> Ann, for me you really hit it on the head when you wrote:
> 'I often find, when working with mom, that by reassuring a her that she "can
> nurse in
> public with out embarrassing herself" she will at least give breastfeeding a
> try.'
>
> Esthetic considerations are one thing, legal ones are another, but when it
> comes down to it it is what the mother herself needs that really matters.
>
Ah, another example of why I *love* Lactnet!
We can add 'cultural considerations', as a loaded term, into the list. I
think this is a way of understanding some of Kathy Dettwyler's points on
'cultural differences' -- if I understand her correctly, there is no
'one' Western culture, and people of the same racial origin don't think
alike. There is a wide range of how individual mothers will think and
feel; I think of temperamental, social, philosophical, historical,
biological, religious, racial, gender and a hundred other differences as
overlapping circles. Chances are slim that we will find ourselves in
exactly the same space as anyone else. Honouring and learning about the
place is even more wonderful an experience when we can accept these
different ways of being.
There's an exercise I do about 'community'. It comes from anti-racist
education. Ask people to stand on one side or the other of an imaginary
wall, depending on whether they were born in this country or another,
whether they live in the country or the city, etc. There is constant
crossing of lines, meaning that no two people in the room will be in all
the same 'communities' -- and, I say, this happens just with the people
who are in the same room.
Jo-Anne Elder-Gomes, currently trying to make sense of the
nature-nurture triad in the breastfeeding dyad, and keeping the mom and
baby in the same room in her head to do it.


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