Breastfeeding appears to be the latest beat-up of mothers in the media. Hardly a day goes past, it seems, without some story or other about mothers and what they do with their breasts. Some cite mothers who sing the praises of breastfeeding, others tell of the stories of mothers were made to feel bad for not being able to breastfeed. Some articles push the ‘breast is best’ message, while others opine that sometimes breast is not best after all and most mothers don't even met their own breastfeeding goals. Some articles even carry opinion polls: did you breastfeed and are bottle-feeding mothers vilified? As if they are a disinterested party, newspapers also observe that the breastfeeding debate has 'gone sour'.
Of course, there’s those celebrity breasts too: Jessica Simpson is apparently addicted to breastfeeding while others proudly and publicly trumpet their plans to do it . Even Posh Spice, fourth time round, breastfed, describing it as ‘heaven’.
And, a few months ago, the media struck gold: a seismic backlash and counter-backlash over an anti-smoking advertisement (which was not actually about breastfeeding at all) featuring a celebrity father who was bottle-feeding his young child. The furore over this one seemed to leave everyone reeling: bottle-feeding mothers, breastfeeding mothers, breastfeeding advocates, and fathers who wanted to be involved in the care of their babies.
This explosion of stories about breastfeeding seems to me less about what is best for children (and way way less about what is best for women), and more about divide-and-rule - just like it is with artificial divisions created between stay-at-home-mothers and working mothers. The reality is that many women both breastfeed and bottle-feed: one mother I know principally breastfed her children, but, as a full-time working mother, also supplemented with formula. Other mothers I know who were unable to continue breastfeeding, persevered for several weeks to try and give their babies the benefits of breastmilk, then switched to formula, so their babies didn’t, y’know, starve. Others breastfed for several months, but switched to formula before the magical 12-month mark either because they just couldn’t take it any more or their doctor advised stopping breastfeeding for the sake of their own health. Some women also formula-feed from birth, while others exclusively breastfeed and continue breastfeeding until their children choose to self-wean. Breastfeeding, like so much else when it comes to mothering, is a spectrum not a monolith.
Society remains deeply conflicted about women’s breasts. While public health officials, following the guidelines of the World Health Organisation, push exclusive breastfeeding for at least six months as the ideal, ‘the public’ are reportedly and repeatedly squeamish at the sight of a woman baring her breasts in public and latching a baby or young child on to them. Images, such as that on a recent Time cover of a woman breastfeeding her toddler, which generated a great deal of comment and controversy, are considered beyond the pale.
Mothers therefore seem to be getting some pretty mixed messages about breast-feeding: do it at all costs to the exclusion of everything else but don’t even think about continuing past about eighteen months because that’s just plain weird.
Hmmm ... okay.
Meanwhile, the actual women on the other end of those much-handled breasts are given pretty short shrift. Some report being made to feel like bad mothers if, for whatever reason, they can’t or won’t breastfeed. While others who want to breastfeed their children for as long as the children want it are labelled as freaks and even child-molesters. Those who advocate breastfeeding and want to support mothers establish feeding, are frustrated by extreme depictions of their work (some advocates are even described using references to Nazism and Islamist fundamentalism. I mean, really? Just because they think breastfeeding is best and want to try and help women feed their babies?)
Yet another example of women caught in an impossible and contradictory double-bind that means all women fail situation. How unusual.
I have to say, even some feminists are uncertain about what it all means, and have debated whether breastfeeding is feminist or not. Some consider that it is, while others confess a deep ambivalence, and still others contend that formula-feeding has been an important development in freeing women from biological servitude (though if you want to breastfeed that’s okay too). My own feeling is that this is entirely the wrong question to be asking. Breastfeeding in itself is neither feminist nor unfeminist: supporting women to make the best choices they can for themselves and their families in the circumstances in which they find themselves is.
I personally breastfed for a just over a year, and have never used formula. But here’s what I had going for me in order to make that ‘choice’:
- the physical ability to do so
- a baby who seemed to know how to latch on properly herself (and not all of them do)
- no severe side-effects such as cracked nipples or mastitis
- no other disability or illness that would affect my ability to breastfeed
- a baby with a good appetite who took to solid food well, meaning that breastfeeding became much less time-consuming after about 8-9 months
- a supportive husband, who got the baby up for every feed during the night, and, recognising the toll it took both physically and emotionally, stepped up and took on other domestic jobs
- a decently-paid job from which I could choose to either take a long period of parental leave in order to focus on the baby or return to work and have breastfeeding breaks, privacy to breast feed and/or pump milk.
All that support notwithstanding, I’m not sure I would share Victoria Beckham’s view that it was ‘heaven’. Here’s how I felt about it:
- pleased I could do it, especially after a difficult birth that didn’t go at all the way I thought it would
- bored at being stuck in one place while the baby fed for up to 90 minutes at a time
- resentful at being the only one who could do it
- worried that the baby wouldn’t gain enough weight (health authorities might push you to breastfeed but with their obsession with weighing them, particularly in the early days, it can send a message that breastfeeding isn't very reliable)
- a sense of duty and obligation that if I could do it I should
These are probably not the noblest reasons for breastfeeding, but I’d be lying if I said that I loved it every single minute of every single day. And I think the media and wider culture does all mothers a disservice to perpetuate sentimental and misleading ideals about breastfeeding. I don’t see how it will encourage more mothers to breastfeed if there is not also some honesty about what it takes to do it: time and a lot of patience, support (from partners, families, health workers, and the wider community), understanding, societal structures and practices that can accommodate it, a little bit of luck, and, yes, knowing there is a formula tin available if it is needed.
Guess that just doesn't make for an attention-grabbing story though, does it?
