There have been several reactions of distaste or disbelief after the post on
the mother who was breastfeeding her toddler and smoking and drinking
several units of alcohol per day.
All of us know that these practices are not associated with optimal health,
and we know that women don't start smoking and drinking (or quit, it seems)
for the sake of their health.

I wonder how much of our reluctance to believe this was for real, comes from
a desire to distance ourselves from the kind of unhappiness behind the
mother's behavior.  It is challenging to take in, that someone we would like
to feel very different from, is also breastfeeding her three year old and
values that relationship highly enough to let her helper post to this list
about her.

And I think it is too bad Naomi Wolf did not meet such a non-judgmental
helper when she was in need of guidance, because that small passage in her
book (which is not primarily a tirade against LLL) might have turned out
differently.

Think about it.
Rachel Myr
who was so lucky that I never needed help from any organized source while
learning to breastfeed, because I had such a supportive informal network of
feminist breastfeeders around me
but who was indelibly marked by a LLL leader I babysat for as a teenager
(yes, she left her children with a teenager), to see BF as something truly
enjoyable, doable and important, that only women are any good at!

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