Just to get in on the issue of how soon the day will dawn when breastfeeding is
the accepted way of feeding babies, I think this day is far in the future.
I base this on the knowledge of how long it has been in the West, in our
culture, since breastfeeding was accepted and unremarked and unrestricted and
wholly valued.   In my reading I would say that as soon as humans began fooling
with agriculture and began to move away from hunter/gathering economies,
breastfeeding began to be restricted and subject to cultural constraints (e.g.
avoidance of colostrum).

Sometimes when I am out and about I hear people say "well, it all started after
the last war, in the thirties, at the turn of the century...".  But avoidance of
breastfeeding, starting for the women in elite classes, began with the earliest
hisotrical written records.  Some egyptian hieroglyphs talk about the
characterisitcs of a good wet nurse, and in Rome and Greece elite women used
slaves to nurse their babies.  Of course the babes got breastmilk, but the point
was that this set up the ideal of avoiding breastfeeding if you could do so.
There is some lovely archeological stuff too.

See Valerie Fildes (Bottles, Breasts and Babies & The History of Wet Nursing),
see Money Milk and Madness, see Gay Palmer(The Politics of Breastfeeding) see
Margaret Ehrenriech (Women In Prehistory) see Margaret Mead (Male and Female),
see Vanessa Maher (the Anthropolgy of Breastfeeding), see Marilyn Yallom (The
History of the Breast), see Timothy Taylor (The Prehistory of Sex -- one of my
favorite reads this year).

Whoops, I think I got carried away.  My point is that breastfeeding has been
undermined for several millenia now.  Whatever we do is trying to make it
possible to succeed physiologically in a cultural context which has particular
notions of what women should do with their lives, what function breasts serve
not just for women but for society, how babies ought to behave, the relationship
of humans to the rest of nature, and what is a valuable commodity to
produce/market.  Until we impact on these things, and more, breastfeeding is
going to be under threat.

I'm finished now.

Magda Sachs
Breastfeeding Supporter
The Breastfeeding Network
Saddleworth, near Oldham, Greater Manchester, UK