, and a multivitamin I'd be endangering their health. They'd be getting the calories and other nutrients they needed, but not in the most optimal way. The same thing is true with formula. The baby gets the calories, vitamins, and minerals necessary for survival, but not in the most optimal way. How is this different?
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This is different because for most things regarding child abuse, there are public service announcements, or societal safeguards in place (like the free carseat at the hospital programs, as one example) that let the general public know what the
appropriate course of action is to prevent child abuse.
There is NO SUCH PROGRAM for breastfeeding promotion (in fact, there is the TOTAL OPPOSITE in most institutions with any power, like hospitals, television stations, and magazines). Your average ordinary Joe (or Jane) on the street is totally confused, if not outright oblivious, about breastfeeding. If anyone finds out about breastfeeding in this society, it's through word-of-mouth because of the luck of knowing a lactivist or by careful, hard research. Yes, the formula companies tell everyone "breast is best" but while they say it, they're saying "but this formula is very nearly almost as good, so why bother?" They also say, "Breastfeeding is hard and not worth the effort." They also say, "It will hurt and you'll want to quit." They also say, "Your doctor and/or hospital recommends you use Brand X formula when you finally realize your milk is drying up, you naive, idealistic new mom; here, let us 'help' you with with that inconsolable baby with these free samples." These messages are read LOUD and CLEAR by the mainstream, whether the mainstream realizes it or not. The evidence is in our
staggeringly low breastfeeding rates, particularly among those in this population who are the least likely to know how to educate themselves.
Most mothers who don't succeed at breastfeeding are
sabotaged, plain and simple, by a society that, like Song stated in another post, is
HOSTILE to breastfeeding.
You can go on and on and on about "personal responsibility" this and that, but the bottom line is, if a person is informed their whole lives that formula is "just as good" and all the messages that person gets from the people they love and trust the most for their information (spouse, mom, dad, in-laws, grandma, grandpa, siblings, aunts, uncles, doctors, nurses, powerful hospitals) are telling them to "just give the baby a bottle," this is the natural result. Having one stranger lactivist in their lives that tells them the
exact opposite of what everyone important to them is saying, if it has any impact at all, I see that as an enormous VICTORY, even if the person still ultimately makes the choice to bottle-feed/formula-feed.
I know you are in the trenches, as Song put it. I know it must be SO frustrating to see, day in and day out all these young girls who, in your opinion, just don't try hard enough for their babies, and who, for various other reasons, are irresponsible parents... Unfortunately, our society is not set up to be friendly toward moms, particularly single moms. And it's
openly hostile to lactating moms, while being simultaneously friendly to formula marketing (oh, the irony).
But these young girls you see, Anna, these young girls probably have NO other lactivist influence in their lives. You are IT. Any small amount of work you do is significant and has a positive impact, even if you can't see it immediately. Even if you don't convince every single person you meet in that WIC office to breastfeed, even if your goals are not where you would like them to be, it's
something.
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| Not doing the best for your child when you don't know an alternative is one thing, but knowingly giving your child less than the best because of peer pressure is quite another. Comparing rape to breastfeeding is perpetuating the idea that the breast is solely a sexual organ. Heck, rape isn't even about sex, but power and control. So how what does power and control have to do with infant nutrition? |
The comparison between rape and breastfeeding wasn't a direct one. It was more of a comparison to illustrate that survivors of rape, even though they did not ask to be raped,
feel guilt nonetheless. It was brought up to illustrate that guilt can be induced by peer pressure, that you can, indeed "make" someone feel guilty, even if that person hasn't done anything wrong (someone else said that you only feel guilty when you know you're doing something wrong, but I disagree; some people feel guilty even when they haven't done anything wrong -- it's not ideal or wonderful, but it's an accurate reflection of reality).
And the argument I'm making here is that knowing there is an alternative is NOT enough for some people. To a lot of women the thought of breastfeeding is such a paradigm shift that it's too much to assimilate at once. I could easily compare it to the shift from disposable diapers to cloth. Yes, it's a no-brainer that cloth is better for the baby, better for the pocketbook, better for the environment, and easy to use, and for ME, it was an easy decision to make and keep... But for many, many, many people, it's TOO MUCH of a paradigm shift. How could I possibly judge anyone for making the decision to use disposables when I know how hard changing an entire paradigm is?
See what I mean?
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: It is a society wide sabotage. But many things that involve women are sabotaged, aren't they.
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