From time to time I check The Shotgun. This week, I note that their most highly commented post is about breastfeeding in public.
Interesting.
I suppose I should have an opinion on this. I figure a baby’s got to eat, and if the mom is comfortable doing it in public, go for it. We don’t live in a modest age, and if I’m going to see nudity everywhere I look, I’d rather it be because a mom is feeding her baby than the reasons I see it now.
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Tanya adds: According to Dr. Harvey Karp and his book, The Happiest Baby On the Block, human gestation used to span over 12 months. He claims that’s why some babies suffer colic for the first 3 month after birth. Heads got bigger as brains got bigger, so we delivered them earlier as a matter of survival. (Whether that’s true of not, his “swaddle-suck-shush-shake-stomach” method definitely works.)
One of the best parenting tips I was ever given was to save righteous indignation for things that were truly abhorrent. If you go hysterical on your children for every piece of clothing they toss on the floor, what are you going to do when they call from prison at 16 because they got caught driving drunk without a license, I ask you? It doesn’t only make good parenting sense, it also makes good common sense. My day-job puts me at the receiving end of a lot of disgruntlement from all sorts of people. Believe me: when you start questioning someone’s moral fiber because the latest press release contained a typo or because the French translation came after the English version or because your phone call was returned the next day and not the same afternoon, it affects your credibility. Somehow.
What was I saying? Yes, righteous indignation for really bad things. Everything else can be handled in a mature, rational matter.
That’s what I thought when I read this piece and the comments page to this post.
So we live in a country that is so progressive and so in love with a “woman’s right to choose” that we can’t even discuss abortion without being labelled “anti-choice.” Our government recently thought that in order to secure re-election, it had to slam the door shut on Parliamentary debate on abortion and muzzle its cabinet. We are so darn progressive — can’t you hear my suspenders snap (that’s a French expression, se péter les bretelles, look it up) — that we can’t even handle a law on abortion thus making it legal to abort a child throughout all nine months of pregnancy while saving premature infants born as early as 23 weeks. And don’t get me started on not getting a pedicure to save a child I could still legally abort, no questions asked. But let’s not talk about all that. We’re going to get our collective nose out of joint over mothers feeding their children because *gasp* they do it with their breasts!
That’s how pro-woman we are. We institutionalize equality according to a male standard of sexual behaviour. That is, to be equal, we have to be able to have sex without having the kids. To achieve this great ideal, women have to stuff themselves with synthetic hormones, contraceptive devices and, failing that, undergo invasive surgery in the form of abortion. Then, having convinced women that they are really like guys, we will bombard them at a very young age with suggestions of proper sexual behaviour: “51 tricks that will make him jump for joy,” “Release your inner vixen” and “How Hally got her bikini body back only 3 months post-partum.” (3 months post-partum I’m still thinking up an action plan for getting out of my PJs). And that’s saying nothing about fashion images that show just about every inch of skin except the nipple. Which is really too bad for the children who depend on the poor nipple for their physical or emotional sustenance. Well, grow up kids! Society needs that nipple for titillation and had you stuck with the bottle, there would be no problem. Forget those pesky health advocates who suggest that the nipple is put to better use feeding the kids than entertaining the adults.
All it underscores is the vast hypocrisy of our society’s liberal, pro-choice rethoric. We are not really pro-choice, we are pro-Me. Me support your choice to whatever as long as it doesn’t affect Me. That’s why Me supports abortion as long as we don’t talk about it publicly. And Me support your choice to breastfeed as long as Me doesn’t have to look at a working boob (as opposed to the decorative variety which is usually bouncier and better-looking).
My point is not to start a flame war on breastfeeding in public but to question the hegemony — and hypocrisy — of choice and equality. The biological purpose of breasts is to feed children just as the biological purpose of sex is to conceive them. How can we pretend to have reached equality when we deny the biological dimension of womanhood? As for making breastfeeding into a moral issue, as I said, righteous indignation for things that are righteously abhorrent…
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Brigitte disagrees: Well, in part anyway. Specifically, about whether it should be a big deal to breastfeed in public. There are ways of doing it that aren’t as in-your-face as others, but some people insist on thrusting their private parts in your face regardless, and I find that unbecoming. In this as in many other things, it’s all in how it’s done: I understand that small breastfed babies do not always send their moms advance notice of when they’ll be hungry. And that when they are hungry they’re hungry right now!!! But that shouldn’t be an excuse to let it all hang out. Yes, it’s a small thing. But small things say a lot more about a person than we sometimes think.
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Véronique says: Don’t get me wrong: there is still an argument to be made about whether it should be a big deal to breastfeed in public and how. I once had a 18-month-old nursling who would start howling as soon as we stepped into a restaurant because he knew I would nurse him right away to shut him up. I didn’t like feeling like a self-serve and I like to teach my children some self-control, yes, starting at 18 months. So I stopped and got nasty looks of a different kind for a while until the baby got the message (nobody likes a screaming toddler in a restaurant more than a nursing one, believe me). I once saw a nursing mother at a public pool with her one-piece pulled down to nurse and I thought that a towel wouldn’t have been out of place.
That being said, it’s the whole “moral argument” that gets me going. Appropriate or not, sure. Let’s talk. Moral or not… Let’s not forget that we live in a country where you can abort human babies in the name of equality. If that’s our standard of morality, then the least we can do is to leave the poor nursing mothers alone.
