"using the risk-based language with new moms can back fire in the
sense that it can appear that we're overstating the risks for the sake of
scaring moms to breastfeed. The social marketing approach, which focuses
more on the benefits of breastfeeding to mom (much along the lines of the
other current thread about the emotional joys of breastfeeding), seems to me
a more effective approach than the focus on potential risks. Even a
"selfish" mother might be inclined to breastfeed if she understood how much
easier it could make her life as a mom."

Risk-based language certainly *can* backfire, and overstating the case doesn't work.  But we also need to remember that the formula companies moved heaven and earth a couple years ago to change the Ad Council breastfeeding campaign from a risk-based message.  Why would they be so desperate to change an approach that doesn't work?  

It's all in how it's done, and we're all still sorting out just how to do it.  But 20 years ago there was a woman in our League group who'd been coming for months, happily discussing the advantages of breastfeeding at every meeting.  When it first occurred to me that maybe we were doing this backwards, I posed it as a question to the group, not sure whether I was right or not.  The woman, who used formula casually whenever she was away from her baby, flared up.  "I use formula," she said.  "There's nothing wrong with my baby.  And there's nothing wrong with formula."  And I realized we had done her and her baby a disservice all those months, protecting her from the fact that formula causes harm.  Twenty years.  And mother after mother still doesn't learn from anyone that formula isn't benign.  

As one grandmother in an Ad Council focus group commented when presented with their risk-based information:  "If only I had known."

Diane Wiessinger, MS, IBCLC  Ithaca, NY  USA
www.wiessinger.baka.com


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