Why the Choice Not to Breastfeed is a Feminist Issue
During my second pregnancy, several out-of-state friends and family told me that a Massachusetts agency had acted to ban hospitals from giving out free diaper bag gifts, containing formula coupons and samples, to mothers giving birth. The goal was to promote breastfeeding, and after doing some research on this, I cannot find a single argument in favor of the ban citing anything other than the fact that breastmilk is better. I was disturbed and outraged. Let me just start out by saying that I would never try to claim that formula is better than breastmilk.
Before getting into why I find this action so disturbing, I was shocked that coverage of this administrative action was so much better outside of New England. The administrative action banned the gifts, but the ban was subsequently suspended for review. Yet even now, many of my fellow New Englanders are genuinely surprised to hear about it. It was buried in news reports with a bunch of other administrative actions and just didn't get a lot of press. I consider my husband and myself to be fairly well-informed people, but neither of us knew about it.
Part of me wonders what the public reaction would have been had there been better coverage. Sadly, I get the sense that most people don’t care because they believe it is a women's issue. Many people out there just don't care about women's issues.
So why is this a feminist issue? Basically this administrative action assumes that women are incapable of making our own decisions and need the government to come in and tell us what's best for our babies. It is further a statement by the government that formula feeding is not a legitimate choice. By extension, the government is suggesting that our breasts are not are own and that the state can require us to use our breasts solely as milking machines with which to feed our babies.
A friend of mine signed a petition for this ban because she felt that women who are having difficulty breastfeeding their babies might be more likely to use formula if they had free samples lying around. That may be true, but it may also may not. After all, many women who have difficulty breastfeeding continue to do so even though most hospitals are giving out diaper bags. It certainly doesn't seem to be a problem outside of MA. I think there are far more likely reasons why our breastfeeding rate is so low when compared to other first world countries, such as the US's incredibly short maternity leaves and less frequently available paternity leave when compared to other countries. Maybe more people in Massachusetts would breastfeed if Massachusetts weren't so backward in its legal protections for breastfeeders. Thirty-two states allow breastfeeding in public. Fifteen exempt breastfeeding from public indecency laws. Ten states provide legal protection for breastfeeding in the workplace. Ten states exempt breastfeeding mothers from jury duty. Massachusetts does none of these things. Scroll down this web page and see for yourselves. There is a big blank next to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. I would sign a petition in support of any of these laws. Mothers who work outside of the home can't breastfeed for 8 hours a day, and we are worried that a $10 gift bag containing less than 2 day's worth of formula will make it too easy for women to stop breastfeeding? Let's focus on what matters.
Even if the gift bags do reduce breastfeeding, so what? It's not like formula is rat poison. Like I said before I certainly would never argue that formula is better than breastmilk (although I do feel there are advantages to formula feeding, just like there are advantages to breastfeeding.) I will argue that it is a safe alternative. There's a whole generation of formula-fed baby boomers who are out and about and doing just fine. The big allergy explosion is happening to today's kids, not the baby boomers. (I am not blaming breastfeeding for allergies. I am merely demonstrating that formula feeding isn't to blame for allergies either.) The fact that breastfeeding may be better than formula feeding does not mean that formula is bad or that formula feeding is not a legitimate choice. To that extent, it is fundamentally no one's business whether another mother chooses to use formula, and it is infringing on a woman's freedom to deny her the opportunity to make the choice.
I hesitate to use this example because I do believe that formula is a safe alternative for those of us who cannot breastfeed either medically or because of personal preference. However, I think that most people would agree that cookies, cakes and sodas can make a person overweight. They were all options on my food service menu both times that I gave birth. I didn't see the government stepping in and banning junk food because it is unhealthy, yet they are perfectly willing to ban formula because it is healthy but not as healthy as another alternative.
Want another example? I think that most people would agree that diapers are taking up an enormous amount of space in landfills. However, we haven't seen the government act to prohibit hospitals from using and handing out free disposable diapers because it may encourage exhausted parents to turn to the dark side and, gasp, yes dare to use a disposable diaper. No one thinks that the government can prevent parents from learning of and using disposable diapers by not providing them in a hospital. Or at least, they don't have the chutzpah to try.
