Oooh!  I just saw the question about this.  I used to wonder, too, why the
scissor hold was bad, when so many women fall into it so naturally.  I
decided it isn't.

I bought a plastic multi-layer hamburger, and hold *it* instead of my
breast (but right in front of my breast) when I demonstrate positioning.
If I hold the hamburger parallel to the floor (long axis side to side), my
hand is in the C-hold.  Ah, but my *baby* (doll) is *sideways*!  If I keep
the hamburger pressed to the doll's mouth, then rotate doll and hamburger
so that the doll is sitting upright, the hamburger now has its long axis
running floor to ceiling.  That's no way to eat!  So how do I hold the
hamburger so that it's lined up appropriately for my sideways doll?  I hold
the hamburger sideways also.  That's not hard to do if I'm using a
transverse hold and can use my left hand to support my left breast in a U
shape.  But if I'm holding the baby in a traditional cradle hold, the
easiest way to hold the hamburger sideways for her is to hold it between my
index and middle fingers - in a scissor hold.

I think the only reason we feel the scissor hold doesn't work these days is
that mothers have forgotten how important it is to stay away from the
baby's lower jaw.  Let those fingers encroach on the baby's territory, and
mom gets sore.  Then we blame the hold, when we should be looking at the
mother's perception of where the baby's mouth goes.  In the "old days"
before bottles were ubiquitous, I think mothers had a clearer notion of
just what a baby was doing at a breast, and kept out of his way.

For those of us who never used a scissor hold when we nursed our babies...
I'd be willing to bet we pressed or lifted or shifted our breast using the
side of our index finger (left breast, right index finger), which
essentially did the same thing:  created the underside of a rather sideways
sandwich for a rather sideways little mouth.  Unless we were big-breasted,
in which case we had more individualized techniques - which still included
a scissor hold for many of us.

Diane Wiessinger, MS, IBCLC, LLLL  Ithaca, NY, fan of the scissor hold