I am replying to the thread which started out as "abm marketing" and which has deteriorated, IMHO, to the denigration of those with opposing points of view.

I would like to speak as one who was born into one culture and who has moved into another. My intention is not to flame, but to share my own experiences in the hope of opening the doors to understanding, so that we can begin to comprehend from where many of the mothers with whom we work are coming. Please understand that this is not a whine, merely a recitation of facts and an airing of opinion.

My first six years were spent living in a tiny three room apartment in London, England, with my mother, baby sister, aunt and 90 y/o grandmother. My father had a room somewhere else, because there was no room in our flat  for another or bigger bed. There was no hot water or bathtub, and we thought ourselves lucky to have our own toilet. All washing was done at the kitchen sink, both clothes and people.

When I was six we moved to what in the USA would be called a public housing project. This was luxury - a real bathroom! - but we usually had to walk up to the fifth floor because the elevator wasn't very reliable, and anyway, reeked of human waste. The district in which it was situated was (and still is) considered a high crime area. I had to delay going to school because of an overcrowded system, and then sat in classes of 40-45 students with minimal equipment and teachers who were either bordering on retirement or were awaiting formal training.

My mother and father had both left school at 12y/o to contribute to their families' incomes. Nevertheless, they believed in the value of education, and I learned to read fluently, well before starting school. Every afternoon I would help my mother line, by hand, the three heavy fur coats that she would bring home from her part time job. She was worried in case her boss noticed my neater stitching and wondered why she didn't keep to the same standard all the time. My father worked double shifts as a postman, earning minimum wage, but at least they were now together.

What has all this got to do with promoting breastfeeding and abm advertising? I'll tell you.

With a minimum education, working long hours for little pay and living in dreadful conditions, my parents truly wanted the best for their daughters. Because they respected those with more education, they believed the doctors and nurses who told my mother that she didn't have enough milk for me - those same people who made her adhere to the 5 mins-every-four-hour schedule during her 10 day hospital stay, and who then gave her free cans of powdered whole milk at the well-baby clinic.

Many years later, my sister, by then a State Registered Nurse, looked at me with complete disbelief when I told her that in the USA processed foods were labeled with their ingredients. "But the government wouldn't allow manufacturers to put in anything bad, so why do you need labels?" she asked.
She was the one who told me that the women in our family couldn't make enough milk. Goodness, she had even put *her* baby on a THREE HOUR SCHEDULE and he was still hungry enough to gulp down a full bottle after a ten minute nursing! (Later on, she told me that I should have weaned my toddler by nine months, because now was too late to *break him of the habit* and being addicted, he would nurse forever!)

Do you see the pattern here? People with little education and limited access to information can easily form the mindset that *those people* must know what they are doing, otherwise they wouldn't be allowed to do it! This attitude is so pervasive and ingrained, that it achieves a cultural significance which carries over even when they have moved up the socio-economic scale, because the education system is designed to perpetuate the status quo. It is the rare student who is taught to question authority. No wonder commercials are so successful - after all, surely the advertizers wouldn't be allowed to make false or misleading claims?

Why did I break the mold? I don't know. What I do know is that my family have always been at a loss to explain my differences and can only shake their heads in utter disbelief.

It is often difficult to understand why people make choices that are so different to ours. It is only by looking to see from where they are coming that we can begin to help them choose their own path.

That is the essence of counselling.


Norma Ritter, IBCLC, LLLL
"If not now, when? If not us, who?"
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