Bravo to Catherine Genna! Her message of June 8 is a classic.
Anyone who works with minority or otherwise disempowered
individuals will identify. The disempowered in my part of the
world are usually (but of course not always) Jews whose families
immigrated from Arab countries. The women are often disempowered
by their husbands and by the medical system, which is still in
the "just leave everything to infalliable me" phase. Their bodies
are a mystery to them and they are often afraid of it. I try to
show them what a marvelous process is involved in breastfeeding,
and try to communicate my own sense of wonder to them.
I was interested in Catherine's noting that "Hispanic moms born
in the US seem to have lost the 'breastfeeding culture'", as she
put it. My gut feeling with these Israeli moms is that they
consciously or unconsciously REJECT the breastfeeding culture,
indeed the whole birthing culture, of their mothers' generation.
Again, this is probably my hang-up on peer group acceptance, role
modeling, etc. I find great resistance to arguments on the
benefits of bfing, so when I can find someone from this
population who IS receptive to long-term bfing, I make an all-out
effort to make her a believer, hopefully the basis for a peer-
role model to her friends and neighbors.
How do others see this? Judy Knopf