Many thanks for the encouraging and thought-provoking comments! I
will take all your suggestions to heart. Yes, I absolutely plan to
calculate out the actual costs of the increased morbidity in
artificially-fed children due to welfare policies; I may make this
the "take home message" of the paper.

To clarify further on the term "welfare": "Welfare" is the loose term
in the U.S. for government payments (and medical insurance) to
families (usually single mothers) with no other support. For 50 years
the federal government gave these very small grants to families with
few requirements attached, as in many other countries. But 10 years
ago, the US led the way in beginning to unravel this "safety net".
Now what we have is a worrysome non-system, one of whose features is
that many of these mothers are forced to go to work -- at very
low-paying jobs, which have notoriously poor breastfeeding support --
when their infants reach 3 months old, and leave them in low-quality
subsidized daycare.

I know it's complicated to complain about this, when mothers at ALL
income levels, in many countries, feel they have to return to work
when their children are infants, and leave them in daycare. In my
view this reflects incredibly short-sighted and tragic public policy,
all around.

Tina

At 9:08 AM +0200 8/19/03, Rachel Myr wrote:
>Tina, your PhD work sounds very timely.  I hope you will include in your
>policy suggestions a mention of the increased morbidity in artificially fed
>children.

At 9:22 AM +0100 8/19/03, Magda Sachs wrote:
>>"TANF mothers" just means "mothers on welfare".
>
>Since I am an ex-pat American I understand this explanation, but I think
>many, many outside the US would be no further forward.

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