Breastfeeding News This Week

Toronto Plan Embraces Nursing Moms
The Public Health Department in Toronto has come up with a new plan that, if passed, would request restaurants and city-owned venues to voluntarily display a breastfeeding friendly decal. The decals, adapted from Health Canada's "Breastfeeding Friendly; Anytime, Anywhere" symbol, would let nursing moms know that they're welcome. The plan would go into effect in the spring of 2008 if it is passed this week.

Facebook in hot water over breastfeeding stance
Facebook is embroiled in controversy over the removal of photos showing mothers breastfeeding. The social networking site permanently closed Karen Speed’s account saying that she violated Facebook’s terms prohibiting posting photos that contain “nudity, drug use, or other obscene content.” Response to the move has been overwhelming, with a support group Hey, Facebook, breastfeeding is not obscene! (Official petition to Facebook) has grown to over 18,000 members in just 3 weeks.

Check out the group’s wall posts to see comments from supporters. The Toronto Star also has online comments showing both sides of the debate:

http://www.thestar.com/Speakout/Voices/article/255772
http://www.thestar.com/comment/article/255973

It seems to me that sometimes public perception of lactivists is that they are trying to push their choices (and their breasts) in everyone’s faces. Conservatives may see it as infringing on their rights not to see breasts in public and don’t understand the point of public photos of breastfeeding. This seems fair enough. Though, the comments I read about this still smack of sexualization of the issue, as if they believe that the women posting the photos get some perverted enjoyment out of it.

The real issue is not whether or not we have the right to post public photos of breastfeeding. The issue is breastfeeding is the natural way to feed a baby. Breastfeeding is the actual purpose of breasts. Breastfeeding is the healthiest choice for babies. Breastfeeding rates are too low because women are not being supported in their choice to breastfeed. Or to get really outrageous, let’s not even call it a choice—women are not being supported in their duty to breastfeed. Breastfeeding rates are too low because our society is still laden with holdovers from our Puritanical, Victorian history as embodied by people who think that breastfeeding is obscene.

A woman posting on the wall of the Facebook group above made a very valid point along these lines: It’s pretty sad that we need decals to show which areas are breastfeeding friendly. The whole world should be breastfeeding friendly.

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Breastfeeding does not protect against asthma, allergies
A new study published in the online British Medical Journal seems to corroborate the HHS story about science not supporting their proposed ads. The study of over 13,000 children in Belarus showed that contrary to earlier findings, extended breastfeeding does not seem to be associated with lower rates of asthma and allergies, and in fact, was associated with higher rates of certain types of allergies.

As I trolled the news, I found it rather interesting to see the ways the study was reported in various news outlets. Time’s headline was: What Breast-Feeding Can't Do. It’s funny how some headlines focused on the negative aspect as if they were just waiting for evidence that breastfeeding isn’t as good as everyone thinks. Compare this with the more neutral stance of the AFP (Breastfeeding has no impact on asthma risk, says study) and Medical News Today (Breastfeeding Makes No Difference To Risk Of Asthma Or Allergy). Clearly it's all semantics, but it seems like these two headlines are focusing on the fact that the risk of allergies and asthma are more or less the same, whether you breastfeed or not, rather than focusing on breastfeeding as being flawed.

The study’s authors say that it is the first randomized trial of human lactation. It compared a breastfeeding group with a control group that did not receive extra urging to breastfeed. By one year, 20% were still breastfeeding versus 11% in the control group. It does make me curious how this can be considered a study of extended breastfeeding if only 11%-20% actually succeeded in breastfeeding to one year. I wonder if the data would be different if the extended breastfeeding rates were more like 50%-75% instead.

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