I was glad to read the post on asking you colleagues about references.  I've
been looking for writings on "the breastfeeding relationship" and am striking
out terribly.

  I've been asked to do a 90 minute presentation to about 150-200 people in
May at an Infant Mental Health Conference.  The participants will be from a
variety of professional backgrounds (social work, psychology, child
development, early intervention specialists, medicine, nursing etc.)  The
thing they have in commom is that they all work with infants and mothers
(conception to 3 years of age) who have or are "at risk for" relationship
problems and/attachment difficulties.

 I have been suprised by the lack of emphasis/support/understanding of the
importance of breastfeeding to the mental health of infants in this group of
professionals. I think there are many reasons (we live in a bottle-feeding
culture blah, blah, blah) but one thing that I hear from this group (there
were 700 people at the conference last May) is that "our clients are low-
income and they don't breastfeed". In 13 years of working with women with
limited resorces, I have to disagree with them.  But, I think that attitude is
prevalent.

As I begin to prepare the outline for this talk, I am thinking about the
importance of breastfeeding as a prevention strategy for relationship
difficulties in infancy.  I would like to spend some time talking about the
uniqueness of the "breastfeeding relationship" but I can't find any references
on it.  I hear us talking about how special that relationship is all the time.
Has anyone ever studied it?  I've tried MEDLINE and the Lactnet archives, as
well as all of the bf books on my shelf but nothing is turning up.  What am I
missing here?  Can you guys help me here?

I think the way I'm going to go on this is to start with reviewing the risks
of ABM (I can't believe how many educated people don't have that information),
examine the effects of infant illness on the Mother/infant relationship that
is already at risk, then look at the "breastfeeding relationship" and its
unique contributions to secure attachment, and finally, talk about
breastfeeding promotion and breastfeeding support for low income and
emotionally "at risk" mothers and babies.
I would appreciate any other ideas on this for your collective wisdom.

Sorry this is so long.  thanks in advance for your help.  Later,

Priscilla