http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ellen-malmon/ipeaceful-revolutioni-why_b_322523.htmllac

I liked this - haven't seen it discussed yet, but I have been No Mail
for a while.

This seems to me to be one of the few bits of 'layperson's' writing
that understands the social and cultural impact of not breastfeeding.
She almost grasps it, I think.  The impact of not breastfeeding is
far, far wider than the individual effect on the health of a child
and its mother, important though that is. The impact is on a whole
society's relationship with food .

"Perhaps with science's effort to isolate the health effects of
nutrients in food, we ignore the possibility that maybe it's not the
antioxidants, minerals, and flavinoids alone, that maybe it's the
entire piece of broccoli eaten at the table with your family that
makes it healthy." she says.....yes, yes!

Sadly, she fails to link this with what we could put as  the 'entire
breastfeed taken at the breast of your mother in response to your
needs with everyone else around you accepting it that makes it
healthy' ...and there is a whole lot of stuff on pumping, which
brings us right back to 'isolating the health effects' rather than
valuing the relationship again.

Comments from readers show the usual painful sensitivity towards
women who can't or don't breastfeed....but if we truly valued
breastfeeding for its social and cultural effect, and the vast
majority of women did it, the few women who truly could not/could not
bring themselves to do it would be nurtured and supported and
embraced, and their children would grow up with a sort of 'herd
immunity' - because relationships with food would have a chance to
normalise in general.

I would be v. interested to know what US colleagues think.

Heather Welford Neil
NCT bfc, tutor, UK

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