At the end of the lactnet thread some years back about "why I decided to breastfeed," it occurred to me that there were some interesting statistics to be had. I printed out the 39 stories that I found, and tried to categorize them. They seemed to break down into 6 categories:
1. I was part of a breastfeeding mini-culture already and there really was no decision-making process (6).
2. I did it for my baby's health (7)
3. I had a compelling role model (for one of us, it was a woman on a bus, tending her children in a way that the writer instantly envied) (9)
4. I wanted to follow my mother's example (I've since met people who wanted to do the *opposite* of their mother) (6)
5. I had another "selfish" reason (one did it for her own health) (3)
6. Other (one breastfed because her boss told her to) (8)
I eliminated the first group because no decision was made; these women simply followed their cultural model. That left 33, with the following breakdown:
1. 29 percent
2 27 percent
3. 18 percent
4. 9 percent
5. 24 percent
Then I grouped them according to "baby reasons," "me reasons," and "other". "Baby reasons" was about 29 percent, "Me" reasons was about 54 percent, "Other" was 24 percent. Here we were, a group of people who had ended up being health care professionals and allied health care professionals, yet *half* of us chose to breastfeed for some reason other than for the baby's health.
There's more. In their stories, I noticed phrases in the baby's health group like "I decided to try it for 6 months" - uncertainty and a time limit built in. The me-mothers were more likely to say things like, "As soon as I saw her, I knew that's what I wanted for myself and my children" - very positive, with no expected time limit. Granted, not all stories were like that, but I wasn't looking for that trend and think it was there.
Having a role model was huge: categories 1, 3, and 4, or a total of 21 of all 39 stories.
This doesn't say anything about why a woman having trouble continues; if she runs into problems it might well be important that she see the benefit to her child, because at that stage she may not be able to see any benefit to herself, and certainly role models would continue to be huge. But these were all stories about the initial decision, pre-baby.
As a speaker, I've walked groups through these figures, first having them break into groups of 2 or 3, tell their stories to each other about why they did or didn't decide to breastfeed, and decide what category to put themselves in. Looking over the audience's show of hands, it usually seems to be about 1/3 "selfish" and 2/3 "baby". But I always wonder how long it takes to figure out what we *really* thought back then. Can it be done on the spur of the moment? For my part, I assumed for years that I was in group 1 - part of a breastfeeding mini-culture that never really made a decision. I knew that all my friends had breastfed. Then one day I sat down and thought about my supposed "breastfeeding mini-culture." My mother breastfed and my older sister (my only sibling) breastfed. At 29 I was the first of my friends to have a baby. Mini-culture indeed! I simply did what my family did, and that was mini-culture enough...
Bottom line: Mother-to-mother support groups are critically important, and mothers should be encouraged to go when they're pregnant. They're *looking* for role models, whether they know it or not. We need to be appealing to women's guts rather than their heads, or at least doing much, much, much more of it than we do.
And we need to urge them to give it a try, if only while they're in the hospital, to give the "me reasons" a chance to kick in. Barb Behrmann's book, The Breastfeeding Cafe, has in it a story by a woman who bottle-fed her first 3 and then, out of curiosity, decided to put her 4th to breast just once, to see what it was like. Happily, the baby latched on flawlessly. The mother writes, "I instantly understood why women nourish their babies in this manner, what it meant to breastfeed, and why no one could ever have explained this to me." She became a nursing mother and writes, "Of course I could tell you all about the health advantages of breastfeeding, or about the convenience and economy of it. But these things are only the icing on the cake. To tell the truth, I participated in breastfeeding for what it offered ME.,, I'm so glad I gave myself permission to love a child this way."
Diane Wiessinger, MS, IBCLC Ithaca, NY USA
www.wiessinger.baka.com
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