Every year at this time I mark another year of fascination with
breastfeeding---September 25 is my first-born's birthday.  This year she
turned 30, and we all have taken it very well!

Back in those days...1968...(I'm not climbing onto a soap-box.  I'm easing
down into Granny's rocker to give the young folks some pearls of
wisdom.)...there wasn't much you could read about breastfeeding in the United
States.  LLL was around, with the old blue Womanly Art, and so were Karen
Pryor and Niles Newton.  I hung onto their every word---but mostly, it was my
baby who taught me about breastfeeding.

You all know that the 1960s were the lowest point in recent history for
breastfeeding in the U.S., with about 18% of mothers even trying to nurse at
all, and most of them giving up within a few weeks.  Where was a person like
me, starting out on a breastfeeding journey that was to last four years
(although I didn't know it then), going to find support from other women who
understood my experiences, my point of view?  From all those women around the
globe whose cultures had not let breastfeeding slip the way my American
culture had done!

Through LLL, and later on through IBFAN and the Nestle boycott and UNICEF's
Campaign for Child Survival, I found out about breastfeeding in other
cultures, real breastfeeding cutures.  Although I couldn't talk with my own
neighbors or my relatives about my mothering experiences, I could find soul-
mates in pictures and words from almost anywhere...outside the borders of my
native land.

When I began to identify myself as a breastfeeding advocate, it was also to
people outside the U.S. that I turned for a model and for encouragement.  I
believe that a global point of view has been absolutely essential in the
process of building a breastfeeding awareness in the U.S.  We Americans still
have a very long road ahead of us, but we have plenty of company on the road.
Others are fighting many of the same battles in their own lands, and now we
are strong enought that we can offer support to them.

So I have to tell you that I just don't understand why anyone on Lactnet would
want to have a narrower-than-global point of view.  Breastfeeding belongs to
all the mothers and babies on the planet---as well as all of human mothers and
babies through history---and, to tell the truth, to all of the other mammal
mothers and babies as well.  Breastfeeding is ours to defend.  Breastfeeding
is threatened all over the world by changes in women's lives.  It will take
the efforts of us all, with all the allies we can bring into the "cause," to
win back women's right to breastfeed their babies.

What are we arguing about?

Peace to all.   Chris Mulford
BA, RN, BSN, IBCLC
Swarthmore, Pennsylvania
leafy green suburb of Philadelphia
central Atlantic region.  Same latitude as Beijing, Rome, and Madrid