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Date: | Sun, 15 Mar 2009 09:33:40 -0400 |
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I'm feeling a little cranky after the Atlantic article and I'm pretty sure I'm repeating
myself. The article follows standard guidelines for discrediting breastfeeding as follows:
1) Discredit the evidence --- usually only taking on those conditions for which it is difficult
to prove a relationship to anything (e.g obesity and IQ --- they never take on diarrhea or
respiratory infections)
2) Discredit the researchers --- note the indirect comments about the American Academy
of Pediatrics ---- that are designed to lead one to conclude that these are breastfeeding
fanatics
3) Claim that women will be liberated by formula feeding (yes, I am naming Voldemort)
--- hence appealing to "feminists" (the debate is always couched in the Martyr versus
Liberated or the Madonna versus Lazy terms)
My problem with the argument that formula is a feminist issue is that women used to
work in close proximity to their infants. Just like sleeping in close proximity to your
infant, working in close proximity enables women to work and breastfeed with less
disruption. Industrialization made this just about impossible for women to breastfeed
their infants while working and the infant death rates in Chicago (I'd have to get the
original citations) were in the 300 per 1000 during this period from the formula available
at the time. Wetnursing among family and kin members was common and the wealthy
used wetnurses. Formula has been given sufficient subsidies to demolish wetnursing as a
viable employment opportunity and hence we now have an inferior product. If we can
screen for egg donors, sperm donors and surrogate mothers, you cannot convince me
that the medical community cannot give guidelines for safer wetnursing and milk sharing.
The baby swapping that I know went on among cowives in Northeast Zaire (now Congo
again) was the maternal relief system. These women shared care giving and income
generating activities. In that area of the world women really were the economic engine -
-- most men only worked at chopping down large trees and hunting except for a few
lucky men who worked for the railroad company, the five teachers and the two doctors.
Google the author of the article --- it should be enlightening as to her lack of credentials
in science.
Best, Susan
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