Jean Ridler wrote:

"A big part of marketing stuff is creating a NEED that doesn't really
exist."

 

This is so true.  In South Africa we have 4 months maternity leave - for
most women there is no need for breastpumps, bottles, or other
"breastfeeding products"  during that time.  But, due to the power of
marketing and the fairly recent greater availability of these products there
has been a significant change in breastfeeding "culture".  It's really sad.

 

Yes, Jean, it is sad.  One factor that has been like an invisible elephant
in the living room in this discussion is paid maternity leave - or its lack.
What has been needed, but resisted, for years (in my country, too) has been
a concerted push for paid maternity leave, as in the most recent ILO
recommendations of the early 2000s.  If paid maternity leave had been
happening, there would have been little excuse for the commonly given reason
for the aggressive marketing of breast pumps and the bottles, teats,
sterilizers and related equipment that go with them - that Mums have to
return to work very early.  Efforts to enable Mums to stay home longer with
their babies and breastfeed directly, rather than to promote pumping, would
have better served all concerned - except company profits.  Adequate
maternity leave should not be a dead issue, even with the Recession, for any
time is a good time to start planning a concerted campaign for it.  When the
economy revives, companies will need to recruit and retain experienced
staff, including women of child-bearing age.

Of course, in some countries or localities, some mothers would have made
different choices, especially if bombarded with marketing that implied that
to breastfeed they "needed" xyz equipment.  Jean Ridler's post shows how
this marketing has had an effect, despite paid maternity leave in her
country.  It shows how global this sort of marketing has become.

Marketing gurus such as Drucker emphasise the purpose of marketing is to
create a "need", or a perceived need, where none existed.  In our lifetimes
many of us will have noted many culture changes, some of them promoted by
the post-war rise of consumerism and by increasingly aggressive marketing.
Remember when fathers tinkered with things to fix them, instead of replacing
them with something new?  Culture isn't fixed and can change.  Some changes
we might deplore.  Culture can also change for the better, which is the aim
of social marketing.  Think about attitudes towards car safety belts or
smoking in pregnancy.  Change can also happen through activism.  Look at the
huge shift in cultural values with the passing of legislation specifically
protecting breastfeeding in public places, in various states in the US and
Australia.  This only happened because efforts were made, sometimes over a
long period, to change the laws.

What I'm saying is that we don't have to think that, because most mothers
are returning to work soon after giving birth, that we are stuck with that
situation, and that, consequently, this or that product will be essential
now and into the future.

Concerted, effective campaigns for paid maternity leave need, in my view, to
be followed by sustained social marketing that promotes the savings made
from "just breastfeeding", and the convenience to Mums.

Virginia

 

Dr Virginia Thorley, OAM, PhD, IBCLC, FILCA 

Brisbane, Qld, Australia 

E: [log in to unmask] 


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