<if you figure out how to inspire docs to learn about lactation, please let 
me know.> Kathy Leeper, MD, IBCLC>

And please let me know too.  I think it's a combination of a number of 
factors, mostly operating unconsciously.  Firstly, most doctors genuinely 
are unaware that breastfeeding is important or if so, that there is anything 
to know about it.

Most doctors in this country certainly are aware that it's important for the 
poor at least, but they don't know that there's anything in particular that 
they can do about it other than advise a mother to do it. It's a mother's 
personal choice, and rather than address a topic that is an area of total 
ignorance to many of them, they leave it alone.  Before I read the Womanly 
Art of Breastfeeding, when I was pregnant with my second child, I really 
thought it was a matter of luck whether a mother breastfed or not - that is, 
if she wanted to.  I mostly blamed the mother who didn't breastfeed for not 
wanting to.  Until I wanted to, and didn't. I hadn't breastfed my first 
because of the usual hospital mismanagement, but I didn't know that then.  A 
good lesson, however sad.  There is some truth to this too, there isn't much 
you can do when you don't know anything about breastfeeding, which is 
because medical training hardly mentions it.

Then, there's the control issue, which I think is major.  The whole male 
domination culture - breasts are theirs, and they can't control 
breastfeeding, they don't know how much the baby gets, or how to manage it. 
Artificially fed infants provide huge scope for management and control.

And I have even wondered about an unconscious need not to sabotage their 
means of earning a living, since artificially fed infants need doctors much 
more....

I once gave a talk to a group of GPs and caught their attention by 
explaining my feelings about breastfeeding - that it gave me confidence as a 
mother, grew my self-esteem as a woman, made me feel normal.  That after 
failing to nurse my first child, something inside me died, but I would never 
have admitted that, if I hadn't succeeded with my second.  And that I had no 
idea ahead of time that it would affect me that way; I planned to breastfeed 
because I considered it normal, and of course for the health benefits.

Jelliffe quotes Weichert in his"Human Milk in the Modern World":

"....a functional castration of women has occurred. They have aquiesced to a 
combination of forces, medical and cultural, which have eventuated in the 
use of the breast as the primary sex symbol and yardstick of feminine 
desirability, divorced from its nurturing role. Women in a critical period 
of their life cycle have become divorced from themselves and from the 
ability to confirm their identity fundamentally. In this instance, the 
degree of concern of the medical profession might be described as inversely 
proportional to the dimension of the problem. To draw an analogy, would the 
professional distance of physicians be maintained were it routinely 
recommended that all insemination be accomplished  artificially? Would 
anyone suggest seriously that males abstain from intercourse, bind 
themselves, take drugs to relieve congestion, or be mechanically relieved 
routinely, and that it would be as good?
The apparent absurdity of the analogy goes to the heart of the problem. If 
one sees lactation as part of a psychosexual continuum in women, the analogy 
can be taken seriously."

Weichert C, (1975) Paediatrics 56:987 Braestfeeding, First Thoughts.

Nan Jolly MB BCh IBCLC LLLL
Port Elizabeth, South Africa, where MB BCh means what MD does in the USA

             ***********************************************

To temporarily stop your subscription: set lactnet nomail
To start it again: set lactnet mail (or digest)
To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet
All commands go to [log in to unmask]

The LACTNET email list is powered by LISTSERV (R).
There is only one LISTSERV. To learn more, visit:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html