Speaking from personal experience as a mother and as a midwife:
I insisted on following my own cultural practice, and refused to let the
hospital give my baby sugar water for the first feed.  I insisted on having
him with me at all times, also not the norm.  And I declined to give him a
large formula feed the day before his outpatient PKU test as the head
midwife on the postnatal ward advised me to do.  This was 1986 in Norway.
We have improved since then!

The one generalization I can make from my professional contact with mothers
from N. and S. America, most Asian countries, most European ones and many
African ones is this:
If I meet them with a genuine interest in, and respect for, how they are
used to doing things, and then explain how we do them here, and how this
relates to our excellent child health statistics, they are usually quite
open to trying 'our way' even if it is very different.  And sometimes I
learn that 'their way' is better, and then I've gained something important
as well.

If, OTOH, women are met with a patronizing attitude about the backwardness
of everywhere else in the world relative to Norway, they tend to dig their
heels in and follow their culture which affords them more self-respect,
regardless of how destructive that is to breastfeeding.  I offer myself as
an example of that reaction, although seen objectively from the vantage
point of a breastfeeding expert, my culture was superior as well.

I have extensive contact with US expatriates. Those who have grown up in
areas with weak BF traditions are the hardest ones to 'enlighten'!  But when
they do come around, they are some of the most persistent, rabidly devoted
BF mothers you'll ever meet, and they evangelize by e-mail to their friends
in the US.  Isn't there some saying about the faith of the newly converted?

Rachel Myr
editor, midwife, IBCLC
blooming where I have been transplanted, in Kristiansand, Norway

             ***********************************************
The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(TM)
mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html