Alicia at Fructus Ventris writes in response to my earlier post,
Fathers and mothers have different roles, absolutely. I think that one of the earliest steps to the confusion of these roles was that mothers voluntarily gave up their God-given gift of breastfeeding.
Anyone (male, female, adult child, relative or total stranger) can give a baby a bottle. Bottle feeding was the earliest stage of the scientification of motherhood. Mothers no longed learned their craft from other mothers, and eventually came to rely upon ‘scientific’ methods for everything from infant feeding to toilet training and a whole lot more.
The care of the infant and the child was there upon turned over to others besides the mother, leaving her to be simply a servant to the chores of the household. Her unique role was lost.
I agree. I have often thought that the widespread abandonment of maternal breastfeeding (whether to wet nurses or to bottles) was perhaps the first link forged in the long chain of degradation of respect for human life.
I say "widespread" as a caveat: wet-nurses and bottles have always been valuable and even lifesaving fall-back options for babies in specially unfortunate circumstances. The problem has always been the move to acceptance of these emergency measures as equivalent, or even preferable, options. That’s a pattern we see in a lot of other areas, too.
Here’s the most obvious connection in my mind: Breastfeeding is the sole natural birth control in the human population, inherent in the very bodies of human beings. It requires no technology, no specialized techniques or even folklore, no modification of behavior from even the purely animal.
There is some debate about whether in early human societies lactational amenorrhea tended to put between babies about two years (a spacing that would be appropriate to a fixed-in-place agricultural existance) or about four years (a spacing that would be appropriate to a nomadic existence), but there’s no question that breastfeeding suppressed ovulation to a degree we hardly ever see today.
Disrupt the complex dance that is breastfeedingof on-cue and constant mother-baby-togetherness, and suddenly it becomes widely possible for a woman to give birth to two babies within a year. In the face of this horrifyingly dangerous (in an era of high child mortality) and unnatural situation, it’s no wonder that women in industrializing societies felt the need to resort to all kinds of contraceptive techniques, some of them worse than useless—dangerous.
There’s the first link. Paul VI foresaw many of the rest.
…[H]ow easily this course of action could open wide the way for marital infidelity and a general lowering of moral standards. Not much experience is needed to be fully aware of human weakness and to understand that human beings—and especially the young, who are so exposed to temptation—need incentives to keep the moral law, and it is an evil thing to make it easy for them to break that law.
Another effect that gives cause for alarm is that a man who grows accustomed to the use of contraceptive methods may forget the reverence due to a woman, and, disregarding her physical and emotional equilibrium, reduce her to being a mere instrument for the satisfaction of his own desires, no longer considering her as his partner whom he should surround with care and affection.
Finally…Who will prevent public authorities from favoring those contraceptive methods which they consider more effective? Should they regard this as necessary, they may even impose their use on everyone.
bearing blog 