I get the feeling that the author of this comic wasn’t particularly happy with breastfeeding (NSFW)
Exclusive breastfeeding means only without supplementing of formula, not the feeding of complementary foods. A six month old having breastmilk and cereal or fruit but no formula is still considered exclusively breastfed.
Under Health Care Reform, employers are required to provide a non-bathroom space for private pumping, and all the breaks (unpaid) necessary to pump at least through the first year of an employee’s child’s life. Productivity aside, it’s the law, and employers aren’t following it, but employees don’t seem to be asking much, either.
No, experts recommend introducing solids when babies show readiness to eat solids, which is age-independent. People who write baby books say six months. Any “expert” who says that this is age-related isn’t.
Prior to recent budget cuts, WIC would make pumps available on a loaning basis, only for working parents. Those who had issues with latch and couldn’t nurse directly from the breast, though, were SOL. And each WIC office only had a small number (though these are the big, hospital-grade, uberpumps) and once they were all loaned out, anyone else who needed one was also SOL.
After recent budget cuts, the pump loan program has been severely pulled back in some offices, ended entirely in others, even though the only cost is in replacing the milk-contacting parts between users, which is less than the cost of a month’s worth of formula.
This is perhaps one of the most repulsive and ridiculous things you, a person with a.) an agenda to destroy breastfeeding relationships out of your own pathology and b.) a stunning disregard of anything approaching actual mental health (or physical health) knowledge has ever said.
Honestly, whatever alleged credentials you have that allows you to impart this horrible, destructive, anti-information to women should be so seriously revoked it’s not even funny. You are frightening. You need professional help.
But those were not the reasons ZPG was laying out in her post. As a pumping mother I heartily resent her implied implication that I am a milk machine rather than a person. She has not nursed so she has no idea what nursing is like. Unfortunately instead of admitting this she makes things up. You can nurse at night if you co-sleep. You can also pump milk so that others can feed the baby besides you.
No one’s arguing with your reasonable conclusions including me. But hers are very ill informed and poorly reasoned.
Probably due to fear.
A former employer of mine said it was breastfeeding friendly, and it certainly was for management-level women who had their own offices with doors and who could scoot away for a break multiple times per day, but oddly enough **every **non-management employee who tried taking pumping breaks just happened to crop up with performance issues and was gone within six months of returning from maternity leave. It was never explicitly said that was the reason, but it happened over and over.
Laws are broken often. The burden is on the employee who lost a job to prove bias. Regardless of the law, too many businesses regard a mother with a young child as a burden, much less a women taking time out of the work day to pump breastmilk.
Isn’t formula feeding correlated with postpartum depression and psychosis? Seems odd to advocate it in such such a situation.
Again, no a US example, but in Peru public breastfeeding is very common. Women simply wip out a breast in the bus and start nursing. Upper (middle) class women would normally be more modest, convering the area with a piece of cloth.
Heck, we even had a congresswoman breastfeeding in congress during a session.
At least here, Catholic modesty never interfered.
I’m trying to think of all the retail places I’ve worked where that simply isn’t an option. The gas station I once worked consisted of the salesfloor, a small stockroom, 2 bathrooms (1 customer, 1 employee), a walk-in cooler, & a walk-in freezer. The stockroom seems like it’d be the most logical option, but it had security cameras & just a swinging restaurant-style door with a window so it wasn’t very private. The cooler would be pretty convienent for storage, but it also had glass doors everywhere so you’d need to hide behind racks of product. Given our wages it’d probally have been cheaper for the company to just offer a year of paid maternity leave than remodeling it’s store; especially for a part-timer.
I suspect that you just want to see more titties. 
Seriously, though, you’re right. I know that I’ve seen a number of threads about breastfeeding on the SDMB alone, and I am always surprised at how many posters will say that it’s gross to watch. This attitude is even more prevalent among the general public, though of course individual responses might vary. Some people are absolutely charmed at the sight of a mother nursing her baby, and this includes women as well as men. When I was nursing, I had several women ask if they could watch, as they thought it was the nicest thing in the world. I always let them, if I could do so discreetly. I never had a man ask to watch, other than my husband. It’s quite possible that some men did want to watch, and not for sexual gratification either, but they were afraid that I’d think they were pervy.
I think that what we’d need is for some popular but empty headed female celebrities to come out in favor of breastfeeding, and for them to leak pics of them nursing their babies. You know, sort of like anti vax, except this time it would be in a good cause.
You know, you should stop and think about what ZPG is saying.
When you are borderline surviving, have a kid, possibly more kids, a house and bills - and have to work long hours and can’t pump because you can’t afford health insurance that would provide one, the local health department won’t provide one, and you HAVE to maintain both jobs and all the housework and child care that you are providing, formula is the freaking answer.
You can’t drop any hours, or jobs because you need the money. The house isn’t magically going to clean itself, nor are the meals magically going to make themselves. You can’t pump, but you can use formula. If I were that mother, and you started blathering at me how horrible my decision to feed formula even though I have a perfectly serviceable pair of teats popping with milk, I would look at my empty bank account, the stack of dirty dishes, the squalling kid and my work schedule stuck to the fridge and give you a hearty fuck off, you going to pay for a maid or me to sit on my ass nursing for the next year?
She might be able to get her kid watched by the neighbor for a couple hours til the dad gets home from work, or granny, or a sister. That person can’t feed the unpumped milk because you can’t afford a pump, but they can pop open a bottle of formula and feed the kid … and then she can work both jobs, or clean the house, or make dinner and actually get to sit down and rest for a bit before bed. I worked 2 jobs at one time, and I also at one point went to college full time and worked a full time job, I know how bone tired you can get with day after day after day with no down time. I can not imagine adding kids to the mix.
