This morning, Wendy wrote,
<< Don't assume people will breastfeed w/o free formula. They sure don't
here. >>

I agree with Pamela, Kathy D, and others that giving out formula is one of
the big contributing factors to a non-bf culture.

However, in order for its cessation to result in everyone bf, it would have
to be the main, or almost the only, factor.   And we know that this is not
so.

Kathy recently posted eloquently about mothers who want to do the best for
their baby but believe (have been made to believe?) that their milk is
somehow inadequate in quantity or in quality.   The discussion about the
extent to which moms' need to go back to conventional styles of employment
does or does not doom bf is certainly not conclusive -- either way -- but
it's clearly a factor at least.   And we all know that there have been plenty
of other cultures in which there was no commercial formula but plenty of kids
still died for lack of their mothers' milk -- Victorian England comes to
mind, as does the country (Iceland, I think? or Greenland?  oh oh, posting
without checking is risky...) where for generations in the late medieval
period the most prestigious thing to feed your baby was butter -- and the
infant mortality rate was in the 90% range.

I hope it's obvious that I don't mean that these things are normal, or good,
or even inevitable.   What I do mean is that culture is strong, and has a lot
of complicated aspects.   And cutting off formula from mothers who see no
cultural basis to believe that they can feed their babies at the breast is
probably -- even in Lactnet fantasy -- not going to result in a bf nation.
Their prejudices, and their real experiences, are likely to prompt them to
interpret having their formula cut off not as meaning that they should bf,
but rather as meaning that there just isn't much of a safety net for infant
and child health and nutrition.

I remember someone saying a while back that if you are trying to move your
hospital toward Baby Friendliness, start with the steps that provide support
before you plunge yourself into the steps that attack formula distribution,
because mothers will not want the formula if they get good support -- from
the hospital and elsewhere to bf instead.   And if that is true in a hospital
setting, how much truer is it in a whole national culture, where the whole
world around them militates against putting their babies to the breast, and
this program is the only safety net they have for their own, their families'
and their babies nutrition?

I know, it's all a thought experiment anyway.   But that's how my thought
comes out, on this one.

(similarly, but relatedly,  I was surprised by Kathy's assertion that grandma
cutting off the childcare tap would make her daughter more likely to
contracept or abstain.  My understanding was that the states in the USA which
in the last welfare reform cut off additional benefits for babies born after
their moms were already on the dole, have not seen reductions in those birth
rates.   Am I wrong about this?   I get my info only from the papers, not the
research, so I am ready to be corrected.   But I wonder whether there is any
research support for the idea that codependent grandmas make more neglected
grandbabies.)

Elisheva, musing in NYC

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