Mother's Milk

[Guest guest]

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=17325

 

 

Mother's Milk

 

By Kristin Van Tassel, Prairie Writers Circle

December 4, 2003

 

The benefits of breastfeeding are widely acknowledged, but few people see this

as relevant to anyone but the parents of babies. In fact, there are advantages

directly related to larger concerns, particularly food and the environment.

Human breast milk is one of our most valuable natural resources.

 

 

 

It boosts infants' immune systems. It is designed to meet their specific volume

and nutritional needs, with no additives or supplements. It eliminates the waste

of formula's packaging and discarded leftovers.

 

 

 

While formula requires fossil fuel for its production and distribution, every

nursing mother has a fresh, locally produced food ready to serve to her infant

anytime, anywhere. Rather than relying on multinational companies, breastfeeding

mothers empower themselves – and, thereby, their home communities also – to

nourish their children.

 

 

 

Breastfed babies are also less likely to suffer from obesity later in life. And

exclusive and frequent breastfeeding can work as birth control, limiting

population growth.

 

 

 

Breastfeeding should be of interest to anyone concerned about landfill waste,

global warming, agribusiness, multinational conglomerates, obesity and

overpopulation.

 

 

 

But despite its large support in the medical community and positive coverage in

the media, the culture of breastfeeding continues to face troubling challenges.

Like the canary in the coalmine, it reveals systemic problems that bode ill for

effectively addressing more complex and controversial food and environmental

concerns.

 

 

 

The steady decline of breastfeeding during the first three quarters of the 20th

century resulted directly from industrialization's move toward large-scale food

production and the subsequent overproduction of cow's milk. The dairy industry's

search for new markets led to development and promotion of infant formula, with

devastating results for the culture of breastfeeding.

 

 

 

By 1972, only 25 percent of American women left the hospital nursing their

newborns. And of these women, virtually unsupported in a society that had lost

the experience and knowledge necessary to sustain the practice, very few

continued nursing beyond the first two months of their children's lives.

 

 

 

The good news is that breastfeeding has made a remarkable comeback during the

past 25 years, due in large part to the organization of breastfeeding support

groups, encouragement by progressive doctors and the perseverance of individual

mothers. Now, 70 percent of women leave the hospital nursing their infants, a

marked improvement in one generation.

 

 

 

Still, the culture of breastfeeding is undermined and compromised. It is

sobering to realize that despite stacks of supporting scientific studies,

universal endorsement (or at least lip service), and an army of local

volunteers, lactation consultants and support groups, only 16 percent of

American mothers nurse their babies for the full year recommended by the

American Academy of Pediatrics and the U.S. surgeon general.

 

 

 

The formula industry is alive and well in both rich and poor countries. It is

standard for companies to give mothers in U.S. hospitals gifts and free cans of

formula. Now the manufacturers are fighting an Advertising Council public

service announcement for breastfeeding.

 

 

 

Although the inability to breastfeed is extremely rare, too many women, faced

with the large presence of formula in the maternity ward and supermarket, assume

supplementing or replacing their breast milk is desirable, even necessary. This

belief undermines confidence in their bodies, which hinders their breastfeeding

success.

 

 

 

Additionally, social and economic forces in the United States discourage

extended nursing. While no one objects to a baby being fed with a bottle in a

restaurant, park or church, nursing remains taboo in many public places. And

although it benefits employers to support breastfeeding since breastfed babies

are sick less, which means their parents miss fewer work days, many businesses

fail to give mothers the flexibility to realistically fit breastfeeding into

their working lives.

 

 

 

We live in a society where our domestic lives are severed from our educational

and economic activities, commercial agendas take precedence over the natural

world, and profits are prioritized over health. These dichotomies exist at the

expense of women and babies.

 

 

 

We would do well to examine the economic, political and cultural forces

hindering the complete success of something as straightforward and compelling as

breastfeeding.

 

 

 

Kristin Van Tassel is a mother who teaches English at Bethany College in

Lindsborg, Kan., and Kansas Wesleyan University in Salina, Kan. She is a member

of the Prairie Writers Circle at The Land Institute, Salina.

 

 

 

 

 

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