I want to chime in with Cathy Barger's comment about most of her moms knowing
that bf is best but not seeing how to manage it; she wrote "The good news is
that at least most women have heard something about BFing being recommended as
the best choice for babies; the bad news is that the women who've heard that
it's "good" in general often have a long and firmly-entrenched list of reasons
why it's not for them."

I interviewed a group of professional, highly educated african american women
who ALL quickly asserted that "bf is much better for babies" but never
seriously considered it for themselves for reasons that had nothing to do with
physiological health; they talked about the impermissibility of black women
"using" their own bodies publicly and still being "respectable" (one professor
told me "I want to applaud when I see it but I can't help thinking, Girl, put
that titty away where it belongs!"), and also about the mother's income as the
foundation of the black middle class, which is perceived as having an even
greater effect on their children's well-being that bf could have.

So according to these women, the problem for them wasn't advertising the
advantages of bf -- it was persuading them of the cultural possibility of bf.

(If anyone out there has worked with significant numbers of mothers in this
demographic groups I would be grateful to hear from you -- my samples have
been entirely unscientific, though their results have been remarkably
consistent.)

Elisheva Urbas
NYC