After reading Dr. Amy's post "Is breastfeeding a moral imperative?" yesterday, I began to compose a comment. But, like trying to fit a breast into a bra a size too small, my comment began to spill out over the confines of comment-hood, and developed into a post of it's own.
Dr Amy's post is well worth a read, but to give the summary: she takes an in-depth view of the essay "Breastfeeding as a Moral Imperative: An Autoethnographic Study," by Michele L. Crossley, published in a recent issue of the journal Feminism & Psychology.
In her essay, Crossly argues that "far from being an 'empowering' act, breastfeeding may have become more of a 'normalized' moral imperative that many women experience as anything but liberational. Accordingly, an uncritical appropriation of the idea that 'breast is best' may not only be disempowering for women, but also problematic for babies," a lesson she learned from her own misadventures in breast-feeding.
Unfortunately, the full-text is available only to subscribers, so I can go only by the excerpts provided in Dr. Amy's post. But I think the key word in here is "autoethnographic."
Autoethnography is a fancy-pants way of saying: "I'm going to share my experience and then I'm going to tell you that it's a Universal Truth." It has it's share of detractors in the academic world -- as well it should. A single individual's experience is rarely universal.
If one million women become pregnant on the same day and give birth on the same day, each of those million women will have different pregnancies, different birth experiences, and be rasing babies as dissimilar as snowflakes. There will be points of commonality, but not actual commonality.
So the best any society can do is come up with some general principles: Don't drink or smoke while pregnant. It's generally better to deliver vaginally. Breast is best.
But let's strip away Crossly's starting point. Breastfeeding is neither moral nor liberating, any more than it's immoral or repressive. It simply is.
Women bear young, and their bodies produce milk. Logic tells us that that milk must have some particularly nutritive or protective value; otherwise, we would not have been able to evolve or thrive as a species.
Yes, we've now come up with very good synthetic alternatives to breastmilk. We've also come up with pretty good instant mashed potatoes. That doesn't mean we're not going to pull out the potato masher at Thanksgiving. Generally speaking, we should always encourage the consumption of the real thing versus the created thing.
So the bigger question is not "is breastfeeding a moral imperative?" -- because clearly, it's just another basic biological and sociological process -- but "why do we make breastfeeding a moral imperative?"
Is it a by-production of having choice? Up until the last century, breast was pretty much it. Now we can turn to safe, reliable formula and regular bottle-feeding. While doing so may be neither right nor wrong, it's still turning one's back to centuries of practice and shared culture. Are the Evil "Lactivists" evil, or are they reacting against a significant cultural shift?
The Lactation Wars seem to focus on middle- and upper-class professional women...generally white, well-educated, and very, very, nervous. Do working-class and poor women have different attitudes? If so, why? If not, why are they less likely to share their stories?
Does the obsession with brestfeeding reflect the modern professional woman's anxiety over limited amount of time she has to spend with her newborn before heading back to work and spending most of her time away from her child at it's most fragile age? Are we at the point where working women are established enough in the working world that we can craft better policies for new mothers?
These, to me, seem to be more fundamental questions than: "The Nipple, Yea Or Nay?"
If Crossly wants to use her life as an example, I have questions for her, too. By her narrative, she was so enamored with the pro-breast message that she let her baby wither -- to the point where he husband was convinced she'd let the baby die -- rather than turn to the bottle. If, in fact, she could so clearly see that breastfeeding wasn't working, why did she have so little self-confidence? Did she put herself under so much pressure to perform that her stress depleted her milk production? If she had been able to relax, might she have been able to nurse more successfully? Why did she not listen to her husband's concerns?
While certainly a good starting point for discussion, Crossly story seems to be one of finding a philosophical justification -- i.e., blame someone else -- for a scary but largely self-inflicted situation. That is not going to help create better guidance for new mothers. First, we need to stop the shame-and-blame...on both sides. Only then can we move forward.
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You point about social class rings true to me. The entire uber mommy phenomenon needs to be called out -- and the lactation ideologues are just a subset of that disturbing trend.
Yeah, workplaces need to be more accomodating of nursing mothers. (I daresay that's the single biggest reason most lower-income women bottle-feed their babies even though it's much more expensive.) But people really need to butt out of things that ain't their business, and how people choose to feed their children is one of them.
