These days, when a woman is expecting and wondering what to expect, she will seldom turn to a book, her doctor, her mother, or even a friend. If raising a baby takes a village, then we're screwed. Instead, the battle lines are drawn mostly by class, and often by race, but perhaps most painfully between those who succeed and those who "fail." To be part of the breastfeeding infantry, it doesn't matter if you're planning to work full-time or be a stay-at-home-mom, if you're gay or straight, if you're a card-carrying left-wing feminist or a Mormon with a penchant for traditional values. I was an unknowing foot soldier in a new mommy war, one with a strong and ever-growing army. It was judgmental, holier-than-thou ignorance. She may have won at being the better pregnant person, I silently scoffed, but I was already beating her at being the better mother. But she had made it clear that she wasn't planning to nurse, that she might pump for a few months, but no more than three, and certainly no actual "breast"-feeding. My husband, Steve, had a family friend who was due around the same time I was, putting us in the awkward spot of being constantly compared to each other in every way, shape, and form (especially shape and form-this woman had gained only twenty pounds during her entire pregnancy and had taught aerobics up until her due date I had packed on more than thirty-five pounds and sat on my couch writing and napping for most of the nine months). Also-and I'm not proud of this-I had a theory that many breastfeeding "problems" were a result of women waiting too long to have kids that we were a selfish generation and that my peers would just give up too easily, at the first sign of trouble that we couldn't be bothered in the first place. but nobody I knew in real life had actually complained about these things. I'd read about latching issues, insufficient milk supply, fussy eaters. He'd had such a rough start-my body hadn't done such a bang-up job of nurturing him internally, and he was born with the ominous label of "growth restricted"-so it was the least I could do to feed him liquid gold, as the books called it, from my breast once he was on the outside. I'd read study after study extolling the many virtues of breastmilk, and I was entirely convinced that it was the only choice for my son. I looked at formula from an unemotional place because I didn't foresee it having any real impact on my life. While pregnant with my first child, I was aware of the breast-versus-bottle controversy on a peripheral level, as if it were a war waged in some far-off country. This battle is over our breasts, and it is causing significant carnage. A literal front, actually: those two structures protruding from our female bodies, otherwise known as our mammary glands. But while the fight looks the same, this war is fought on a very different front. Like grunge music, or flannel.įlannel has recently come back in style, though, and so have the mommy wars. The whole mommy war phenomenon seemed dated, something left over from the early 1990s. But although I can vaguely remember some discussion of work versus motherhood in my young adult social circles, it was only on the periphery. More than a decade ago, writer Tracey Thompson coined the term mommy wars, a "shorthand for the cultural and emotional battle zone we land in the minute we become mothers." Thompson's war was between working and stay-at-home moms, and I certainly witnessed this struggle within my own family-my mom stayed at home, my aunt was a successful professional, and there was a constant stream of subtle barbs about who'd made the superior choice. From social media to public service messages and an overwhelming societal bias in favor of breastfeeding, mothers hear the message loud and clear: breastfeed or bust. Fear of being less-than is a forceful motivator, and these days, women who do not breastfeed are portrayed as lacking-lacking in education and support lacking in drive and, in the harshest light, lacking in the most fundamental maternal instinct. But the real heroics of the breast-is-best revolution happen not in government buildings or laboratories but rather in online chat rooms, playgroups, and prenatal classes, in the pages of parenting magazines, and in the headlines of daily news feeds. The credit goes partly to the researchers whose studies have shown a myriad of benefits to human milk, and partly to activists who have fought admirably for better pumping rights and hospital policies, doggedly working to make breastfeeding the norm. Breastfeeding rates are the highest they've been in two decades: by the most recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates, a whopping 75 percent of new mothers in the United States are nursing their babies when they leave the maternity ward. After years of hitting the bottle, America has fallen in love with lactation.
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