The use of the word, guilt in regard to infant feeding, is a social marketing tool used to silence everyone. Guilt is about blame, wrong-doing, fault. Our society has chosen to fault individual mothers for their choices rather that put the blame, the guilt squarely on the shoulders of institutions and governmental bodies that have chosen to support the infant formula industry over the individual mother. Pregnant mothers are swamped with information from the infant formula industry, given free formula in the hospital and enough coupons for infant formula to fill a house. Some administrators of medical institutions say we should not make moms feel guilty. What? By using the word guilt, they have presented the issue of infant feeding in terms of a right and a wrong. When I talk to moms in regard to infant feeding decisions or weaning I talk about regrets. Will you regret this decision to wean now? Will you regret bottle-feeding this baby? Regret is about sorrow, about grief. I suggest that we quit talking about guilt, a social marketing tool to silence people. Instead, we need to present to others the concept of regret and the need to limit the amount of regrets we have in our lifetime. I have alot of regrets in my 50 years of living but no regrets about breastfeeding all my children. Guilt is for wrong-doing. Women bottlefed for many reasons and most of the reasons are because our culture is guilty of not supporting breastfeeding. Valerie W. McClain, IBCLC *********************************************** The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(TM) mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html