Dear Ms. Gibbons,
A number of people have sent me email copies of your article in the
Traverse City Record-Eagle. I am an anthropologist who specializes in
research on infant/child feeding practices, especially breastfeeding and
weaning, as well as the cultural context of breastfeeding in the United
States. I found your column to be tasteless and misguided. The picture
from National Geographic, which I have seen, shows one end of the spectrum
of women's breast shapes around the world.
Your column is seriously misleading when you claim that the woman's
breast shape in the National Geo photograph was the consequence of
breastfeeding. Unfortunately, the children may remember your comment when
they grow up and choose not to breastfeed their own children, or not to
support their wife in breastfeeding for their children. This would be a
serious consequence, given that not breastfeeding increases a child's risk
of many diseases, both during childhood and throughout life, lowers the
child's IQ, and increases the mother's risk of breast and reproductive
cancers. Thus, what you have done is NOT trivial, especially since your
inaccurate comments have now been published for many more people to read.
It is NOT true that breastfeeding "ruins" breasts. Around the
world, women are about equally divided between those whose breasts are
larger after they finish breastfeeding, those whose breasts are smaller
after they finish breastfeeding, and those whose breasts are about the same
before and after breastfeeding. Amount of body fat also plays a huge role
in breast size, so that if you yourself lost a lot of weight after
pregnancy, you may very well have ended up with smaller breasts than before
breastfeeding. Women who don't lose weight or who gain weight, will see a
proprotional increase in the size of their breasts. "Degree of sag" is
determined, for the most part, by genetic inheritance, age, number of
pregnancies, and the degree to which you do hard physical labor (or
aerobics) without proper breast support.
I suspect the African woman in the National Geographic photo is (1)
middle-aged (2) has had many pregnancies (3) is NOT in good nutritional
status, despite your contention that she looks healthy, and therefore has no
fat reserves in her breast to make it look like a mango instead of a banana
(4) does a lot of hard physical labor without a bra and (5) probably carries
her child tied to her back with a length of cloth that presses tightly
against the top of her breasts, pushing them down.
Finally, you would do well to ponder the purpose of breasts. Women
have breasts so they can breastfeed their babies. Breasts are not meant to
be used to attract male attention, for your own self-esteem, or to get you a
lucrative Playboy contract. They are for feeding babies.
Women around the world know exactly what toll childbirth takes on
their bodies, and they continue to have children because having children is
one of the great purposes of life. Natural selection operates on humans as
it does on all other animals and plants -- those who have the most children
get the most copies of their genes into the next generation, and the urge to
procreate is one of the most powerful on earth, right after the urges to
breathe and to eat. Children are also a joy, and raising a child extremely
rewarding. The toll is takes on your body (why not talk about stretch
marks, weakened abdominal muscles and urinary incontinence!) is well worth
the price.
It is certainly too bad that you didn't breastfeed your child for
longer than a few months. The new American Academy of Pediatrics guidelines
recommend a MINIMUM of 12 months of breastfeeding for all babies, and the
World Health Organization recommendations remain as they have been since
1979, recommending a minimum of 24 months of breastfeeding. I breastfed my
three children for a combined total of 9.5 years, and at 43, my breasts are
a little bigger than they were before I had children, and they sag a little,
not much.
You should be ashamed for spreading misinformation about the effect
of breastfeeding on breasts to people who read your column. If even one
child is not breastfed because of what you have written, it will be a huge
tragedy for that child, and will put the child's mother's health at risk as
well.
A retraction and apology (in your column) would be most appropriate.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------
Katherine A. Dettwyler, Ph.D. email: [log in to unmask]
Anthropology Department phone: (409) 845-5256
Texas A&M University fax: (409) 845-4070
College Station, TX 77843-4352
http://www.prairienet.org/laleche/dettwyler.html
|
