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From: Women's eNews <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Fri, Aug 26, 2011 at 1:45 PM
Subject: When 'Breast is Best' Is Not Enough
To: Women's eNews <[log in to unmask]>
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Friday, August 26, 2011
TODAY'S UPDATE
Read Today's Story: When 'Breast is Best' Is Not Enough
http://www.womensenews.org/story/reproductive-health/110825/when-breast-best-not-enough<http://www.womensenews.org/story/reproductive-health/110825/when-breast-best-not-enough?utm_source=email&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=email>
When 'Breast is Best' Is Not Enough
By Kimberly Seals Allers
WeNews commentator
Friday, August 26, 2011
*For all the promotion of breastfeeding, U.S. women are not responding well
to the "breast is best" message, says Kimberly Seals Allers. It's time to
clear the air and talk about all the other factors--beside nutrition--that
affect a mother's feeding choice.*
(WOMENSENEWS)--It's National *Breastfeeding Awareness Month*. But rather
than celebrating, I'm in questioning mode.
I'm questioning why our natural instincts to nurse have gone askew and why
our views about feeding our young are less instinctive and more socially and
culturally constructed.
I'm questioning why what should be one of the most natural experiences of
motherhood is under cultural fire and even being used as fodder for
political grandstanding.
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But mostly, I'm questioning why with all the awareness, information and a
preponderance of evidence on the benefits of breastfeeding, breastfeeding
education has been essentially ineffectual.
Our unimpressive breastfeeding rates show the full picture. In the United
States, only about 13 percent of babies are exclusively breastfed for six
months, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC),
based in Atlanta. Meanwhile in South Asia, 44 percent of babies are
exclusively breastfed for six months, according to UNICEF.
The solution isn't in more pamphlets or brochures. Or more awareness months,
for that matter. The problem is in the invisible external forces not
mentioned in those glossy materials that markedly affect a woman's decision
to breastfeed and her experience thereafter.
These many forces include: the competitive mommy culture, the media who
always love a good fight, aggressive infant formula marketing, the Internet
and social media outlets, where the battle between breastfeeders and formula
feeders has reached World Wrestling Entertainment proportions, and
capitalist interests--because let's face it, breastfeeding is bad for big
business.
Perhaps the biggest culprit though is closed-door deals between the
pharmaceutical industry and hospitals that wind up with women going home
with formula in their goody bags. That sends a deep message that health
authorities think formula is really "just as good."
All of these factors create a muddled environment that prevents a woman from
clearly choosing based on fact alone.
The biggest losers against this "machine" of forces are newborns, who don't
get the best first food possible, and mothers, who lose out on the many
health benefits of breastfeeding.
A More Nuanced Message
As a mother who breastfed both of my children for at least 12 months, I know
that breastfeeding is marketed as a simple decision. Breast is best, end of
story. But breastfeeding is actually more complicated and nuanced than that,
and that is where we are losing many women.
The conversation must include existential matters like how connected women
are to the experience and how breastfeeding works in the actual context of
our lives. We need to address and name the psychological, sociological,
economic, political and cultural forces that are undermining our
breastfeeding experience.
We must speak to the tremendous pressure mothers are under to optimize every
dimension of our child's life. And how that pressure can be polarizing, and
then exploited by others, robbing many women of the joy of breastfeeding and
deterring others to never even try it.
For decades, moms-to-be and new mothers have fantasized, and at times even
romanticized, the act of breastfeeding. From the days when La Leche League
International's book "The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding" made us believe that
nursing our children was the deepest expression of womanliness to the power
of the pump--which allowed us to breastfeed without being tethered to an
infant--giving our newborns human milk as their first food has been
inextricably linked to our mothering values and our womanhood.
But loving your baby and loving the act of breastfeeding is not the same
thing. As mothers, breastfeeding contains all of our awe about motherhood
and also some of its ambivalence. So along with the empowerment comes
conflict--a deep personal conflict between a mother's desire to give her
child what's best and a woman's desire to live a full life.
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Shrinking the Outer World
Despite the many benefits of breastfeeding, the fact remains that it also
can considerably shrink your outer world, at least for a while. Stories of
women being ousted from cafés, and earlier this month from the Houston
Zoo<http://abclocal.go.com/ktrk/story?section=news/local&id=8305337>,
for breastfeeding in public don't help. Neither do stories about women
getting fired<http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2011/08/15/general-us-breastfeeding-teacher_8624592.html>for
pumping breast milk at work. There needs to be an honest space to
explore all of that.
Meanwhile, our post-feminist selves (perhaps foolishly) believed that our
marriages would be partnerships with a co-equal dynamic. In reality, even in
the best of marriages, the domestic burden often shifts, sometimes in slow
ways, onto the woman. Breastfeeding plays a central role in that shift. When
the woman alone is in charge of feeding (or even pumping so someone else can
feed), it's assumed she naturally knows better how to comfort the child, and
then she is a better nurse when the child is sick, and so on. Something
happens from an initial breastfeeding decision, and it can sometimes lead to
frustration, disappointment and even depression for some mothers.
These forces take a toll on women and their families, not to mention on
public health. At a time when U.S. infant mortality rates rank higher than
less developed nations like Poland, U.S. maternal mortality rates skyrocket
annually and childhood obesity runs rampant, a stronger and more broad-based
breastfeeding culture could have a significant impact on the health of
infants and mothers.
If 90 percent of new mothers exclusively breastfed their babies for the
first six months of their lives, it would save 911 babies and $13 billion
each year, according to the CDC. If 80 percent of mothers exclusively
breastfed for the first six months, 741 deaths would be prevented and $10.5
billion saved. If the Healthy People 2010 goals were met, which call for 50
percent of mothers to continue breastfeeding for six months, 142 deaths
would be prevented annually and $2.2 billion would be saved.
This would be tremendous.
It's time to look past the simplistic marketing and examine the big picture,
which includes the entire breastfeeding culture and all its insidious
players. Women and infants need this.
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*Kimberly Seals Allers is an IATP Food and Community
Fellow<http://foodandsocietyfellows.org/>and a leading voice on the
African American motherhood experience. She is
the author of "The Mocha Manual to a Fabulous Pregnancy"
(Amistad/HarperCollins) and two other Mocha Manual™ books and founder of
www.MochaManual.com, a parenting and lifestyle magazine and blog for African
American moms. She is a regular commentator for Babycenter.com and
Essence.com and is the multicultural mom channel leader for
LiftetimeMoms.com.*
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