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Date: | Fri, 4 May 2007 20:58:32 EDT |
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I recently read in a faith-based publication the following, on the morality
of breastfeeding:
"[Our organization] promotes breastfeeding because it is the optimal way to
feed and care for a baby. [Our organization] teaches the art of
breastfeeding so couples are encouraged to choose breastfeeding out of selfless love for
their babies. Breastfeeding benefits baby, mother and father, and in fact,
all of society, but should be done primarily for the baby's benefit rather
than for other motivations."
Does anyone have any idea what "other motivations" they might be talking
about?
This idea has been coming across my desk frequently lately. I also
corresponded recently with a prominent theologian who indicated to me that any mother
who breastfeeds "solely or even primarily" to encourage natural child spacing
was "using her baby as a means to an end" (in other words was breastfeeding
for an immoral purpose.)
I am pretty worried about how close this comes to the old accusations used
to discourage mothers from nursing a child, say, past the age of 2 - "that
mother is only nursing for her own selfish benefit..."
I am also worried that a young woman who doesn't know anything about
breastfeeding or who has a particularly sensitive conscience is going to start
worrying that if she reads about the child spacing effect (or the reduction in her
own cancer risk, etc.) and thinks, wow! that would be great - to
breastfeed and have babies spaced naturally 2 years apart - and then start to worry
that she was appreciating the child spacing benefit a little TOO MUCH and that
perhaps she should stop breastfeeding so much.
I don't understand where all the caution is coming from about breastfeeding
SOLELY for the benefit of the baby.
Breastfeeding always benefits the baby. But it seems to me that some people
of faith could believe that God (or nature) has so intertwined the physical,
emotional, psychological and spiritual benefits of breastfeeding that when
the mother benefits so does the baby - the benefits are not in conflict.
It would be a very unusual situation - I think - in which a mother would
breastfeed for a selfish purpose to the detriment of the child (or in this case,
in which a mother would breastfeed to the benefit of the child, but has the
wrong internal motivation for doing so).
Can anyone think what this is about? Are any other groups - faith-based or
other - casting doubt on or particularly concerned about the morality of
breastfeeding based on the mother's private motivations? This moral objection to
breastfeeding seems to have come out of left field to me. And from a
faith-based organization that has historically been fairly closely aligned with La
Leche League in its approach to breastfeeding.
I work closely with many women of traditional faith and values and this kind
of doubt about the morality of breastfeeding could combine with modesty
concerns and a tendency to elevate the primacy of the marriage relationship over
the baby's needs (in an Ezzo-type manner) to have a real chilling effect on
breastfeeding in some circles.
Thanks.
Pamela H. Pilch, JD
Lamaze Certified Childbirth Educator
CatholicMom.com Breastfeeding Columnist
_http://www.catholicmom.com/pilch.htm_ (http://www.catholicmom.com/pilch.htm)
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