Hi Heather :)
Boy, could I relate to this!
I come from a working class family in London's East End, and what you
describe regarding new mothers seeing their own mothers every day is typical
there too.

As it happens, I married an American man and have lived in the USA since
1973. As a result, while I was raising my three children I only saw my own
mother about once a year or less. Even so, our visits were always stressful
because of her not-so-subtle comments about breastfeeding. The examples you
gave could have been taken straight from her mouth!

Having said that, many of the new mothers in the small, semi-rural town
where I have lived for the past twenty years face exactly the same
challenges. About half the population has been living in the same location
for several generations, while the other half are *foreigners* brought in to
take on specific jobs. It is the latter who are most likely to initiate
breastfeeding and seek help when necessary. They tend to have more formal
education, and of course, live further from their families.

It would be wonderful if new mothers were able to turn to their own mothers
for accurate breastfeeding information, and I have seen signs of this
gradually happening. That is one of the (nicer) results of getting older -
seeing the babies you helped to breastfeed now raising their own children.
When a mother calls me to ask if I am *still doing that breastfeeding stuff*
because her daughter just had a baby, it provides a wonderful sense of
continuity. Increasingly often, I am finding that the grandmother has
assessed the situation quite accurately and is only calling me to confirm
her opinion to her daughter.

One baby at a time!

Norma Ritter, IBCLC
Big Flats, waaaaay upstate NY, USA
[log in to unmask]

>Here (North of England) grandmothers' influence can be very strong.

Mother tell me their mothers (or mothers-in-law) say 'if you were
botte feeding, I could take the baby for a night and give you a
break'....or 'are you sure he doesn't need a top-up?'....or 'don't
make it hard for yourself - just give him the bottle' and so on. I
have spoken to many women who feel this as intense pressure, and some
who have given in to it.

A local study done about 12 years ago found that the more often a
mother saw her own mother, the less likely she was to breastfeed.
This is actually a marker for class, as well....older, middle class
mothers are more likely to bf, *and* more likely to live further away
from their mothers, and so see them less.

So it's a double whammy. The younger, working class mothers have
mothers who probably bottle fed, and they see their mothers very
often....in the study, daily visits to and from the mother's mother
were very common.

Heather Welford Neil
NCT bfc Newcastle upon Tyne UK



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