Dear Jeanette, about 35 years ago LLLI thought as soon as everyone knew the
facts and benefits of BF they'd be out of business!  I think there will
always be a need even if BF friendly community.  Medicine will continue to
think up new ways to screw up what should be happening between mother and
baby at birth.  And there will always be some special needs moms and babies
and a need for on-going ed for everyone.  We got to where we are today by
thinking we can improve on mother nature's system.  I think people will
always be coming along who think they can do it better!

If the community is BF friendly then moms will know and expectant moms will
observe and catch-on.  Oliver Wendall Holmes said (about a hundred years
ago) that a grandmother was better than 2 spheres of a learned professor's
brain. (or something like that).  Now I personally think that needs to be
changed to a grandmother who BF!  The model is coach Smith's: Feed the
baby.  The mother is right. It's her baby. Nobody knows it all.  There's
another way.  (The "rules" hang over my desk!)

I don't think it needs to be a province of medicine.  It got to be a
province of medicine by the gradual slide into bottle feeding of a
concoction that babies could survive on, when it became "science". Even
when we become "baby friendly" I don't think we'll ever be able to undo all
that has been done to mothers and babies in the name of science.  And I do
believe since the beginning of time there have been a certain percentage of
women who weren't interested, just couldn't be bothered etc. to care for
their own off spring.

There is so much involved.  It's just not a simple question of being "baby
friendly".  Being "baby friendly" is a start.  But we have to value
children, invest in children, and as a culture we don't.

Sincerely, Pat in SNJ