I’ve not been able to read a whole lot of blogs, but I’ve been exposed enough to see that there’s a controversy swarming around this article by Hanna Rosin on why breast-feeding is overblown. I thought, “Uh-oh.” It’s bad for her if her evidence is weak, but worse for her if her evidence is strong, because this is an emotional subject for reasons of class status, marital politics, middle class anxiety, and competitive child-rearing, and therefore if you actually throw a little water on the situation, it’s just going to make people more angry. Also, she’s treading into an area of skeptical inquiry that’s one that even hardened skeptics try to avoid, which is questioning something that is undoubtedly beneficial, but whose benefits are overblown or that people use way past the point of excess, thinking that if a little is good, a lot must be even better. In that category, I’d put everything more facial moisturizers to massage to fiber consumption to vitamins. Yes, massages are relaxing, but they probably have no more health benefits than stretching. And vitamins are healthy, but you don’t need to double down, and sometimes doing so is dangerous. Fiber for regularity is great, but “detoxing” is a scam. And yep, facial moisturizers have benefits, but there’s a top limit where spending more money on a product doesn’t equal more benefits. Humans tend towards black and white thinking, so this sort of critique can cause massive problems as people turn “not as great as advertised” into “not good at all”. Add to it the emotional aspects of breast-feeding, and you have the makings of a shitstorm.
Which is no doubt why I’m writing this before I go gallivanting around Austin for SXSW, unable to follow up on comments. But I thought I could add something useful to the conversation, so here goes. Three parts: the direct scientific controversy, why feminists have been traditionally reluctant to subject breast-feeding to analysis, and why Rosin’s not wrong on the social aspects.
Critics accuse Rosin of cherry-picking her evidence against breast-feeding. But that critique I linked is bothersome, because their evidence is that they “could” have called a dozen pediatricians and researchers. I’d rather they contact researchers in actuality, cite studies, and avoid pediatricians, who are mainly a good group but who have a few prominent members who make a lot of money off pushing granola mommy stuff for yuppie couples (the whys on this I’ll get to), and who are more interested in serving the interests of trendy clients than using science. I fear, for instance, that the pediatricians clamoring to get quoted are the kinds that feed anti-vaccination hysteria and then buy a new BMW. But it’s beside the point—-they offered nothing at all but a “could”. Rosin did use evidence, and I’d be curious to see a real critique that proves she cherry-picked it.
What is true is there is that there’s no fucking way that breast milk is as great as people act like it is, so whether or not Rosin’s other claims are suspect, I can support the big one. There are some benefits, but it’s hard to pin down what they are exactly. But to hear people carry on, if you don’t breast feed, your kid will graduate at the bottom of her class, and be unable to make the graduation because she’ll be stuck in bed with 15 kinds of infections. Calling women who use formula a “public health menace”, or suggesting that it’s child abuse if you give up and use formula is exactly the sort of sexism of setting impossible standards on women that feminists see fit to criticize elsewhere. We recognize it as sexism when we’re told that women shouldn’t drink at all because we’re all “pre-pregnant”, and we’re onto the home schoolers who claim that no one but 100% mom all the time will do until the kid’s 15 years old. So why are we scared to look at breast-feeding under the same lens, and while agreeing that there’s health benefits, look at the way that it’s quite possibly another way of using women’s biology against us to fit us into restrained gender roles.