from The New Yorker

An article is coming out in next week’s New Yorker called Baby Food by Jill Lepore. Lepore cleverly weaves us through the frigid timeline of the changes and perspectives of breastfeeding within this so called modern society. From the Enlightenment doctors & philosophers’ of the mid 1700’s advocacy for nursing mothers to the security guards at LaGuardia airport dumping out a mother’s two-day supply of expressed milk due to airport regulations, Lepore holds the mirror up to our society and begs us to really look at our reflection as a human race (influenced by the Western Civilization). Is this what this is supposed to look like? I don’t think so.

For a while now, I have realized how devastating the effects of the industrial revolution have had on the human race. Our dependency on machines and detachment from the mechanics called human nature has had a whole sleuth of less than positive effects. I find it interesting that Lepore points out how in the 1887, around the time when the invention of artificial infant foods was introduced, and cows were proclaimed the new “wet nurse for the human race”, doctors at the time where convinced that women’s mammary glands were not working properly and influenced the women’s’ psyche. By the time reports came out that cow’s milk was causing illness and sometime deaths in newborns, women were convinced that their breast did not work and conducted using formula. Thankfully, by 1997, a statement by the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended that babies should exclusively intake breast milk for at least the 1st 6months of their life.

The article starts and ends talking about the growing popularity of expressing milk and the popularity of breast pumps. Though it still allows for infants to feed on their mother’s milk, the bonding benefits of breastfeeding are lost. Lepore does a great job at playing the devil’s advocate. A lot of cases where women express and pump are because they have no other choice for they have to return to work, others, well its growing to become a social norm. When will our society be truly breastfeeding friendly?

I definitely recommend reading this interesting article.