I (almost) always read articles breastfeeding when I come across them, because I feel pretty strongly about it....for a lot of different reasons. Sometime when you have too much time on your hands (since that happens to all of us so often) and are in the mood for a rant, give me a call. :-)
I nursed Bee until she got sick of it (the day before her first birthday). J is still nursing (he'll be one in 17 days!!). He gets a bottle from time to time (qualifying exams proved enough to cut into my milk supply with a decent vengeance....but only very recently, and not so much as to totally make nursing impossible, so we're in good shape!).
A woman wrote an interesting article in the Atlantic. Since the title was "The case against breastfeeding" you can imagine the raised hackles I went into reading it with. But there are some good points, one of which I've been thinking about because of the differences in my kids. By the time Bee was the age J is now, she had about 8 words in her vocabulary. When J says "MAH!," I get excited and try to encourage it. Anyway. She points this out:
The IQ studies run into the central problem of breast-feeding research: it is impossible to separate a mother’s decision to breast-feed—and everything that goes along with it—from the breast-feeding itself. Even sibling studies can’t get around this problem. With her first child, for instance, a mother may be extra cautious, keeping the neighbor’s germy brats away and slapping the nurse who gives out the free formula sample. By her third child, she may no longer breast-feed—giving researchers the sibling comparison that they crave—but many other things may have changed as well. Maybe she is now using day care, exposing the baby to more illnesses. Surely she is not noticing that kid No.2 has the baby’s pacifier in his mouth, or that the cat is sleeping in the crib (trust me on this one). She is also not staring lovingly into the baby’s eyes all day, singing songs, reading book after infant book, because she has to make sure that the other two kids are not drowning each other in the tub. On paper, the three siblings are equivalent, but their experiences are not.
I like the tone of it.
I think it's important to remember that every woman who decides to be a mother goes through different seasons in her life...and the kids will be along for the ride. Add to that the fact that each child is different, and this allows for some pretty dramatic variation in parenting and childhood experiences.
And I really think that it will all be okay. That's all! So thoughtful, no?
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Yes, and I agree! At least that's what I tell myself when I panic about what I might not be able to duplicate with subsequent children or what I might be messing up with the first. It's a little bit like the birthing process issue. While there is certainly a better and worse, there is also a lot of wiggle room depending on the woman and her situation. I think allowing the mother-to-be to feel confident and not constantly regret what happened because it wasn't what she planned is important, especially when it doesn't go as planned.
Not sure that made sense (yay more late night rambling!) but I always appreciate what you have to say.
I thought that was a good article for bring a little bit of nuance to the discussion. One of my children was breastfed for a year; she has had a lot of trouble with illnesses, including skin issues and lung problems that led to her being hospitalized twice when she was not quite 2. My other kid was formula fed after 4 months and he is totally healthy and also starting to read even though he is not quite four years old. You can find anecdotal evidence to support either side; I especially liked the point she made a few times that formula feeding is not causing some kind of irreparable harm to your child (unless you're in a developing country and using contaminated water). I wish women could be more secure about their choices and so be able to relax about the fact that other people choose differently. I also wish our culture could back off from the idea that parents (especially mothers) are the only factor responsible for the outcome of children. The older my kids get the more I realize that, while my influence is great, I don't have total control over how they turn out, and how they turn out is not a reflection of my worth as a person.
OK, so this is a discussion in which I am pretty interested, so I'm going to rant (with a nice tone in my voice) a bit:
I don't see the relationship between anything in the Atlantic article and the differences in Bee's and J's vocabularies at a given age. Do you just mean that your children are different? Do you think Bee had more words because you were able to be a more attentive mom? Or do you think there might be a relationship between vocabulary and the child's relationship to breast-feeding? Am I being dense?
One of my boys who breastfed the longest, talked the latest, and read the soonest. His brothers became faster, more dedicated readers than he, but he became the most dedicated/achieving college student. Not only are moms and their choices not the only influence on kids, kids come with their own package of personality, gifts, propensities, etc.
I agree with FoxyJ's idea about women being more secure about their choices, and for the most part I think it gets easier and easier to feel secure the further and further you get away from church/community situations in which the predominate family situation is newlyweds with newborns. (Something about those young married wards just doesn't work really well.)
There is something sneaky about the article, though. Its underlying premise is that we are making women who choose not to breast-feed feel unnecessarily guilty. Women should be able to choose "modesty, independence, career, sanity" over the fairly insignificant "health benefits" of breast-feeding. A whopping 17 percent of women "nurse exclusively for at least six months." It doesn't look like we need to worry anytime soon that immodesty, dependence, staying at home, and insanity are going to be embraced by the majority. Why not work for a kinder, gentler world, in which the majority of the 69% of mothers who start out wanting to breast-feed could also choose to do so modestly, calmly in the workplace. I don't know about the "independence" part--what parent can expect that during the first 18 years?
About the paragraph that you quote from the article: My personal experience ran opposite of the little scenario created by the author. I let more people hold my first baby, and got more cautious with my others. I breastfed each boy for longer, and longer, and longer periods of months at a time. (This was a question of convenience and survival--so much easier than dragging myself out of bed or paying the money for the formula. It also calmed crying babies and toddlers faster.) My first guy was in daycare sooner and longer, and I got more and more skeptical over the years--less preschool, less public school period. I've admitted more than once that I homeschool Joseph just because he's the last one and I like having him around. Number one had a pacifier--the other guys weren't interested. I was staring lovingly into number two, three, and four's eyes, because number one was no longer interested in my stares.
My experience is that the longer I breastfed my boys and rocked and sang them to sleep, the cuddlier they got. I like them cuddly. We hug a lot in our family.
Yes, my thought was just that my children are different, and are having different experiences to some extent (but not entirely) because of where I'm at now versus where I was when Bee was 12-15 months old.
I get really frustrated, really quickly, that more women don't feel like they can nurse babies wherever/how ever long the like (our graduate secretary who just came back to work, for example, switched her baby to formula even though she didn't want to, and the baby had a rough adjustment). But I also feel a lot of sympathy for people like my sister-in-law who is STRUGGLING to nurse her first baby in this community of other women who have successfully nursed theirs. Various family members have made comments at various points that, if I were in her situation, I would have found quite hurtful, about how using formula is terrible for your babies.
So what I liked about the article (I agree about the presence of sneakiness, mind you...it seemed to me that the author felt an amazing need to over-present one side of the issue) was the sort of over-arching idea that we should feel confident and capable about our choices, and not judge each other when we depart from everyone else's "right way." And that kids' (and moms', though the author didn't really seem to focus on that) experiences will be different no matter what we do.
I agree with Kim that I need to just give up on the idea of duplicating experiences, or worrying about the fact that I'm not. I also agree with Foxy that moms aren't the only thing that determine a child's destiny. Heaven help ME if that were the case. And I'm really excited to be away from a young married ward, where I'm one of two women in graduate school. :-)
I hope you know that if I ever get to be a mom I'll be asking you about all this kind of stuff. So be prepared, just in case. :)
I'll be ready, WHEN that day comes. :-) And just so you know, I'm no expert. I'm figuring this out as I go along, as much as anyone else.
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