Also, breastfeeding causes uterus contractions, which many religious women would consider “sinfel,” like any other sexual sensation.
Why shouldn’t the default norm be whatever the mother perfers and finds most convenient and practical for her life style?
Or have time / a clean place to pump even if they DO have breastpumps / refrigeration available. I’m a professional, and have a lot more flexibility in schedule than many minimum-wage / factory type women, and it was a challenge even for me.
Of course, it doesn’t explain unemployed mothers choosing formula over breastmilk; while some obviously have trouble or have medical reasons not to, the only thing I can think of is that they haven’t been as exposed to “breast is best” the way many of us have… and a lot of women having babies today are born to mothers who were in the “don’t breastfeed, that’s what animals do, formula is better” generation.
Certainly I got some “why would you do that for THAT long” from my own mother (who actually bragged that she breastfed all of us - for up to 2 months!) - and I knew better and just ignored her.
In some cases the “unemployed” mothers may actually be employed, but in the underground economy. In my neighborhood many Mexican-American women sew in their homes or apartments. This is all for pure cash and if they are good at it, they can make considerably more than they would at minimum wage jobs. Others have informal daycares or do eldercare. It has occurred to me that in rural areas like the OP mentioned, the mothers could be working a large home garden, chopping or gathering wood for fuel (I have a saw this in Tennessee less than a year ago) which provides considerably more to the household income than a minimum wage job or not having to buy formula.
The thing is, you can’t look at a woman and know what medical problems she might or might not have. I used to work at a clinic that treated drug abusers, and by the time I left about 1/5 of them had something like HIV or hepatitis or STD or something. A lot of them sure looked healthy, though. We actively DIScouraged them from breastfeeding for the good of their children for reasons I’m sure are obvious. Breastmilk with a deadly, incurable virus or street drugs in it is NOT best for baby and baby is better off with formula in that particular case.
Almost all these women were also unemployed. It might seem like they should be able to breastfeed, but really, no, they shouldn’t. Some of them did get some hassle from busy-bodies haranguing them for bottle feeding but really, these women didn’t have to tell people “I’m a junkie with a 10 year habit and HIV, so I’m bottle feeding my baby so my problems don’t become his problems”. It’s nobody’s business but theirs and their doctor(s).
Sure, a healthy mom providing breastmilk is the ideal, but it’s not always best in the real world. By all means, promote and encourage breastfeeding in general, but back off personally indoctrinating people unless you’re their medical provider or something. You don’t know why they make the choices they do.
Me, I’m glad there’s an alternative for those women who, for whatever reason, can’t breastfeed. Until we have a perfect world, thank Og for formula that will allow the child of an imperfect mother to grow up reasonably healthy and strong. Meanwhile, I will absolutely keep repeating “breastmilk is ideal if you can manage” and defend any woman’s right to nurse in public and keeping pushing for reasonable accommodations in the workplace.
The answer could be as easy as “lazy”. It could but it could also be as easy as ‘cause I can’, of all the free stuff that the poor have access to, the one that provides the most good is WIC/Food Stamps. A family of two (mom/baby) used to be able to get $400/month of food.
Add to that fact that breastfeeding isn’t as easy as ‘insert nipple so’. It does take some work to get done properly.
A lot of the perceived benefits of breastfeeding come from values that differ across the strata. To put it plainly, many women nowadays do it because of peer pressure and because they don’t want to be looked down upon by others as a selfish, lazy mother. Just as bottle-feeding used to be seen as a mark of sophistication and refinement, so is breastfeeding today. It has now become of those hot button issues used to pit mothers against each other. Much like the SAHM vs the working mother debate has.
If you’re living in poverty, at the bottom of the Maslow triangle, you don’t spend a whole of time trying to outdo your next door neighbor as Mother of the Year. There are about eleventy billion other competing concerns that are higher priority. When you’re juggling a minimum wage job or two that keeps you running all day, while also trying to manage an underfunded household, what incentive would you have to turn away government-subsidized formula? Okay, so breast milk is nutritionally better for the kid, but not so much better that you can easily tell which babies go without it from those that get it.
