The case against self-hatred

Where to begin to rebut the “Case Against Breastfeeding”? In this month’s Atlantic, Hannah Rosin claims breastfeeding keeps women down—she compares it to the vacuum cleaner of the 50s ‘Feminine Mystique'—and that the evidence for its health benefits is thin.

There are some serious flaws in Rosin’s claims about the science, nicely described here. And the idea that breastfeeding is itself as oppressive as being a 1950s housewife is just weird.

But what I find the most intriguing element of the piece is what shows up in the first two paragraphs. Rosin describes being ostracized in the playground when she tells other mothers she’s thinking about cutting short the breastfeeding of her third child.

…circles were redrawn such that I ended up in the class of mom who, in a pinch, might feed her baby mashed-up Chicken McNuggets. In my playground set, the urban moms in their tight jeans and oversize sunglasses size each other up using a whole range of signifiers: organic content of snacks, sleekness of stroller, ratio of tasteful wooden toys to plastic. But breast-feeding is the real ticket into the club.

There’s so much here to, as they used to say in grad school, unpack, that the mind reels. It’s a classic reactionary setup, really quite Rovian: It sets up a hated elite (lattes and chardonnay here are replaced by organic snacks and sleek strollers, but the effect is the same as in a Limbaugh rant) who engage in terrible oppression, which justifies a counter-attack, much as the Christian right typically must paint themselves as oppressed and embattled to justify their attacks on gays, civil liberties, and women’s reproductive rights.

Yet in the real world, it’s women who breastfeed for the full two years the WHO recommends who are the struggling minority in the U.S. Only 31 percent of U.S. babies are breastfed exclusively for even three months, and only 11 percent are exclusively breastfed through six months, and that with breastfeeding having recently reached new highs. Among the reasons women most commonly cite for giving up breastfeeding or supplementing with formula is—can you guess?—returning to work. This is no surprise, given that there is no such thing as paid family leave in this country, nor even are most workers guaranteed their jobs back if they take unpaid leave.

In my highly progressive, pro-breastfeeding circles, I know of almost no mothers who returned to work fulltime who continued breastfeeding exclusively. It is nearly impossible to do so.

Still, I think Rosin is, in a warped way, on to something in perceiving herself ostracized among her privileged community for considering cutting breastfeeding off. Our misogynistic culture maddeningly, at once curtails our choices (by not offering paid leave, for example, or for permitting hospital practices that discourage breastfeeding) and valorizes individual choice as its pre-eminent value. Women often respond to this contradiction by turning on other women. It exacts such a toll in this culture to acknowledge that one hasn’t acted freely—especially in the deeply intimate sphere of reproduction--that many women would prefer to embrace their supposed “choices” and vilify other women who made different “choices.”

I think of the friend of mine who, while 8 months pregnant, was sneered at by another mother for planning a nonmedicated birth. “Well, if you want to be a martyr, you go right ahead.” Given the high rate of women who report having had disempowering birth experiences, I suspect that many women who have experienced awful treatment in birth have as the path of least resistance embraced their “choices,” leaving no honest outlet for their anger, which gets channeled at other women.

This is a problem that goes way beyond breastfeeding and it’s far past time for women to stop turning on each other. I welcome thoughts.