Here's one more example. There are a lot of arguments as to why a balanced vegetarian diet is a lot healthier than eating meat. You don't see vegetarians or even PETA looking to remove meat from hospital menus or eliminating sampling of meat at deli counters or in other areas of a grocery store.
My examples all speak to the fact that the government's lack of respect for a legitimate choice. There is a starker issue, which is that sometimes breastfeeding is not an available choice. I know many women who wanted to breastfeed but were not physically able to do so. Almost every one of them describes the day that they realized that they could not breastfeed as a horrible time in their lives. I call it the dark period in my life, and I honestly have a hard time remembering what those few weeks were like when I made the adjustment to solely formula feed. I find administrative actions like the diaper bag ban extremely painful emotionally. Why do we need to make women feel like they are bad parents or bad people if they can't breastfeed?
Oh and one other thing. I have recently learned of another argument in favor of the ban. Some people claim that it is a form of marketing by the formula companies and thus is inappropriate for a hospital. Every woman who gives birth at a hospital who does not believe in marketing should not accept the packets of Tylenol and Metamucil and free diapers and wipes that are routinely handed out. Not to mention the parenting magazines that give out free issues to encourage subscriptions, the breastpump companies that provide information at the hospital breastfeeding classes, the list just goes on....Attempts to take the moral high ground on this issue are merely false efforts to mask an agenda that is really focused on controlling the way women feed their infants.
So here's A. Elliot's Lesson Learned: The choice to formula feed is a legitimate personal decision and protecting that choice is a feminist issue.
Great post. I think you make really convincing arguments that the ban on formula samples is clearly bullshit, and your stats on protections for breastfeeding in public are very useful. Thanks for the info!
Good post! I'm a mom of two who breastfed both for 2+ years each, despite great difficulties including two months of painful latching with the first one, and working out of the house full time.
That first experience makes me think this whole debate is about the wrong thing. I don't think including formula samples in diaper bags are any big deal. What disturbs me is the bottles and nipples that come with them, which (according to the lactation consultant that taught the breastfeeding class at my hospital) are specifically designed to make the baby prefer bottles and refuse the breast.
New moms desperately want some reassurance that their babies are okay. With a bottle you can measure out an amount and see it vanish into the baby, so you know how much the baby is getting. Not so with the breast. Even a mom making good milk can be a nervous wreck and want some reassurance that her baby is being fed. What's wrong with that? It would be great if a mom who wants to breastfeed her baby, in her moment of desperation, uses that sample to know her baby is really getting some nourishment, and then can resume nursing again after that, instead of having the baby refuse to even try to latch on because they were spoiled by that easier bottle, wouldn't it? It can be hard enough without another hardship added under your nose. I would support legislation that forces those sample bags to include easy-to-read and attractive literature about "nipple confusion" and bottle nipples designed to avoid it.
I've known several women who had every intention to breastfeed their babies, only to be undermined and thwarted by that very thing. They'd tell me how tired they were and desperate for some reassurance that their baby was fed, so they'd reach for that sample and the bottle that came with it, and after that the baby just wasn't interested in the breast. They just didn't know.
In fact, my two months of painful latching is partially due to that free bottle. I wasn't getting enough sleep (the nurse said I was clinically sleep deprived) so I used a pump to express a meager amount of milk (actually the nurse said one ounce was quite good, but how was I to know that?) and then go to sleep and kept sleeping through the next feeding. Boy, I needed that. I can't help but think the next two months would have been less painful if the bottle had a breastfeeding-friendly nipple, or if we'd been educated about alternatives to using a bottle for that one feeding.
The lactation consultant also said the free pump included in the sample bag was junk, and in her opinion it was included as another way to discourage women and make them think breastfeeding is too hard, so maybe junk pumps could be banned. I was fortunate to have a double electric pump on hand.
Professional Mom of two cats, a dog, an ant farm, and oh yeah...two boys: a 6 year old and a 3 year old. Also found in my house is my husband who is known on this blog as The Big Giraffe.
For those of us who didn't get an instruction manual with our babies and for whom parenting hasn't always gone as planned. On a more serious note this blog is about supporting a woman's ability to make her own choices about parenting including the choice, for whatever reason, to bottle feed her babies formula.
Great post. I think you make really convincing arguments that the ban on formula samples is clearly bullshit, and your stats on protections for breastfeeding in public are very useful. Thanks for the info!