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Bottle-feeding
culture
One of the reasons why breastfeeding is
so hard for many Western women is that we live in a
bottle-feeding culture. Breastfeeding is natural but not instinctive.
It needs to be learned. However, it is hard to learn about
breastfeeding in a bottle-feeding culture.
This page describes the bottle-feeding culture we
live in. For related information, see the page on breastfeeding
culture.
- Many of us have never seen a baby being breastfed.
- Practically none of us have seen a toddler
being breastfed. Even fewer people have seen a tandem-nursing
mother.
- All of us, however, have seen many babies being bottle-fed,
including babies propped with
bottles.
- No wonder that we think of bottle-feeding as the normal way to
feed a baby!
- Images of bottle-fed babies abound in movies
and on TV, but breastfed babies are more or less restricted to
anthropological films (usually we see a starving woman with a
malnourished baby at her apparently empty breast--can we help form
the impression that breastfeeding is for unfortunate, poor,
uneducated, hungry people, and bottle-feeding for the modern and
healthy?). There are relatively few movies featuring breastfed
babies.
- Many children's books depict
bottle-feeding as the normal (usually only) way of feeding a baby.
Few children's books feature
breastfeeding (although, fortunately, the number seems to be
increasing).
- There are many bottle-feeding doll
sets, but few breastfeeding dolls.
To make the matters even worse, the casual observer gets a
distorted picture of current baby feeding practices:
- Bottle-feeding is highly visible
- Bottle-feeding parents do not feel compelled to hide what
they are doing--everyone can tell that they are giving their
baby a bottle.
- Even when not feeding, bottles in a stroller, diaper bag,
on a dinner table, etc., announce that a baby is
bottle-fed.
- In the supermarket, one commonly sees people buying
formula.
- Breastfeeding is much less visible
- Some breastfeeding mothers avoid nursing
in public. They might instead use bottles in public. Or
they might practice "back room
nursing".
- Mothers who do breastfeed in public usually try their best
to be discreet. While a careful observer can tell that a mother
is nursing her baby, a casual observer often has no idea.
- Nursing mothers are not easily recognized as such except
while nursing (cf. bottle-fed babies--you can see their bottles
in their hand, in their stroller, etc.). Even those mothers
that wear specially made nursing tops
would not be recognized as such by most people, and many nurse
in their everyday clothes.
- Bottle-feeding is also disproportionately visible because
manufacturers of artificial breastmilk substitutes promote
their products through advertisement. Breastmilk, although
superior in just about every imaginable
way, is not vigorously promoted.
Our society is desperately in need of mothers nursing
their babies in public openly. We also need books
and TV programs featuring breastfeeding mothers. Our children need
breastfeeding dolls, not bottle-feeding
ones.
If a girl grows up thinking that breastfeeding is
the normal way to feed a baby, she will be much more likely to try
it, and knowing that a lot of women can do it with no difficulty,
she'll have more confidence in herself as a nursing mother. A child
growing up seeing breastfeeding as the normal way to feed a baby will
be much less likely as an adult to be disturbed by the idea of a
mother breastfeeding her baby in public or in private. Such a person
is likely to be supportive of his or her mate in breastfeeding their
baby. He or she will also be friendly to all women nursing their
babies in public.
Back to: the breastfeeding
page
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