Since the vast majority of formula-fed babies turn out perfectly fine and breastfeeding entails inconveniences (and often times costs) that can’t be overlooked, no one should really be surprised that low-income mothers pick the path of least resistance.
Many of these mothers were unemployed and many were in high school so to me I think it is more a culture thing. I have to say, this rotation definitely made me less sympathetic to the plight of the American poor.
And for the person who asked upthread, I was in rural Georgia. So not Appalachia. Not sure if it matters, but the patients I saw were probably 80% African-American, and a few Latinas (if that is the appropriate term).
I hope you’re less sympathetic for reasons other than bottle feeding. Because of all the behaviors that separate the rich from the poor, this one counts as small potatoes.
Well, I certainly wouldn’t object, but I don’t sexualize breasts nearly as much as most men seem to. I imagine that this is due in large part to the fact that my babysitter when I was a kid had no problem at all with nursing her own kids, even when we were watching. So I grew up thinking of breasts primarily as baby-feeding organs, not as sexual organs.
Now, granted, they are also sexual. But that’s their secondary function, not primary.
You have trouble respecting a 16-year old girl for not going against what all of her family and friends (and probably even doctor) expect in order to do something that is complicated, time-consuming, more expensive (have to buy a pump) and will involve having to ask for very unusual special treatment (excused from class a couple times a day, a private place to pump, a place to refrigerate milk)? It also means asking whomever is taking care of the baby during the day to work with the system–something that’s hard to do when they are already doing you an amazing favor by taking the baby at all, and when they see breastfeeding as a whim, a pretension, a waste of time and energy.
I mean, pumping is hard for professional, educated women with support systems. To expect a teenage girl to overcome all of those challenges while also overcoming the unique challenges of her position seems unrealistic.
I’m lazy and wanted to do as little work as possible, so I bottle-fed.
Uh, no. I bottle-fed for a variety of reasons, but laziness wasn’t one of them. I also paid for my own formula, not that it really matters.
The breastfeeding thing seems to be a ‘trend’ (yes, I know that sounds counter-intuitive) as most of us can attest to watching our brothers and sisters being bottle fed growing up. But is it just me or does La Leche target the middle to upper class crowd?
Breastfeeding on a working schedule is hard. I don’t think it’s fair to be judgy to those who choose to bottle-feed.
But…there was a student of ours last year who, at 17, gave birth. <sigh> But the cool thing was that she left class every day to go pump breast milk. She what determined to breastfeed her baby. God bless her.
No, but I do have trouble respecting a culture in which an unmarried 16 year old has already been pregnant twice. Among other things.
No, it’s not just you. IMHO, La Leche has no concept of how the working poor live in cities (and their knowledge of the American countryside isn’t much better).
Or determined to get out of class regularly. Also, I’ve known women who would use their pump break as a smoke break also. Yeah, their milk was so much better than formula.
Assuming no other health problems, yes, a smoker’s breast milk probably is still better than formula.
Actually, on thinking about it some more, let me rephrase what I said in post #70. If a woman came up to me out of the blue and showed me her tits, I would be aroused by that, since she’s clearly sending a sexual signal. If, on the other hand, I saw a woman pull out a tit and then attach a baby or pump to it, I would not be aroused by that, since she’s not sending a signal, she’s just feeding her kid. Even if it’s the same breast, the context is different.
Under the ADA, Wal-Mart MUST provide nursing mothers a private (non-bathroom) location and work breaks as needed to express milk.
They do not have to provide storage or refrigeration however.
And they are not required to schedule you. The issue is that a company like WalMart - where you work scheduled hours, may not bother to schedule you at all if you want to take pumping breaks. Your name will just disappear from the schedule.
But it is attitudes like yours – that breastfeeding is a distasteful act – that can make harder for even middle class women to breastfeed. At no point have you ever acknowledged that if mastered breastfeeding and even pumping can have enormous physical benefits for both mother and baby. We need to do what we can to help change such attitudes not to reinforce them.