Now, I know that this is a prolife blog and breastfeeding isn’t technically prolife material. But hey, unborn babies eventually need to be fed. The link may be tenuous but here I go.
Like everything childbirth, those who have had the great privilege of (a) giving birth, and (b) deciding how to feed their infant, know that there is no easier way to be shot at than to unravel the breast vs bottle issue. (Well, actually, prolife blogging is a pretty sure-fire way of being called names–I would link to some of them but it seems that most pro-abortion bloggers cannot criticize without a generous helping of profanities, at least those who link to us.) But back to breastfeeding. McGill researchers have just published a study linking breastfeeding to higher intelligence. Read the news release here.
Now, for the disclaimer: I have 5 children, all of them were breastfed to a certain extent. 3 of them had their first bottle by their 3rd week, one of them was supplemented with formula from birth. Some of them were weaned the hard way, some of them weaned on their own. I’ve had about every breastfeeding joy and tribulation found in books and even some not found in books. And, dare I say it, all my children are brilliant AND cute as buttons. I honestly don’t care how you fed your baby nor for how long you breastfed. I only care that you fed your baby and if not, that child welfare authorities have been notified. Okay?
Back to McGill researchers. What I find interesting is that breastfeeding has been linked to higher intelligence. Given that breastfeeding is how human babies should be fed in the big scheme of things, shouldn’t we say that breastfeeding is linked to normal intelligence and artificial feeding linked to lower intelligence? On that topic, I found this article very interesting. Warning: do not follow the link if you don’t want to be challenged on breast vs. artificial feeding or if you can’t stand a white font against light blue background.
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Andrea compliments Véronique on her amazing knack for putting together a line of almost non-sequiturs and keeping me interested and laughing in the process. And I don’t even have children to feed. But I won’t read the link because of the light blue background–and their choice of font. Terrible.
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Rebecca’s theory on breastfeeding and IQ: the intelligence flows straight out of the maternal brain, out the mammaries, and into the baby.
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Patricia adds: Hear, hear, Rebecca.
I have nursed to some degree or another all five of my kids, in most cases up to about 13 months. (All of my kids seemed to have lost interest at about that stage.) Each time, the first three months have been a grueling ordeal with pain rivalling childbirth and a host of attendant complications most of which are too gruesome to relate. Over the years, I have had help from professionals, La Leche, my breastfeeding friends, etc., so mine is not a case of being uninformed or unsupported. And, finally, every time, I have wondered why I insist upon putting myself, my husband, my other kids and my baby through the process, and I’m still not 100% sure that I did any of us any favours.
I’m read the press release from the McGill study and, while I’m no expert, I was not convinced that their “control” eliminated all the biases in favour of a certain type of mother. According to the press release, the study was “randomized by taking half of the mothers and subjecting them to “an intervention that encouraged prolonged and exclusive breastfeeding” while the other half of mothers continued with their usual maternity hospital and outpatient pediatric care and follow-up. Well, what type of mother do you think was most persuaded by the intervention in support of breastfeeding? I suspect it was mothers who accept that “what is best for their child” is what is recommended by a certain kind of expert, who relies more on those experts than the experience of her mother, who has the time and support to give to the breastfeeding process, who can persist when it doesn’t go well initially, who takes advantage of lactation consultants, etc. And I wonder how often this type of mother has a certain kind of intelligence and a certain determination to interact and stimulate her child that results in that child, at age 6.5, to do well in certain measures of intelligence.
There are all kinds of reasons to breastfeed – my personal favourite is that it’s cheap. (You might think it’s free, but I have such a voracious appetite when I’m breastfeeding that I’m sure there is an added grocery cost.) When it works, it’s lovely and convenient. But then, so is snuggling up to give your baby a nice, peaceful bottle, especially if it provides you with a break from stomach-churning pain. Let’s face it, infant formula has been around for a long time and was developed for a reason.
What I think really bothers me about the “breast is best” argument is that, for many, many women, it seems to set such a high standard of motherhood so as to make it unattainable, impractical, or something that they may undertake once, under the right conditions, but not something that they would want to have part of their lives on an ongoing basis. I’m sure that any woman who saw me weeping and literally gnashing my teeth as I struggled to overcome the pain involved with getting my infant to eat would think “thanks but no thanks” to whole process. To me, the whole argument has an association with a view of childrearing that says “we must have to best at all costs for our little prince/princess” from breast feeding at any price to the dupioni silk baby carrier (I saw one the other day when I was trying to buy a bib for my youngest). And if you can’t provide that, you’re really not trying hard enough to fulfill your child’s entitlement to the “best”. In some ways, that’s a very worthy standard, but it pretty much guarantees that having child will be seen as some extraordinary undertaking rather than part of everyday life.
And don’t even get me started on natural childbirth (which, incidentally, all of mine were, not by intention, believe me) or attachment parenting.
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Tanya agrees: Oh, Patricia, thanks for bringing that up. Didn’t I just feel like the devil the first time I hopped my 2 week old baby up on formula. When you are pregnant, no one seems to mention that breastfeeding might actually be really, really hard.
Here’s a good gauge, now that I have valuable hindsight: If you want to crawl under a rock every single time your newborn cries of hunger, you’re not alone. Breast is not best if it makes mom lose her sanity.