Class, wealth, family tradition, ability, capability...there are so many nuances to the entire discussion. But for me, it comes down to this; keep your opinions away from my body.
That sums up so many angry posts here on O.S. where people are screaming that their particular experience is universal when in fact it is anything BUT. We could do an entire post on just that line.
As a mother who breastfed for 2 years and never once used formula, this was great reading. Thanks!
In most places in our world, mothers would just feed the kid and get on with it. Bottle or breast...whatever works best at the moment. As you pointed out, this "problem" is only among women who are thinking too much, and have the leisure to do so.
My kids are now 9 and 11. Once upon a time, I was also obsessed with birth plans, breastfeeding, and carting a breast pump around the workplace.
Taking the long view (which, by the way, is impossible when you have an infant, and don't have a houseful of other kids)... it's fairly insignificant. Other issues of parenting, like discipline (for me and the kids), learning how not to lose my cool when I'm tired and grumpy and hungry, teaching the times tables, negotiating the frustrating world of dyslexia... honestly, the way I fed them as babies was so long ago. And so insignificant now.
What was important was that we loved them, they had a stable home with loving parents, we read to them, they got enough sleep and enough to eat, they had shoes to wear, and friends, and loving grandparents, we had (and have) a dog... their emotional and bodily needs were taken care of. That's what's important now, in the long view. The breast vs. bottle? Fuggedaboutit.
In the paper, Crossley reports that she and her partner sought help over and over again. She took the baby to weekly weighing at the local medical office and watched his weight drop every week for 10 weeks in a row. They spoke with the midwife who visited their house on several occasions. Everyone insisted that it was impossible that she wasn't producing enough milk.
That's partly why the baby's father became so frantic. He felt like he was living in a Kafkaesque nightmare. He believed all along that the baby was starving, but everyone else was insisting that that wasn't possible.
He was reluctant to pressure Crossley because her entire self-worth seemed to be bound up the belief that a "good" mother breastfeeds. It was only when he began to fear that the baby might die that he insisted that they had to supplement his feedings. The baby immediately began to thrive and it was crystal clear that he had been starving all along.
Exactly. I have two kids. One was bottle fed, one breastfed exclusively. And if I was pressed to honestly answer why I decided to breast-feed my second child I'd have to say expense (formula prices, wow!) and laziness. Once I figured out it was a lot easier at 4am to pick up wailing child and nurse her than get up and do the bottle thing it was a no-brainer.
And that is "it".
I know this isn't supposed to be an amusing post, but your comment about mashed potatos is priceless!!!
Every aspect of infant parenthood, not just feeding times, could be described as Non-liberating, especially in the baby's first year. You must either be on hand to care for the baby, or arrange for a trusted surrogate to do so when you can't. Hopefully for the sake of both baby and parents, this responsibility is accepted gladly and the necessary things are done with love, but whether gladly or not the parent is accepting the whole caseload for a long time when they decide to go ahead and have the kid. I say, let the parents get on with the job and mind our own business, especially when the baby appears healthy and well-cared for.
I really like your take that breastfeeding just "is." Thank you for that.
I do see, however, when you are a new mother and everything is so new, it is easy to pickup one ideas as to what "makes a good mother." I certainly fell into this at times, and not because I went looking for it, people (like the Leche league) were more than willing to provide it. So, when you say, "for a scary but largely self-inflicted situation," it feels a little like blaming Crossly for falling victim to the direction of many of the guidelines, which can be conflicting, we are given as new moms (especially if we don't know if she sought out help).
We all need accurate data and dropping the shaming of each other (especially women). Thanks for promoting that message. (Rated).
Her doctor and the La Leche's leaguers who came over to her house told her to "try harder". She was looking for help. Not once did any of these people say to her, you know... you can supplement. There are other ways.
She was terrified of having to go through that again with her newborn son. She did end up breast and bottle feeding him and had a much better go of it and stopped breast feeding after 6 months.
But why didn't anyone say to her, it needn't be that painful and difficult and that it is far more important that you bond with your baby and make feeding a loving time instead of being comprised of dread and pain?
It's rather creepy and negligent in my opinion.
Maybe I have collected these stories (in Dr. Amy's and this post) to reinforce my own viewpoint. But again, how a child is nourished in it's first few months of life is rather secondary to the much bigger picture of raising young people who will ultimately be self sufficient, responsible, loving, kind and contributing members to society.
