New Yorker Article: Baby Food: If breast is best, why are women bottling their milk?
I have just read this fantastic article in the New Yorker. Although not seemingly written by a woman who has breastfed or pumped, it affirms my decision to leave my job and not work for six months, putting my family in great financial peril. Please read the article. Here are some highlights:
“Behind closed doors, the nation begins to look like a giant human dairy farm.”
quoting Rousseau: “When mothers deign to nurse their own children, then morals will reform themselves.”
“The stark difference between employer-sponsored lactation programs and flesh-and-blood family life is difficult to overstate. Pumps put milk into bottles, even though many of breast-feeding’s benefits to the baby, and all of its social and emotional benefits, come not from the liquid itself but from the smiling and cuddling (stuff that people who aren’t breast-feeding can give babies, too). Breast-feeding involves cradling your baby; pumping involves cupping plastic shields on your breasts and watching your nipples squirt milk down a tube. But this truth isn’t just rarely overstated; it’s rarely stated at all.”
“Pumps can be handy; they’re also a handy way to avoid privately agonizing and publicly unpalatable questions: is it the mother, or her milk, that matters more to the baby?”
Tags: breast is best, jill lepore, new yorker, new yorker Jill Lepore breast is best pumping, pumping
