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Why we shame women who don’t breastfeed
by confuzzled dude Tue Aug 05, 2014 1:09 pm
Like so many messages these days, the idea that women must breastfeed has gotten a little out of hand. In a survey conducted by Baby Talk Magazine, in which 36,000 women took part, 66 percent of breast feeders said they felt sorry for formula-fed babies, and 33 percent of them called their formula-feeding counterparts lazy and selfish.
That idea is echoed in the media, with scary articles about stores pulling formula off the shelves after a baby died of a bacterial infection (which was never linked to the formula at all) and entire cities putting formula behind locked doors in perky campaigns like New York City’s “Latch On, NYC.”
This ignores a couple of large issues. Just as important as the baby’s health is the mother’s health, and very often, when breastfeeding, adult medications must be stopped so that the effects don’t reach the infants via the mothers’ milk. With postpartum depression affecting 1 in 7 mothers and many more suffering from anxiety and other mental illness, going off these medications could be disastrous.
We need to stop the judgment. Whether women are breastfeeding in public or formula feeding, society feels like it has the right to tell them what they are doing wrong. And that’s the last thing new mothers need. They already feel like they’re doing everything wrong — it is the nature of motherhood. As long as mothers are feeding their babies, whether they breastfeed or bottle feed, why don’t we just let them do it?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/08/05/i-fed-my-newborns-formula-to-keep-them-alive-still-i-felt-guilty-about-it/?hpid=z3
That idea is echoed in the media, with scary articles about stores pulling formula off the shelves after a baby died of a bacterial infection (which was never linked to the formula at all) and entire cities putting formula behind locked doors in perky campaigns like New York City’s “Latch On, NYC.”
This ignores a couple of large issues. Just as important as the baby’s health is the mother’s health, and very often, when breastfeeding, adult medications must be stopped so that the effects don’t reach the infants via the mothers’ milk. With postpartum depression affecting 1 in 7 mothers and many more suffering from anxiety and other mental illness, going off these medications could be disastrous.
We need to stop the judgment. Whether women are breastfeeding in public or formula feeding, society feels like it has the right to tell them what they are doing wrong. And that’s the last thing new mothers need. They already feel like they’re doing everything wrong — it is the nature of motherhood. As long as mothers are feeding their babies, whether they breastfeed or bottle feed, why don’t we just let them do it?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/08/05/i-fed-my-newborns-formula-to-keep-them-alive-still-i-felt-guilty-about-it/?hpid=z3
confuzzled dude- Posts : 10205
Join date : 2011-05-08
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