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The anger over breast- and bottle-feeding
Propaganda seems to accomplish its aims by exploiting our deepest emotional conflicts. The book "Coercion: Why We Listen to What 'They' Say" is the best source I know of that discusses how our deepest feelings and unconscious emotional conflicts are used deliberately to manipulate our thinking and choices. Controversies such as the one over breast feeding become stand-ins for our deep feelings about betrayal of the social contract. The plutocracy cheers as we savage each other instead of turning on them as we should be doing. You might say that propaganda uses social science to confuse us. Granted, Nestle, and their ilk, do belong in an especially deep place in hell and breast feeding, with many millions of years of mammalian evolution behind it, beats the crap out of bottle feeding in multifarious and dramatic ways. But for the individual mom it is often much more complicated then that. There are all kinds of obnoxious barriers put up by our society that complicate what should be a simple decision. I always have found competent breast feeding professionals, such as lactation consultants, to be less judgmental on the subject than any lay person. Our exploitive class based society makes child rearing decisions incredibly painful for lower and middle class people. The system of economic exploitation that makes it necessary for, and even compels, moms to work while being separated from their infants, is to blame for a lot of bottle feeding. One encounters many situations where moms have little choice about breast feeding. Suffice it to say, judge not lest you be judged. After a few decades of experience trying to convince moms to breast feed, I think I understand some of the subtleties involved. It is often a very complicated and, above all, always a very personal decision. In a humane world moms would be supported in making these decisions rather than pilloried for making "the wrong choice." In many ways this controversy is similar to the horror show that is the "debate" over abortion. Basically, it is none of our business how a woman chooses to feed her baby unless she asks for help making the decision. At the core of the problem is our vulnerability to socially induced cultural fads. Nestlé's best ally in its drive to sell formula, for instance, is the perceived social status involved in formula feeding in poorer and less educated populations. This was true in the US till very recently when breast feeding managed to gain an upper class cachet. Besides the strongest influence on how we choose to raise our children is how we were raised. Grandmothers, acting behind the scenes, are often the real decision makers. Ironies abound. Bottle feeding has actually decreased in lower class African families because of the associated stigma of AIDS. This is because breast feeding moms are presumed to be AIDS free (unfortunately not always the case) and escape the terrible stigma that is heaped on bottle feeding moms who are presumed to have AIDS. Moms (and dads) are burdened enough trying to live in today's heartless, materialistic, class based societies where appearances are everything and mindfulness a sin. Let's just agree to leave them alone unless they ask for help. It may be a primate characteristic to defecate in ones hand and fling the dung at others we disagree with, but let's try to resist the urge, OK? Hint: it is not a sign of a sterling character to demonize people for making private, personal choices that should not be the business of anyone except the mom (and the dad when he is involved) and the people she has chosen to help her make her decision.
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