La Leche league runs a close second. They have some good advice and some bad advice. They never, ever recognize that breast feeding might not be working.
What would really help lower income women who work and don't pump at work (my experience is that pumping is time-consuming and a pain) is working out how to keep breast milk production while supplementing. The breast adjusts to the baby's demands. If a mother feeds with a bottle, she produces less milk as the baby is demanding less. It's very easy for breast milk production to fall off to nothing.
Rather than the current all (good) or nothing (bad Mommy!) approach, maybe researchers need to focus on solutions that work with women's lives. What schedules work for keeping breast milk production?
I too was treated badly by the local LaLeche league when I called for help. The first few weeks of breastfeeding were excrutiating and I called our local LLL because I'd read that I could purchase nipple guards from them and that this would allieve the irritation and crackaing (I know TMI) This woman out and out argued with me about whether or not I was in pain. It was all my fault. The baby is positioned wrong. No, the baby was fine. This was simple irritation. The most sympathetic person was my daughter's pediatrician, an old fashioned sort who immediately sent me to a compounding pharmacy for a lanolin cream. I did eventually find the guards on my own and once the initial irritation was relieved nursed successfully for my daughter's first year.
I would never recommend a new mother contact the LaLeche league for assistance.
"Generally speaking, we should always encourage the consumption of the real thing versus the created thing."
this is exactly the thinking debeers is benefiting from. there are synthetic diamonds. there have been for years. yet those diamonds are not as valuable as the ones that grew in the ground and might have been held by warlords in africa. and they never will be (at least, not in my lifetime).
i mean, we don't still forage. we farm. we eat the created thing instead of collecting acorns like our ancestors did. the generalized rule doesn't really hold for all that much. i'd say authenticity is a quality we look for in choices, not necessities. rated for an interesting exploration of choice.
GreenGoddess, according to you, there are times when my daughter should have starved as an infant. I had no problems with breastfeeding. However, I was a working mother (by financial necessity, although there is nothing wrong with being a working mother by choice), and pumping breastmilk is much less efficient than nursing. Thus, there were times when I wasn't able to produce enough milk with the breastpump, and had to provide my daughter's daycare with formula. This didn't happen often; maybe a dozen times during the ten months I pumped milk.
According to you, as a successful breastfeeder, I shouldn't have been able to obtain formula. So what should the daycare have done during those times, allowed my daughter to starve?
I don't regret continuing to pump for the four-plus months my baby was in the hospital, I don't regret delaying work return or the high cost of renting a hospital pump at home or the days I hid in the handicapped bathroom pumping when I did go back to work. I don't even regret the side-effect of depression caused by medication I took in hope of building my milk. Every drop of my breast milk was hard won. But I came to see how the dreaded formula in a can was definitely a blessing, too, because without it, there never would have been enough milk for my baby.
Sure, maybe breastfeeding is not a "moral" imperative, but the pressure put on women (rightly or wrongly) especially during the least desirable, most stressful conditions, is quite astounding. My first days and weeks as a mom were colored by constant messages of failure and inadequacy, and it was rough to come back from that.
Um, no. Autoethnography is a way of saying, "I've heard YOUR "Universal Truth" and it doesn't fit with MY experience." It's not an attempt to say that one's own experience is universal, but simply a way of saying one's own experience is VALID.
The "Universal Truth" is that breast is best. But Crossley's experience didn't jive with that "Truth". For her, breast was most definitely NOT best because it almost allowed her baby to starve to death.
Because of the breast is best "Universal Truth", Crossley experienced pressure to continue breastfeeding exclusively even when that wasn't working. She (and her husband) experienced anxiety, fear and misery. And in response to such anxiety, fear and misery, she's simply told that it's all her fault, she's doing it wrong, she has to keep trying, etc. And then, to top it off, you go and suggest that her anxiety was causing her low production and that her situation was "self-inflicted"! But then you turn around and say we need to stop the shame-blame game. God, what a hypocrit!
The real truth is that breast is not necessarily best. A relaxed and confident bottle-feeding mother with a happy baby is infinitely preferable to a stressed and miserable miserable mother with a starving baby.
"Why do we make breastfeeding a moral imperative?" I dunno, why did you?