Something important that I think has been missing from this discussion is
the important role that seeing breastfeeding can have for girls and women in
their own ability to breastfeed. We all know that the worst time to first
learn about breastfeeding is when you've just had a baby! Really, what we
want is for women to learn about breastfeeding from early childhood on and
the best way to do that is to see others doing it often. I see women who
breastfeed openly in public as performing a very important educative role
and I want to see it more! I specifically want to see more women
breastfeeding toddlers and young children in public. Women cannot consider
continuing to breastfeed past infancy if they 1) do not know that it is
possible 2) think that they are the only one doing it. Yes, people get
shocked when they see a toddler breastfeeding but that is a necessary part
of the process by which women consider continuing to breastfeed themselves
(hopefully the paper discussing this will be published soon!)

We have a long way to go! I'll share an interesting conversation I had with
my daughter the other day. She's just turned 9. Breastfeeding is a frequent
topic of conversation in our house, we have breastfeeding art work all over
the house (can't help myself when we're travelling in China), she can
remember breastfeeding herself, she often sees breastfeeding at ABA
functions and she regularly attends breastfeeding conferences with me. If
any child would know about breastfeeding you would expect it would be her.
However, we recently had a very interesting conversation where she told me
"Breastfeeding is rude, you can't breastfeed in the street can you?" After I
picked myself up off the floor and explained to her that yes, you can
breastfeed anywhere it was time for her to be shocked. She genuinely thought
that breastfeeding in public was not appropriate. "You mean you can
breastfeed anywhere??" Now why was this so? Why did she think this? Well I
have come to the conclusion that it is because she doesn;t see
breastfeeding. Not on the television, not at the local shops, not in the
public arena (we have abysmal breastfeeding rates in our area). Since she
knows that babies are breastfed she has concluded (unconsciously I suspect)
that breastfeeding is not something for the public eye. This  is very, very
bad. Children are interested in infant feeding. They pay attention to infant
feeding, they closely observe and remember what they see. If they do not see
breastfeeding around them they will draw their own conclusions, just as my
daughter did.

Karleen Gribble
Australia

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