Thanks Leslie, for your wonderful post, reminding us that some moms have other issues that may be affecting their decisions and abilities concerning how their babies are fed. We also need to remember, though, that there is a much bigger group of moms out there who have NO CLUE that it makes any difference whether you breastfeed or bottle-feed. It is NEWS TO THEM. These are the ones who can be reached and affected by someone simply providing them with information about the difference between breastfeeding and bottle-feeding. Many many women never give any thought at all to whether they will breast or bottle-feed. They just bottle-feed because . . . that's how babies are fed in the US. They use disposable diapers because . . . there aren't any other kind. They have their boys circumcised because . . . that's what we do to little boys. They buy a crib and fix up a special nursery for the baby because . . . that's what we do in our culture. They assume that if breastfeeding were better, the ob/gyn would tell them all about it, rather than give them a free sample of formula and sign them up to receive cases of free formula. And I'll freely admit that one of my main motivating forces in doing what I do is to empower women as women -- I don't think any other activity empowers women as women as much as breastfeeding. When one knows a lot about a subject, and deals with it day in and day out, it is sometime difficult to remember that there are entire groups of people who have never heard of the issue. I am reminded of this every time I teach my "Women and Culture" class, as I am this semester. We always begin with female genital mutilation -- and most of the class has no idea that this exists. They are shocked. And just yesterday, a student in another class looked thoroughly confused when I told her that women in traditional cultures didn't menstruate very often as adults. She didn't know that breastfeeding affected menstruation, and hadn't really thought about how many pregnancies women experienced in the past. These things seem obvious once you know them, but we all had to learn them for the first time, once. And many women who bottle-feed have never heard anyone say anything remotely like "This may be harmful to you and your child." Kathy Dettwyler