"But where, Carol, is the room in your vision for women to support
each other, to demand the services and the support they need from the
health services, from employers and others...for  a 'bottom up'
approach, so the health services can learn from the women they are
trying to reach?"

i got soundly beat up once when i was still an active member of an
"accredited volunteer breastfeeding support group," but i think i did have a
little plug in my utopian vision for a support group and something about
(LLL). actually i think almost everyone should have their babies at home (but
in the netherlands this does not prevent breastfeeding mismanagement, right?)
and that everyone should use support groups like (LLL) but what i see is
institutions that are "allergic" to support groups that they don't run
themselves, even when it means reinventing the wheel. and mothers in the
world who feel very free to criticize groups they know nothing about - even
people who post on this list and refer to themselves as breastfeeding
supporters have made it plain they don't know nothin' about volunteer groups
and have nothing to do with them. someone i know who "does this work" will
tell you frankly how dangerous she thinks they are and "every mom" who has
even the slightest question needs to see . . . you guessed it, an LC.

so maybe to pass the exam you should be required to have spent some time with
volunteer groups. and yes, heather, how do we convey to women that they need
to take back the power of birth and babies? most are still happily living in
the paternalistic utopia in which birth won't hurt and breastfeeding will
happen "naturally."

or to quote a shirt i saw in a catalog today (okay, so it wasn't heavy
intellectual reading day) "i'll be a post-feminist in a post-paternalist
society." and as long as most people who have anything to do with birth and
breastfeeding support the paternalistic norm, then, here we are!

carol brussel IBCLC

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