Just making mothers feel guilty.

The momosphere is buzzing about that NYT breastfeeding article, mostly arguing about whether it’s helpful or harmful to The Cause to emphasize "risks of not breastfeeding" instead of "benefits of breastfeeding."  Meanwhile, Selkie put her finger on a disturbing omission.

[T]he article is pro-breastmilk, yes, but pro-breastmilk and pro-breastfeeding are not the same thing…   

Human milk is the right choice for human babies (barring unusual circumstances like inborn errors of metabolism or maternal HIV or HTLV), but for some women the cost of getting the milk into the baby may just be too high.  I’m pleased that the Times was clear about the importance of breastmilk.  I wish the article had addressed the issue of making breastfeeding easier.

It’s easy to say, about breastmilk, "There’s gold in them thar hills."  (Oil in them thar hills, I suppose I should say if I were aiming for a consistent use of metaphor, even though that’s geologically implausible.)  The evidence for human milk is overwhelming.  What I’d like to see, if I were the Monarch of Media, is more emphasis on extracting it in ways that are manageable for all concerned.

I think, now, that I can understand the anger from many (perhaps not all) formula-feeding parents who retort, "That article/study/commentary/comment is just aimed at making us feel guilty."   

I’ve got nothing against guilt per se.  Normal guilt is a healthy emotional response to the knowledge that one has done something wrong, or at least, sub-optimal, despite the opportunity to do the right thing.    (Feeling guilt when one has not had such an opportunity, on the other hand, is not normal or healthy.)

Still, there’s a good point there.  Finish the sentence:  "That commentary is just aimed at making us feel guilty, instead of offering resources that assist us and inspire us to persevere with the ‘right,’ but often apparently more difficult, choice."

My friends and I were talking about this last night.  I used to pump breastmilk when I was at the university, in a bathroom in my building (because the cozy nursing mothers room was in a different building three blocks away).  It was a pain, but I persevered!  Still — that is not such a huge hurdle.  There are nursing moms who work at Starbucks, where the only private room may be a bathroom and that bathroom is the same one that the customers use.  What are they supposed to do?    

The answer is not to stop disseminating the information that "just" makes people feel guilty.  That information, we hope, is what motivates families to do the right thing.  The answer is to add the information that gives families the confidence — "empowers" them, to use a buzzword — to do the right thing.

Don’t forget, either, that there are three important audiences to these articles besides the parents who are choosing breastfeeding or formula.

    (1)  There is the medical community, who don’t work hard enough to help parents breastfeed successfully, and who far too often do damage to parents’ efforts through wrongheaded advice and policy. 

    (2)  There are private businesses large and small, who — with the right motivation — could make real changes that would lead more working mothers to breastfeed for longer duration.  (Not to mention the potential impact of private insurers, specifically.)

    (3)   There are a huge number of government entities, municipalities and states and federal agencies and all that (plus the ordinary American in his or her capacity as taxpayer and voter), who already run programs designed to improve the lives of mothers and children, and who with changes of emphasis in existing programs could raise breastfeeding rates — let alone adding new programs.  If voters and policy makers decide that breastfeeding should get a higher priority than some other program — and you can’t tell me that there isn’t stuff in there that deserves to be demoted — then it can happen.   Ask any mom who happens both to be knowledgeable about breastfeeding and a client or former client of WIC or a similar state nutrition program.  (And if you think there’s not a lot of overlap between those two, you’re deluded.)  There’s a lot of room for improvement that would not only further the nutrition programs’ policy goal of improving children’s nutrition (duh), but probably save money too.

So why not, instead of "just making mothers feel guilty," devote some column space to (a) addressing those three other audiences and making them feel a little guilty, for once, and (b) provide information to help mothers subvert the system and breastfeed anyway while the odds are still against them?