The Case Against Breastfeeding
By Glinda
In an article published many moons ago in the Atlantic Monthly, writer Hanna Rosin launches into a fascinating and well-researched article about breastfeeding. And how in her opinion, it really isn’t all that great. This is coming, mind you, from a woman who breastfed all three of her children.
I cheered when I read it.
You see, I happen to think that there is a very judgmental group of women, members of the militant wing of the Salvation Army types, if you will, that see breastfeeding as the end-all, be-all of motherhood.
Hogwash.
Am I a bit biased on this topic because I tried and failed to breastfeed my firstborn? Possibly. But, I pumped for months until my milk ran out due to an undiagnosed immune disorder.
No one ever said to my face that I wasn’t as good of a mother, but there were certain women who would smugly state how long they breastfed and how fantastic it was, even though I had already admitted I felt badly for not being able to myself. Heck, there was even an acquaintance I met who still breastfed her three year old, even in public at a restaurant.
That, they were not-so-subtly trying to tell me, was dedication.
Myself? Apparently lacking in said dedication.
Well, I’m firmly with Hanna Rosin on this one. The evidence in favor of breastfeeding is not all that it’s cracked up to be, despite what certain groups would like you to think.
So I’m here to say that I support women either way. If you choose to breastfeed and it makes you happy, then may the winds of fortune be at your back.
But, if you choose not to breastfeed, I am not going to immediately apply my fingers in an “L” shape on my forehead.
I would like to suggest that more women do the same.
August 25th, 2009 at 8:59 am
THANK YOU! I’ve had a few friends I’ve had to reassure that they were not bad mothers because the breastfeeding thing wouldn’t work. Hey, we were all formula fed and we came out fine! It’s great if it works but if not,well, it’ll all be okay and those women are positively psycho mean about it.
August 25th, 2009 at 10:45 am
THANK YOU! I tried to breastfeed and did for 2 weeks, until I got mastitis and our baby wasn’t gaining enough weight. Since I was going to have to supplement anyway, I pulled the plug on the boobs. I had really wanted to breastfeed, but I realize also that somehow I felt like I *had* to. Switching to formula has meant better sleep for our whole family, and peace of mind knowing that our boy is getting enough to eat without me tearing my hair out.
August 25th, 2009 at 11:15 am
Thanks for this post. I wanted to breastfeed, but I couldn’t. Long story, but I tried really, really hard to breastfeed because I thought it was necessary to give my daughter a good start in life. My breasts didn’t cooperate though. Even my lactation consultant finally told me to give it up when I was getting more blood than milk in the pump bottles. So my daughter was fed exclusively on formula, and now, nearly eleven months later, I have a beautiful, incredibly bright, and extremely healthy little girl who has never been sick a day in her life, not even a cold, not even diaper rash. She’s so smart she makes us a little nervous at times 😉 Formula these days is good stuff, it’s not poison, and it has the advantage of allowing fathers to take over half (or more) of the feeding duties. Of course breastfeeding is best, but not every mother can or wants to breastfeed. And no one should be so rude as to question that choice.
August 25th, 2009 at 11:22 am
So in the old days, if someone had a problem like Pencils did, did the baby just die? Thank God for formula.
Slightly related: When I worked in Chile with a group of indigenous women, I would get stuck in interminable meetings (8 hours of “should we serve ‘young’ Mapuche women or just Mapuche women? What is our mission?”), so would bring my knitting just so I wouldn’t go insane from the lack of productivity. The director of my agency finally told me my knitting was “distracting.”
The three-year-old kids (successfully) demanding that mom pop out a boob were not distracting.
Just the knitting.
August 25th, 2009 at 11:55 am
Amen! The great irony in my breastfeeding adventures is that while I lived in California (land of the aforementioned militant breastfeeding advocates) I received very minimal help in breastfeeding. Here in Kansas (a supposedly backwards area where breastfeeding is not as prevalent) I received amazing lactation support and was finally able to feel that I had done everything I could to try and get my stubborn baby to nurse. So even though I have not been able to actually breastfeed any of my kids I can be happy knowing I did my best despite what some people may think and in a year there is going to be no way to tell the difference between my baby and a breast fed one.
August 25th, 2009 at 12:02 pm
I think that all of the super-judgmental other mommy crap is so ridiculous. It’s horrible that some women insist on their own superiority based on their life decisions compared to others. Women who say things like “I breastfed for two years (or stayed at home for 5, or homeschooled, or etc) because my kids come first” can shove it. Like my kids don’t come first for me?
/rant
I was really lucky with my older daughter to be able to breastfeed as well as we did. I had a mastitis and long gross story short, eventually we were able to get back to it, but it was never the same and we supplemented with formula the whole time.
My cousin wasn’t so lucky. She tried really hard to nurse- our grandma nursed her three kids even when it wasn’t fashionable, her mom nursed her three kids with no issues, but for her it was super painful even when the latch was right, or when she pumped. She felt so guilty over it, and agonized day in and day out. When her pediatrician said she should consider stopping she said “It was like a gift from Jesus!”
Making a martyr out of yourself to follow someone elses ideal is no way to live your life. Your kid is better off with a sane, healthy mom than one who goes crazy because she’s trying to do something she can’t.
