Nina, you are _so_ right!   And Chauntelle, I'm sorry that cultural 
sharing on LACTNET is upsetting you today :-(

In Zimbabwe I worked as a private practice LC and my clients came 
from all ethnic, racial and cultural groups.  Breastfeeding 
initiation was 99.6% nationally, and 94% of babies were still 
breastfed at one year of age.  Indigenous Zimbabwean women were most 
likely to breastfeed, and only needed technical help.  White 
Zimbabweans (often third generation, originally of English or South 
African stock) needed lots of advocacy and encouragement, and 
technical help, but they mostly "complied" with hospital policies and 
the recommendations of their paediatricians to breastfeed, at least 
in the early months, and many of them went on to do it by the book 
for the full two years.  Indian mothers and the Coloured community 
had a bit more trouble, and would often supplement early. Expatriate 
mothers were a very mixed bag, and I learned to expect anything.  I 
was non-plussed to work once with a French-speaking West African 
mother having her second baby who complained about being expected to 
breastfeed at all - it turned out her first baby had been born in 
Paris and had been given a bottle in the delivery room, which I found 
really shocking!   Americans of all colours and from North or South, 
as well as German, Norwegian, Dutch, Finnish, Australian, N Zealand 
and Israeli mothers were usually well motivated to 
breastfeed.  Italians and Spanish, Serbian and Russian were 
definitely tricky, as were Belgians. The most difficult were those 
who spoke with an English or Irish accent, and it was a special buzz 
to help them overcome their cultural fastidiousness - and now that I 
live in England I know exactly where they got it ....   One of the 
most gratifying comments I ever received was from a French mother who 
went on to breastfeed her baby for months and months and then told me 
she was so glad her baby had been born in Zimbabwe because if she had 
had her baby "at home" she never would have even considered 
breastfeeding, and would never have known how lovely it could be.

What can we conclude from all the different stories of different 
myths and beliefs and practices?  Probably Jim Akre summed it up best 
when he said that it's not women who breastfeed, but cultures that do 
so.  And clearly, a mother's cultural background may be so strong 
that its influence survives being transplanted to a new country or a 
new place with strange, new practices.  But sometimes it just 
doesn't, and she will adopt whatever feeding method is presented as 
most "endorsed" and attractive in the new environment.  I've lived in 
eight countries now - ultimately, I have to conclude that a country's 
top-down official breastfeeding policy (or lack thereof) is the most 
important influence.  Sadly ....

Pamela Morrison IBCLC
Rustington, England
--------------------------------------------

while working as a social worker with asylum seekers (not only
from africa but from all over the world), i experienced big
differences between mothers from francophone and anglophone african
countries, but thats another story.

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