Norma wrote,

>At that time she was
>living in Buffalo, NY, where the WIC agency simply ASSUMED that every
>mother would be nursing her baby. Nobody ever asked her if she was
>going to bottle feed or breastfeed, they just TAUGHT her what she
>needed to know.
>
Every year or so, I ask a group of breastfeeding mothers questions like: 
"When did you decide you were going to breastfeed? Why?" and "When do 
you remember seeing someone breastfeed for the first time?"

Recently, I have had more mothers saying that they "just always knew" 
they would breastfeed and that they can't remember the first time they 
saw this -- usually, if I query, mothers who say this figure they "just 
always knew" someone who breastfed.
I'm hoping this means that we have made it few those repeated 
generations of mothers who had never seen anyone breastfeed and never 
imagined doing it themselves. For those generations, which gave rise to 
the LLL movement, having a place to go and meet other women from the 
same tiny minority who also wanted to breastfeed played an essential 
role in making breastfeed seem possible.

That wasn't my case. I was first aware that breastfeeding existed when I 
was 13 and my sil asked us all to leave the car so she could nurse her 
baby, who had been less than fun on our car outing that afternoon. (It 
took a while for the urgency of the situation to register on my father, 
who was driving, not because his dw hadn't breastfed, but because she 
probably hadn't needed privacy from a father-in-law and a teen-age 
brother-in-law.

Nonetheless, I breastfed partly because everyone was doing it -- in my 
little group. In 1983, I was in what I would call a subculture but 
others would see as a support system now. Every single graduate student 
I knew who gave birth in the early 80s breastfed. (They also started 
juice and solids early, but you can't have everything!) That made four 
of us; three of us have remained in contact. We made the decision not on 
our childhood experience, but on the basis of science and psychology. It 
was the thinking woman's choice.

I think the same thing may be true now for women who continue to 
breastfeed past six months. I still hear from mothers that they assumed 
no one in our city was breastfeeding a toddler, because they never see 
them or hear about them. I tell these mothers that I see several moms 
who are nursing toddlers every month at our meetings.

The evolution of attitudes is quite fascinating.

Jo-Anne, who is getting ready for an interview on Ferberizing next week...

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