August 25th, 2009 at 12:06 pm
Class factotum–in the old days you’d get what was called a wet nurse, a lactating woman who either had lost her child, or had enough milk for more than one. In certain periods, upper-class women routinely used paid wet nurses. For poor people, I expect a relative or friend might take on the feeding of the baby for free, or else they got the money somewhere to pay a woman to feed the baby. Sometimes in the lack of a wet nurse, babies would be fed with cow’s, goat’s, or sheep’s milk, but I’m not sure how well that worked. Modern formula is made from cow’s milk, but it’s altered and supplemented. Even with wet nurses and animal milk, I’m sure that many babies did die from malnutrition when their mothers couldn’t feed them enough. And still do today. In 19th century England (and I’m sure in other European countries) women and girls who had babies out of wedlock, or who had to work and couldn’t take care of a child, gave their children to baby farmers, who took care of babies and small children. Many died, as you would expect. There were famous cases of people who would advertise as baby farmers, take the children of unsuspecting, desperate servant and factory girls, and then promptly kill the babies and keep the money. So many babies died as a regular thing from malnutrition, disease or neglect in baby farms it was a good racket for a while.
So, yes, I’m very glad I live in the modern age where my daughter can eat modern formula!
August 25th, 2009 at 2:36 pm
This post was so timely for me. Samuel is now 11 days old, and I’m still struggling with breastfeeding. I figure he’s now getting about 25% breastmilk, 75% formula. I should be really happy with that, considering that I had a breast reduction 17 years ago. But I bought so heavily into the hype, and was so determined to have him exclusively on breastmilk, that I still feel like a big failure every time I open up a can of formula.
August 25th, 2009 at 3:57 pm
Isn’t it weird how we all feel like we somehow failed our children?
We haven’t, I assure you.
If a woman is unable/doesn’t want to breastfeed, I want to tell you that it makes absolutely no difference that I can see. As Hanna says in her article, it isn’t as if you can tell the breastfed children from the formula fed in preschool.
My son is academically gifted, loving, happy, and a wonderful young man.
And to me, that is validation that I made the best choice that I could at the time, and I refuse to regret it any more.
August 25th, 2009 at 7:57 pm
I think you need to recheck Hanna’s sources, because they’re faulty. I would rather have my child fed by a wet nurse than feed him formula.
August 25th, 2009 at 8:03 pm
I breastfed for a month. I knew I was going back to work when my daughter was 2 months old, as I started to prepare for going back, I started pumping. It took me nearly two days to get what would have barely covered one day at work. It made me ridiculously cranky and caused me tremendous pain to pump. then I realized that with my 12 hr plus days I would have 1 hr a day of breaks (2 15 min breaks, one 1/2 lunch) the bulk of which were going to be spent pumping. I decided that I needed that time to mentally recharge for the rest of the day not spend it worrying about pumping enough milk. So we switched her to formula.
I felt horribly guilty and cried about it for days. And I know better. It took days of my husband telling me it was alright before I truly believed him. I knew better and I still felt like I was failing as a mother.
August 25th, 2009 at 9:28 pm
@ayla- So are you suggesting that I’m supposed to take Babytalk magazine over JAMA?
I don’t think her sources are faulty in any way, in fact she does admit that breastfeeding is probably best, based on the current studies.
It’s just that formula isn’t this horrible thing that many make it out to be, and no mother is less of one if she uses it.
August 26th, 2009 at 9:38 am
I appreciated Rosin’s attempt to lessen the guilt of those mothers who can’t or choose not to breastfeed, but I really didn’t appreciate her obvious resentment towards it that was based more on ideas of being “tied down” as a mother than the physical pain and incapabilities that the moms in this comment thread are describing. By all means, formula feed if that’s what’s best for you, I don’t believe in sacrificing the peace and happiness of families on the altar of so-called “Perfect Mothering”, but the OPPOSITE attitude of discouraging breastfeeding as limiting, degrading, or damaging to feminism (Rosin drew parallels in her article between the breast pump of the modern woman to the vaccuum cleaner of the 50’s housewife, each symbols of their oppression as women) is JUST AS BAD. Live and let live, and don’t be so naive as to think that no matter what way you choose to parent or mother, there won’t be sacrifices you have to make.
August 26th, 2009 at 4:04 pm
Didn’t want to breastfeed, didn’t do it, didn’t feel guilty for a minute. My son (now 32) is healthy, well adjusted, brilliantly intelligent and handsome. My daughter-in-law (his wife) breastfed their first child and their new baby (yeah I’m a grandma again). When his wife is unavailable, my son gives the baby a bottle of pumped milk. Everyone seems happy. What’s the big deal? Live and let live ladies.
August 28th, 2009 at 9:34 am
Hello all!
I once signed off for good, but (inevitably) have wandered back and am abandoning myself to a darn good blog! (I know you probably didn’t miss me, but I missed you, and I don’t mind admitting it!)
I had to comment here because I am a convert to Glinda’s way of thinking.
I breastfed my first and loved every minute of it. Admittedly, I didn’t care a snap of my fingers what other women did, but I believed the research about breast milk.
Now I have a second little one and for the first three weeks of nursing it hurt so terribly that I cried every time this kid latched on. EVERY TIME!!! I had never experienced anything like it. I nearly quit feeding the baby, but stuck it out anyway- clinging to my belief that it was the best for my baby.
A few weeks later he was in the hospital from dehydration and “breast-milk” jaundice. WHAT?!?! Apparently breast milk can give a baby jaundice that sticks around for months! AND I have to give him vitamin drops because my milk doesn’t produce enough vitamin D.
And breastmilk provides everything your baby needs…right.
I am now nursing this guy 24/7, and it’s fine, but I will not feel bad when I wean him and I encourage any woman who dislikes, is hurt by, or just plain doesn’t feel like nursing to drop it and buy a bottle.
Anyone who judges you for it is a twit.