Dear Susan,

I love reading your posts. This post is a wonderful tribute to peer support and a heartfelt testimony of the struggle of LCs to be accepted. My post is not about any of the issues that you have addressed though. 

I am taken aback by the fact that nobody in fact addressed the topic of my original post - how licensure will affect peer support. Instead posters concentrate on a) their personal merit as LCs; b) the need to professionalize c) why licensure is a need, etc. I would like to keep the discussion on the subject of "Effect of Licensure of Breastfeeding Consultancy on Lay Peer Support in the United States". I would like to see a case made using research evidence licensure in the past did not affect services available through social, lay, volunteer sector by non-licensed public. Did anybody research the proposed route of action in developing profession of lactation consultants through the lens of sociological, economic, and women's studies?

"I find her post offensive in that she confuses professionalism with medicalization, assuming that those who work as professionals are working to transform breastfeeding into a medical act".

My original post was not about medicalization, but the effect of licensure on availability and quality of non-licensed peer support. This does not only include La Leche League, but also peer support groups all over the country that are separate from La Leche League, the newly formed Breastfeeding USA, and non-organized peer support. Medicalization is but one byproduct, but not the goal in the case of licensure.

"Some of us who have decided to undergo significant amounts of training in order to provide PROFESSIONAL services beyond what VOLUNTEERS can do for the 5% of women who really cannot fully breastfeed and the 95% of women who deliver in baby unfriendly hospitals and develop complex and complicated problems that cannot be solved by peer support alone."

I argue that certification alone is enough assurance for the public about competency of lactation consultants. I argue that licensure will affect peer support. I do not object or put a value statement on the decision to pursue professional career in lactation consulting. I also did not say anything that would indicate that professional help beyond peer support is unnecessary. 

Warmly,
Natalie Wilson

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