>We breastfeeding advocates are too gentle and don't want to hurt anyone's
>feeling, which makes us less effective at getting a strong message across.

My DH gave me a new insight into "we don't want to make them feel guilty"
when he described a recent conversation with a male acquaintance who has
young children.  My DH (man A in this story) and the young dad (man B)
enthusiastically exchanged a couple breastfeeding and family bed stories,
while a third man (C), also a young dad, stood quietly by.  C didn't say
anything, but my DH suddenly had the strong feeling that *that* family
hadn't breastfed, or hadn't done so for very long.

But why the polite, stiff silence?  Suppose A and B had enthusiastically
been discussing, say, home birth or even just vaginal birth.  If C's wife
had had a C-section, wouldn't there have been some comment - "oh, I envy
you," or even just, "boy, was our experience different"?  Maybe even a
comment on the validity of cesareans in cases like theirs?

What if they'd been discussing cars, or teams, or diets, or *anything* where
people have an opinion, and perhaps especially where one is generally
acknowledged to be lower in quality than another?  What if C had been a
smoker, and A and B had recently quit?  Wouldn't there have been some fairly
easy banter back and forth between the two camps?  Wouldn't spanking/not
spanking have allowed for dialogue?  Is there any other area of good and
not-so-good choice where people just stand quietly by, not saying a word but
clearly becoming uncomfortable and - the word keeps coming to mind -
resentful?

When anyone says "we don't want to make anyone feel guilty," perhaps they're
also saying, "people have no right to imply that you might have made a poor
choice.  If they talk with enthusiasm about their choice, you have every
right to feel resentful.  They're rude if they bring it up."  It makes this
straightforward issue seem almost... shameful, and makes things like the Ad
Council campaign a whole lot harder to push through.  I think the formula
companies chose a mighty effective line when they settled on this one.  It
has whole layers of baggage dragging along behind it.
--
Diane Wiessinger, MS, IBCLC  Ithaca, NY
www.wiessinger.baka.com

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