Reply to:   RE>feminism, patriarchy, BF
Dear Tina and Noriko,

Sometimes, I wonder to what extent commercialism and male domination are
responsible for women's difficulties. My personal experience in childbirth and
infant feeding/nurturing has been quite radical from the North American
culture: home birth and breastfeeding for "past one  year". Way back then (14
years ago), I thought that these were women's businesses and therefore, as a
woman, I took care of them. Yet, I was raised in a
hospital-medically-tampered-delivery-and-bottle-feeding environment so typical
in the days of my youth.

I am bringing this up because in the 12 years that I have been counseling
breastfeeding mothers, I have read a lot and thought a lot about what makes
women raised in a seemingly homogeneously man dominated scene turn out so
differently. As many works (Valerie Fildes' research to name only one) on
infant feeding history indicate, women throughout the ages have looked for
physically separating themselves from their babies, whether with wooden
containers equipped with a cloth acting as a wick, or wet nursing, or whatever.
Today, the insistance on bottle feeding and medication during childbirth may be
symptoms of the desire (at least for some women) separate themselves from their
biology, just as some of them have tried to do since time immemorial.

Since education obviously does not work on these women (in other words, we
cannot reason with them, our arguments cannot convince them), should we not
step back to evaluate what underlies women's lack of inclination(?)
reluctance(?) aversion(?) resistance(?) to their biology and  to motherhood?

In all the debates I have heard about women's "difficulties" because of male
and commercial interference, not once have seen women's want/desires/needs as
one key to their behaviour. It is because it is a taboo subject or because no
one has ever thought about it?

PS. Sorry about my previous transmission which included the whole digest for
that day. NB.

Nicole
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