Dear Friends:
        Did you ever stop and think how often a woman's biologic functions
are hidden or ignored? Menarche is not the rite of passage or celebration in
the USA that it is in other cultures. Employed women who become pregnant are
entitled at best to be treated the same as a sick man. There is no concept in
the law of "normal female"....it is all variations on male functions.
Birthing, for the most part is manipulated and regulated by men so that in
many states a woman is not permitted to legally birth at home with the
practitioner of her choice. Breastfeeding is fighting to come out of the
closet....or should I say toilet stall? Menopause is viewed culturally in the
US as a disease to be treated. The only function that women are encouraged to
enjoy and flaunt is intercourse.....is that because it is the only one that
men truly want to participate in?
        A woman returns to employment and can't stay home and mother because
she needs the second income. But she can still provide her milk for her
baby.....maybe. Mary Black makes the comment in the piece she co-authored
with another faculty member in the March issue of Breastfeeding Review, that
"Women have coped by protecting their employer from the dreadful truth of the
baby." They minimize their time away from the job, and rarely, if ever even
bring the baby to their job.
        Karr-Morse and Wiley, in the last chapter of their great book "Ghosts
from the Nursery: Tracing the Roots of Violence" ask the question "What would
the world be like the image of a baby's face was kept in mind as decisions
were made? When babies are not seen, they are not considered. So decisions
made by employers, and policy makers, and governments are made to serve the
needs of the employment and the policy and the government, not the needs of
the next generation. The needs of the baby, which are biologically determined
and cannot be changed, can only be ignored or manipulated or suppressed. And
our world is becoming a place where clean air, clean water, and healthy soil
are increasingly endangered. If we thought about what was best for babies
when we hire Chemlawn for the grass, Chemlawn would be out of business
instead of poisoning ground water.
        James McKenna says that we are birthing stone age babies who are
trying to live in a space age world.
        Every woman who breastfeeds where ever she is, whether it be in a
restaurant, at a beach, or at her workplace is reminding people about babies.
She is a hero by keeping her baby seen. Sure, it is different to work with a
baby around. It takes a different energy. I prefer it to having babies put in
daycare!
        I am so sick and scared about the way the world is, how a man's job
life rarely changes when he becomes a father, but a woman's becomes more
difficult, especially if she chooses to do something that she is biologically
programmed to do such as breastfeed. And how babies are at the bottom of the
list of societal priorities.
        In the USA today, children are committing suicide and murder in
increasing numbers, heretofore never seen before. Joseph Chilton Pierce made
the comment that as a young doctor, he had never heard of a child suicide.
The youngest child in the USA to be charged with attempted murder was a 6
year old boy in Richmond, California who beat a neighbor's month-old sleeping
baby with a stick, leaving the baby with permanent brain damage. There is a
case on record of a 4 year old climbing into a crib and stomping an 8 week
old baby to death. What we are doing with mothers and babies today is not
working......
        If the majority of the world was like the citizens of LACTNET, it
would be a glorious place. Sigh.......warmly, Nikki Lee


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