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Who needs LLL?
Just about every mother I see lately.
Mothering may be instinctive to some extent but without role models we don't
KNOW what to do.  Most moms haven't got a clue how to *mother.*
Several years ago (I was in my teens) a German psychologist came to interview
me.  For the first 16 months of my life I was in an overcrowded orphanage
where the survival rate was very, very low.  He wanted to do research on the
survivors.  The result: As a baby I had red hair and bright blue eyes, hence
he theorized that the nuns probably gave me more attention (unconsciously I am
sure).  My mom told me that for years after they got me I would giggle and
carry on every time I saw a nun.  My mother on the other hand,  was one of
those that followed ALL of Dr Spock's rules, was distant, unattached and has
never been very warm.  I can remember only one time in my life where she
hugged me.  Most of my generation is in their 40's and had the same type of
parenting, they passed it on to their kids who passed it on to their kids.
Those kids are now the present childbearing population.  This is one of the
factors in the popularity of detached parenting methods.  Add the current
belief in the need for book learning, and classes on how to do xx (parenting),
it's a recipe for disaster.  Intellectually they REALLY don't KNOW any better
than what they have been taught.  And they have been taught to distrust their
feelings and trust the experts.
I have always been a very nurturing, maternal type person (some would call
that codependence).  I learned *mothering* behaviors somewhere other then at
home.  Those first 16 months I don't remember nor do I remember the countless
nurses who cared for me during multiple hospital stays but I do remember the
*mothering* I learned from the kindest, most patient LLLL in the world.  As
she mothered me, I learned to mother my own children.  If it hadn't been for
her, I would have easily given up both on breastfeeding and kids.
Moms need positive role models.  Where else but LLL are they going to find it
in this society?

Regarding rules
"Hopefully, I will never grow so old that I become a huge inflexible tree,
uprooted or cracked in a gale.  I would much rather be a twig that can bend
with the storm."
Marie Davis, RN, IBCLC