>
> I think this is the best analogy I have heard so far for the lack of
> breastfeeding in the United States.  And the answer, from my own life, is
what we are
> raised with is what we go back to most often.  My mother had five
children, at
> age 54 she is still within 10 lbs. of her weight when she got married (118
> lbs at 5'5").  It is easy for me to maintain my weight (don't hate me!!)
because
> what I grew up with was whole wheat bread, wheat germ, cottage cheese,
salad,
> skinless chicken, healthy foods and healthy portions.  If one were not so
> lucky then it would be monumentally difficult to change those habits and
> patterns; food is social and food is comforting.  When we need comfort and
> socialization we go to that with which we are familiar.

As an overweight woman, who has done a lot of research on weight issues, I'd
just like to add that it is unfortunately not that simple. My mother had
four children and I suspect may even weigh a little less than she did at 18.
We always had whole wheat bread and healthy foods (in fact we grew most of
our food ourselves in our large farm garden). With that same background
growing up, my sisters and I are very different sizes today. Two of us are
overweight, two are slender. Genetics are definitely a factor.

My own four children follow a similar pattern. I have worked hard to feed
them healthy foods and to serve healthy portions. All four were not
overweight when they were under age six. As they got older, their body size
changed. Today, two are slender - without any real effort on their part,
they don't pay much attention to the amounts they eat and enjoy snacks and
desserts. The other two both struggle with weight. One is heavy at the
moment, the other is thinner because he has cut back to just one meal a day
and his work requires lots of walking and exercise.

The more I research weight issues, the more I see how complex it is. I have
just seen some recent studies on the effects of cortisol - hormones produced
in the body in response to stress. When the researchers tracked groups of
children who were all normal weight, but half had low cortisol levels (low
stress) and the other half had high cortisol (high stress), the high
cortisol group gained much more weight than the low cortisol group. (I have
to wonder after reading this study if this is part of the reason for the
obesity epidemic we are seeing among children today - the lives of
preschoolers and young children in 2004 are incredibly stressful.)

To tie this back to breastfeeding - I suspect the factors influencing
women's decisions to breastfeed or not are equally complicated. It has to
do, in part, with her childhood experiences - but there are always those
women who want to do the opposite of what their own mothers did. It has to
do in part with advertising and marketing, but some are less influenced by
that than others. It has to do in part with what friends say, what the
doctor says, how she feels about her body, etc., etc. That's why I think we
need a multiplicity of approaches to support and encourage breastfeeding. No
one thing will solve the problem.

Teresa Pitman
Guelph, Ontario

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