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To:            [log in to unmask]
Subject:       Saturday's Child Illustration Today (10/17/97)
Date:          Fri, 17 Oct 1997 09:53:44 -0500

Dear Mr. Kelly,

Reading today's article in Saturday's Child about backpacking with a baby, I was
pleased to note that Mr. Hendrix made no mention of the need to pack bottles or
formula.  With his emphasis on the need to pack carefully for such activities,
he left the impression (on me at least) that the infant's food was to be brought
in that most convenient of containers, her mother's breasts.  Why then, was it
necessary to include not one but *two* bottles in the illustration to the
article?  The obvious implication is that a baby cannot be seen without a
bottle.

The routine association of babies with bottles in our culture is one of the many
barriers mothers face when trying to breastfeed.  Everyone in the media must
take responsibility for seeing to it that bottles are *not* depicted with babies
unless they are important to the story in some way.  To do otherwise reinforces
the belief that bottle-feeding is the norm, and breastfeeding is somehow an
aberration.


J. Rachael Hamlet
Author, The Breastfeeding Advocacy Page
http://www.clark.net/pub/activist/bfpage/bfpage.html