I’ve definitely heard nursing mothers speaking about breastfeeding/pumping in similar terms.
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Productivity aside, it’s the law, and employers aren’t following it, but employees don’t seem to be asking much, either.
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With the economy the way it is, you really expect the working poor to start making waves about stuff like this?
Breastfeeding is a luxury when new mothers have to be back to work 2 months after the kid is born. And pumping can be impractical for a lot of reasons no matter what the law says (see alphaboi’s description of retail floor space).
I’d think that these are the primary reasons for people choosing the bottle, rather that prudery or willful ignorance.
There are obviously several reasons why poor women choose to bottle-feed rather than breastfeed, but one of the biggest is that people do what is “normal” for their area/family. If your mom and aunts and sisters all bottle-fed, it stands to reason you will do the same. On the other hand, if you grew up around breastfeeding as the norm, it wouldn’t be such a big deal, and you’d have plenty of support and people to help you if you had problems. It’s been proven that successful breastfeeding absolutely has everything to do with the kind of support you get from the people closest to you.
I’ve read many stories of women breastfeeding a six month old baby and being asked by their SO or mother-in-law when they’re going to stop doing that, as if it’s distasteful and bothersome for her to feed her infant the way nature intended. Add to that the terrible practices of formula companies, where they set up a hotline and F.A.Q. for new, breastfeeding moms, talking about how hard it is, how complicated it is, basically making it out to be a pain in the ass so you can feel better about switching to formula, or at the very least giving you stress and worry before you even start breastfeeding. It’s highly unethical, IMO, but I don’t see it changing anytime soon.
Until we can make breastfeeding the default, the norm, it will always be fraught with anxiety and controversy. I don’t believe in guilt tripping people into doing what’s right, so that approach needs to go out the window. It would be great if women could confidently choose what is right for them without all the opinions and suggestions from everyone around them, but again, I don’t see that changing soon either.
Catholic modesty and Protestant modesty are two different things, with the latter being far more uptight and extreme. The US, particularly in the areas described (rural, Appalachia, etc.) are predominantly Protestant.
First of all, I’m very interested in where your rotation took place because where I’m from (Applalachia) would fall under “poor rural America.”
I nursed my second baby due to economic reasons, although it really didn’t seem to be a common practice.
I gained a new understanding about guys with their erections; those, and “letting down your milk” don’t happen so easily when you feel under pressure. It’s like, “I gotta do this. But if I think about it too much it won’t happen. So I’ll just pretend to think about something else and…” lol If I hadn’t had access to a class (group) I don’t know if I could have done it. Breastfeeding had been “out” for so many years that I didn’t have a lot of women to talk to about it. In fact, one of my baby’s pediatricians actually discouraged it, said it was unnecessary. (Since he wasn’t paying my bills I ignored him.)
It worked for several months although he wasn’t gaining a whole lot of weight so we introduced rice cereal early on. (I couldn’t get WIC because my husband made exactly $48 a YEAR too much to qualifly.) Anyway, I really enjoyed the experience and he got some immunities etc. from me and it was a good time in our lives. I would have done it longer but we didn’t have a whole lot to eat and I kept losing weight (while doing some physical labor) and I think I just “dried up” due to improper nutrition. But we had planted a garden so by then I could pick vegetables and grind them up (sans salt and sugar) and he ate that like a pro. Since he was also allergic to plastic we could only use cloth diapers, so we ended up doing the whole thing “old school.” And we were really lucky to. Wouldn’t trade the experience for the world.
wow…just got the metal image of Mattel marketing baby dolls that cry if not breast feeded by children
would love to see the fallout from that marketing campaign
What’s darkly ironic is; breast feeding is one of the quickest ways to lose the pounds.
It’s worth noting that since time immemorial, the first thing women of wealth and status did was farm their infants out to wet nurses.
I had similar feelings
Most of the jobs the working poor have don’t offer ANY maternity leave. They don’t work full time and don’t get benefits. They string together a few part time jobs to get enough to pay rent. So when they aren’t working, they aren’t getting paid.
I worked a full time job right out of college that didn’t offer maternity leave. Women would come back three or four days after birth. And it wasn’t even a horrible company. It just wasn’t a benefit they offered.
Even jobs with maternity leave aren’t necessarily great. I get 8 weeks maternity leave (it is usually only 6 weeks but they give you 2 additional if you have a c-section) but it is unpaid and we are a small company so FMLA doesn’t apply. They do have a small breastfeeding/privacy room set up for working mothers but realistically my job requires me to be available from 9-5. If I take 2 20-30 minute breaks to pump legally they can’t stop me but I will be much less effective at my job, much less likely to be promoted in the near future, and much more likely to be first on the chopping block in the event of a layoff. I’m going to do my best to make sure that I get to pump regularly during the day but that may not be possible. My plan is to request to have my lunch hour split into 2 half hours so instead of lunch from 12-1 I can pump from 10:30-11 and again from 2-2:30 without impacting my job but that is a best case scenario. They may not be okay with me splitting up my lunch hour or we may have a rash of people leaving the company or a big influx of business that would require more dedication than I could give if I were trying to pump milk during the day.
I have known plenty of women who have nursed and the milk machine comment comes straight from the thousands of conversations I have had with nursing mothers that didn’t like nursing. That is the exact phrase many of them used.