I missed the beginning of the breastfeeding
vs lactation conversation, but it reminded me
of several conversations I had with my dissertation
advisor as I was preparing my proposal on breastfeeding
and the workplace. My advisor is a woman in her early
60s who breastfed her kids (now in their late
20s), but I imagine not for too long and probably not
much in public.
As I we were passing drafts and corrections back and
forth, my advisor said that I should really find another
word than breastfeeding since it might make some people
uncomfortable. So I played around with it and used "nursing"
and "lactation" (mostly lactation) more and "breastfeeding"
less. At one point she noted that using "lactation" so much
didn't sound right either, too medical and sterile.
At the proposal hearing (before I actually did the research
to make sure I was on the right track) I joked about
using my thesaurus to find all the synonyms I could
for breastfeeding.
By the time my advisor and I were passing drafts of
the dissertation itself back and forth a year later,
she had become much more comfortable with "breastfeeding"
and she noticed it and we were able to joke about
it.
I guess that's what we need. The more exposure people
have to the words and the activity, the more comfortable
everyone will feel about it.
Naomi Bar-Yam

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New England Complex Systems Institute
http://necsi.org
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