The article starts out with details about the trendiness of breastfeeding, as if that was why it was so popular. Trendiness is just the least of breastfeeding's virtues in my book - if it's trendy on top of everything else, that's just gravy. But her real problem with breastfeeding comes out in this paragraph:
So I was left feeling trapped, like many women before me, in the middle-class mother's prison of vague discontent: surly but too privileged for pity, breast-feeding with one hand while answering the cell phone with the other, and barking at my older kids to get their own organic, 100 percent juice-the modern, multitasking mother's version of Friedan's "problem that has no name."
The problem that has no name. The idea that a woman should feel content and fulfilled while vacuuming the floor in high heels and having a hot dinner ready when her man comes through the door at 6pm sharp. The author, Hanna Rosin, isn't so thrilled with motherhood now that she's got two older kids AND an infant to feed. She wants a life, too, and it's hard to do with an infant on your boob.
So, with that in mind, she:
called my doctor friend for her password to an online medical library, and then sat up and read dozens of studies examining breast-feeding's association with allergies, obesity, leukemia, mother-infant bonding, intelligence, and all the Dr. Sears highlights.
From her look at the evidence, "breast-feeding is probably, maybe, a little better." No offense to all the hardworking scientists out there, but I just don't buy it. Just because you haven't found studies to prove overwhelmingly the benefits of breastfeeding doesn't mean it doesn't have benefits.
The New York Times took on this article too, with its piece "Is Breastfeeding the New Vacuum Cleaner?" by Lisa Belkin. The title refers to "The Problem That Has No Name" and the quote by Rosin:
it was not the vacuum that was keeping me and my 21st-century sisters down, but another sucking sound.
The meat of the NYT article are these three paragraphs:
I caught up with Rosin briefly on the phone this morning, and she said the response to her article so far was what she had expected - an email box filled with personal stories of women thanking her for writing it, and an internet full of women calling her "a loser, saying I have a bad marriage, telling me I'm a bad mother and saying I'm wrong."
What does it say about modern mothers, she wonders, that such energy is spent judging how other women feed their children? What are we reflecting about ourselves when we so readily apply the word "selfish" to any Mom who doesn't do things our way? (And why, while we are at it, is it so wrong for a mother to think of herself - and her job and her marriage - first once in awhile?)
"We are in a time of incredibly intensive parenting," she said, "Why now, when women have less time and more opportunity than ever before? You would think some other form of parenting would be thriving now. There is more being debated when we talk about breastfeeding than just breast-feeding."
In other words, it's stressful to be a Mom, especially when you need two incomes to stay afloat financially. It's a lot of work. And it's a pain in the ass that we women are the ones with the boobs and thus the ones doing all of the work in this case. Yes, formula is a great equalizer - we can split that job with men because it doesn't require body parts they don't have. But I don't think that alone justifies a choice against breastfeeding. |
