>I agree. Here in the Netherlands we don't have the Babywise program, but
>this style of feeding is very comon here, and also strongly recommended by
>a lot of baby check offices. So, the thing that Vivian describes is also
>very common here. These babies just don't nurse enough and are put on
>pacifiers the whole day.

I just read the most wonderful, passionate article from a small
newsletter.  Coming from a Christian perspective, the author was writing
about what is wrong with the infant programs that are becoming so
popular, *again*, these days. (You know, they say history repeats
itself--- for better or for worse. <sigh>)

Her bottom line-- they are conceived by men, who do not have a mothering
instinct because God [and nature] did not give them one.  She talks about
the very real differences between men and women, and how men are not in a
position to fully comprehend our mothering responses.  The author rightly
points out that women have traditionally taught each other the art of
mothering, the older teaching the younger, and yet the authors of all of
these popular control-oriented programs are male (Holt, Spock, Ezzo, etc).

She wasn't putting men down in anyway, just pointing out that these
programs reflect an almost exclusively male approach to life and are
largely devoid of the female influence.  Realizing what many women must
do to succeed in a "man's world,"  her perspective made me realize how,
just as medicine (which comes from a strongly male perspective--fix the
problem!) has taken over childbirth such that most women never fully
experience the potential of their own birthing abilities,  so have
male-authored programs also taken over our infant nurturing, undermining
our maternal intuition and causing mothers in droves to question their
ability to "do the right thing" without an outer authority.

Gosh, I think she really nailed it!  Nurturing babies is primarily a
woman's role as dictated by nature, and yet we have abdicated our own
knowledge in favor of another.  The existence of formula and its ability
to "free" a woman from her natural role just serves to obscure the issues
even further. No wonder women are terribly confused these days, and that
dads are so attracted to the orderliness of these programs!

-Lisa Marasco, BA, IBCLC

PS-- Keeping the lack of respect for the female perspective in mind,
y'all are going to love what our latest favorite author has to say about
our largely female profession in his updated revision: "Unfortunately, as
a result of their training many within the lactation industry are heavily
biased in favor of the attachment parenting theories and thus against any
type of routine feeding. PDF (parent-directed feeding) is a new and major
paradigm shift for the industry and not all consultants have a working
understanding of routine breast-feeding dynamics."  I guess we lack
sufficient male training, eh?