The best I ever heard was a French woman in Mali, who weaned her child at 4
months because breastfeeding "made her breasts too big, and they got in the
way when she wanted to play tennis."  I'm still shaking my head over that one.

I think we need to cultivate a more understanding attitude towards mothers
who choose bottle-feeding because they've been told over and over that it's
the normal thing to do, equal to breastfeeding, painless, less time
consuming, etc.  Just as we need to be understanding of women who get breast
implants because they accept our culture's definition of the sexy,
attractive woman as someone who is thin but has big breasts.  Ditto for
understanding women who choose abortion of fetuses of children with Down
Syndrome because doctors, friends, neighbors, and co-workers all told them
that their child would be severely mentally retarded and lead a useless
pain-filled life.

It is *hard* to step back from immersion in one's culture and see the
negative aspects of the messages you hear constantly from day one, from
everyone.  It takes a lot of courage to defy the cultural norms.  And it
takes a lot of education just to get to the stage of beginning to question
those cultural norms and seek out information from unbiased sources.


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Katherine A. Dettwyler, Ph.D.                         email: [log in to unmask]
Anthropology Department                               phone: (409) 845-5256
Texas A&M University                                    fax: (409) 845-4070
College Station, TX  77843-4352