Carol, thanks for your response to this. I agree with your analysis
of the Ezzo agenda. I am certain it is anti-breastfeeding and
anti-child, under the guise of being pro-family.

The agenda of course states that breastfeeding is the healthier
option (I mean, as you point out, the milk manufacturers say the same
things), but the Ezzo approach shows the risk inherent in bf
advocates narrowly focussing on the health agenda as well.

Of course we have to remind 'the world' of the health issues - 'cos a
lot of people who should know better either don't know, don't agree,
think it doesn't matter etc etc.  But the shared focus of bf advocacy
is women-centred, and human rights centred...yep, it's political.

Even if someone invented something that's artificial and yet 'the
same' as breastmilk, that showed up as equally 'healthy', (apart from
being very sceptical) many of us would *still* be determined to
continue to advocate bf as part of the normal, nurturing, physical
and emotional *relationship* that women and their babies have a right
to choose.

All that is, as you say, very uncontrollable and risky. It allows for
self-indulgence - babies can suck 'just for comfort' (how I hate that
phrase!), the naughty little things. A mother can breastfeed at her
own convenience, as well as at the baby's. Shock horror.

>
>
>and why would ezzo be opposed to breastfeeding as a nurturing approach to
>parenting? its not a way in which you can express a patriarchal, domineering
>power relationship that is entirely about control, and not about respect or
>love.


Yep. hence the sad attempts to impose a power relationship via the clock.

>for instance, a recent mom i saw who has difficulties and whose baby has
>difficulties as well. she can't nurse him beyond a certain point and will put
>up with anything, and i mean anything, rather than "just" nurse him again
>before it is "time." she will put him in his room in his crib screaming (she
>recognizes that she must do this to avoid hurting him) and will try just
>about anything . . . except nursing him. i can't fix everything that's wrong
>with her (and the dad for allowing this, etc., etc.) - that is, unless jack
>knows some handy mexican pharmacia that will send me large hypodermics full
>of horse tranquilizers and giant economy size bottles of zoloft. she will sit
>and nurse him when i am around and coo at him "you little monster" and worse.



Oh, I come across mothers like that. It is so sad. Yet at its best,
bf can help the mother overcome her own bad parenting, and allow her
to connect with a baby who otherwise seemed 'alien'. Bf as therapy...
someone should do some work on that.

>  also, if you are too fondly
>connected to that baby, how are you going to listen to him cry? and how are
>you going to then move on to slapping his little hand and withholding food
>and all the other ways in which you are expected to raise the baby as he
>grows?

True. That's OT on this list, I know, but the physical discipline
advocated by the Ezzos was the reason why they were roundly condemned
here last October when they visited (UK parents do beat their kids :
(  but they resist being told they *have* to, and how and with what).

I have yet to come across a parent reading still less following
Babywise, though I have heard one or two examples from other bfcs
that it is happening - not much (yet), thank goodness.

Heather Welford Neil
NCT bfc Newcastle upon Tyne UK

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