Morgan

You gave a wonderful testimony for the need to speak on behalf of 
babies!  Very persuasive, very simple, very direct. I am particularly 
struck by how you have put your finger on the central truth that when 
you attack a mother's infant feeding choice it has no sting, whereas 
when you frame an attack on breastfeeding as an attack on the baby, 
the implications become very clear.  Thank you!

Yet where you note that the mother is still so reduced and reviled, 
it has always seemed to me that this happens precisely because we 
frame so many of the issues surrounding the well-being of babies and 
young children as being only "women's decisions" and "women's 
choices".   I've always felt that by portraying mothers as mothers of 
*babies*, and by putting the well-being of babies first, then this 
would elevate the status of women.  When the well-being of the child 
is seen to be the central issue (as so eloquently stated in many 
UNICEF documents) then, by association, this highlights the unique 
and irreplaceable role that only women can play as the nurturers and 
carers of their children.  Seen in this light, the duty of society is 
to enable women SO THAT they can mother their babies.  Breastfeeding, 
public or private, is not a right of women, but the right of their 
babies.  Maternity leave is not a right of women, but the right of 
babies.  Being truly baby-friendly would mean being mother-friendly, 
since mothering itself, would at last be accorded a value - to 
become, in effect, invaluable.

Pamela Morrison IBCLC

---------------------------------
Morgan wrote, "Attack breastfeeding, you are attacking the
baby.  Attack the mother, and you are interfering with her personal
choice - and a choice that you may not approve of, so it has no 'sting'
to those doing the attacking.....

".....I'm filled with sadness that the role and status of the woman, the
mother, is still so reduced and reviled.  But hopeful, that, at least,
there is still some sense of the imperative that the child has to have
protection."

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