Great email Lee!
I sent the following yesterday and did not receive any automatic response. I am hopeful it was read:
Bravo Professor!
Glad that you are able to look at breastfeeding in a new light. I am concerned about why you are able to do that. It makes me wonder if you are in the pocket of some formula companies. While you expressly say breast is best, it is with the same reluctance that I see in formula literature given out to mothers.
"Now this orthodoxy is being challenged by a study that claims “breast is best” campaigns risk doing more harm than good,"
How can this do harm with obesity rates and chronic disease increasing faster than healthcare can keep up?. We are all mammals Professor, even though Europe and America are in a state of denial due to all that money to make off mothers and their infants. Indeed money is KING. If more women do breastfeed, who gains? The mother and child foremost just on bonding with each other. The society as a whole gains from decreased healthcare costs as well as social costs. How can that be more harmful than good?
The transference a mother feels has nothing to do with a campaign. It is that she instinctively knows that breastfeeding is right. Forty years ago the tobacco companies were crazy over their limitations for advertising. And now the formula companies are fighting to politicise breastfeeding because they are losing their profits. And after a few years from now they will go into the third world and hurt more babies and mothers with their free samples and formula that will require sanitation and clean water. This is really unethical because the majority of these women would have breastfed. Just like in the 50's and 60's, the majority of women stayed at home and wanted to breastfeed. But formula company, lab coat dressed representatives pushed their product. Also the docs and nurses told the mother that formula was better. Personally two of my four aunts were told this as well and they still feel anxiety because their milk was not "enough" for their babies. Since, their
daughters have breastfed and they now see what happened to them, at their expense.
"Denting women’s belief in their maternal capabilities in this way by far outweighed the potential health hazards of babies drinking formula, as opposed to breast milk, because it could make mothers over-anxious." Indeed, if women trusted their instinct to begin with, instead of being bombarded with all the advertising and family members who used formula, perhaps there would be less anxiety.
"Breast-feeding has become politicised. Instead of having a grown-up debate, we assume that unless a woman breast-feeds, she is an irresponsible mother."
Don't know where you get this really. By promoting a health issue, is it making one be irresponsible? Well, maybe. Guilt is guilt. I don't think that is what the campaign is saying. It is informing mothers about what formula is all about: more illness, more chronic disease, obesity, etc.
Certainly I am not against artificial baby milk (formula) feeding. It has it's place. When a women rarely cannot breastfeed (happens even more rarely than a woman being able to conceive) or doesn't have a supportive work environment to be able to keep up her supply, then she has to feed her baby something or she would then be an irresponsible mother.
It is my hope that you will consider my views mentioned here and realize that your comments are doing more harm than good.
Warmly,
Pam.
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