While I do believe that the ad campaign was a good one, and appropriate for
the US, I am also reminded by Jo-Anne Elder Gomes' posts of late, that there
will always be a role for the network of mothers around each new mother.
Reflecting in the company of others is how we learn mothering consciously.
The ad campaign has a different purpose altogether, and no less necessary.

I've been just skimming the digests this past week as I've been sick.  I
noticed Amy Spangler was quoted in the TV interview as saying BF initiation
rates in Norway are over 90%.  They are indeed - actually over 98%.  We
don't run ad campaigns about BF to entice women to breastfeed.  They want to
do it because it is the norm.  They are terribly distressed when they
encounter problems, because it is conspicuously different to use a bottle.
The people who are most cavalier about the use of formula are, and have long
been, maternity ward staff.  Sadly, many of us still lag behind in knowledge
and in attitudes.  We could use an information campaign about the risks of
artificial feeding directed at ourselves as health care providers, really.

We don't have the formula gift packs, and our pediatricians don't get their
union dues subsidized by the formula industry.  Our pediatricians make only
a fraction of what US pediatricians do, too.  We don't have adverts for
formula, and mothers don't get sent cases of it after they give birth.  We
have good maternity benefits, mandated by law, like most of the
industrialized world with the exception of the US.  Among those benefits are
complete coverage of medical costs in connection with pregnancy and birth,
and paid leave for the first year of the child's life, as well as the right
to breastfeeding breaks up to one hour each day, with no limit on the age of
the child being breastfed.  Our foremost activist since the mid-1960's,
Elisabet Helsing, is now concentrating on getting breastfeeding to be
considered a human right, both for the child and the mother.  She notes that
this implies an imperative for governments to enact legislation making it
possible to breastfeed.  Maureen Minchin wrote that without the necessary
support, an admonition to breastfeed can become just another stick to beat
women with.  I'm afraid that potential still exists in the US, though I
think the campaign should go ahead even so.  But I wonder how much we would
need this campaign if the WHO code for marketing of breastmilk substitutes
had been ratified in the US 20 years ago.

Rachel Myr
Kristiansand, Norway

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