Book Review
Mother's Milk: Breastfeeding Controversies in American Culture
by Bernice L. Hausman
Softcover, 288 pages
Reviewed by Sara Dodder Furr
Lincoln NE USA
From: LEAVEN, Vol. 41 No. 1, February-March 2005, pp. 18-19.
Based on personal experience
and an extensive review of breastfeeding literature and research, Bernice
L. Hausman has written a book that provides an examination of how US
culture both promotes and undermines breastfeeding. Mother’s Milk:
Breastfeeding Controversies in American Culture examines the effectiveness
of strategies used by breastfeeding advocates, such as Ruth Lawrence
and Katherine Dettwyler, to make breastfeeding the cultural norm in
the United States. The beliefs and concepts advocated by La Leche League
are also analyzed in great detail.
The AAP recommends that infants
be exclusively breastfed for approximately the first six months of life
and that breastfeeding continue (at least) through the first year of
life. Yet, according to recent data released by the United States Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention, only 14 percent of infants are exclusively
breastfed for six months and only 17 percent are breastfed any amount
at one year of age. Why the disparity between what we promote and what
we find to be the reality in the United States? Hausman draws upon her
personal experience as a breastfeeding mother, an LLL member, a feminist,
and an English professor to delve deeply into the reasons that breastfeeding
as promoted by LLL is not the norm in the United States.
As I read this book, I sometimes
felt as though I were listening, unobserved, while people I know and
respect critically discuss an organization I love. There has been controversy,
perhaps especially within LLL, regarding the purpose of the organization.
This book is written by a mother who, through LLL, became aware of the
importance of mother-baby togetherness in addition to breastfeeding,
and who also went to what some of her professional colleagues might
consider extremes in order to meet the needs of her baby. Because of
her experience of the seeming conflict between feminist perspectives
and LLL philosophy, Hausman was inspired to critically examine the nature
of this conflict and controversy. This book has great value to Leaders
and others interested in breastfeeding who are trying to come to grips
with the current struggle, both within LLL and within the greater American
culture, to balance the importance of breastfeeding and the baby’s
need for the mother’s presence with the economic constraints within
which we live.
Employment and Separation from Baby
In an email I received from Hausman, she wrote:
I will say that in writing
Mother’s Milk I came to believe that the divisions that often
separate feminists from LLL members are falsely represented. When
I became a mother, I found my feminism altered and deepened, as I
realized how the work of mothering is so disparaged culturally, even
as it is upheld in impossible ideals of perfection. It is my hope
that my scholarship on breastfeeding and motherhood contributes to
opening dialogues between feminists and "motherists," so
that we can realize how profoundly working together for women will
help mothers worldwide. In my view, the oppression of women is maintained,
in part, through the denigration of motherhood, as well as the negation
of the important social, cultural, economic, and political work that
mothers do every day.
Of LLL mother-to-mother support, Hausman writes:
This sort of woman-centered
practice, in which the emphasis is on helping mothers make choices
(often in the face of opposition from physicians), has always seemed
profoundly feminist to me.
In her chapter "Womanly
Arts," Hausman briefly presents the feminist critique of LLL, followed
by an extensive evaluation of LLL philosophy and how it has changed
from the first (1958) through the sixth (1997) editions of The Womanly
Art of Breastfeeding (Hausman’s book was completed before the publication
of the seventh edition of the WAB). She writes, "The conflict between
La Leche League and feminist scholars..." is set up by the economic
and social structure of the United States itself, in which mothers really
have little true choice about how to practice their mothering. Women
without means, especially since the 1996 "Personal Responsibility
and Work Opportunity Act" (welfare reform), are expected to work
outside the home for wages. Women linked to male providers are encouraged
socially to stay home with young children and often have a difficult
time making careers mesh with family expectations and needs.
Her bias in favor of LLL
is clear. However, she effectively presents the argument of many feminists
which is that:
Until La Leche League
addresses how its optimistic focus on individual women excludes the
experience of many or most poor women, women of color, and working
women in the United States, it will not succeed in promoting a cultural
climate in which all women can really choose to breastfeed.
The discussion of LLL is
divided into two parts. The first part reviews the way nature, science,
and working women are viewed within THE WOMANLY ART OF BREASTFEEDING—including
various editions of THE WOMANLY ART OF BREASTFEEDING. Hausman writes
that LLL emphasizes the naturalness of breastfeeding but also understands
that in our society, this naturalness must be learned. As for LLL alignment
with science, Hausman quotes from Dr. Herbert Ratner’s foreword
to the third edition of the WAB, which noted that one LLL Leader had
stated that:
A fanatic is a breastfeeding
mother who for twenty years and against great odds has been doing
and believing what physicians have only now discovered is a scientific
truth.
The evolution of LLL recommendations
in THE WOMANLY ART about breastfeeding mothers’ relationships with
their physicians is interesting. In the early years of LLL, mothers
were encouraged to be assertive in their dealings with medical professionals.
It was suggested that mothers enlist physicians to help them, not direct
them. The third edition of the WAB encourages mothers to change physicians
if they do not like the advice they receive. Later editions also emphasize
choosing a physician who shares the mother’s beliefs. According
to Hausman:
Scientization enhances
the mother’s authority. The more recent editions of THE WOMANLY
ART OF BREASTFEEDING include an increasing amount of medical information
concerning problems that might be faced by a nursing mother and baby.
Hausman asserts that LLL
beliefs and practices, as outlined in the WAB, send "a political
message about women’s place in contemporary society, although that
message has changed over the decades and continues to develop."
Early editions of the WAB simply assumed mothers were home with their
babies while later editions devote entire chapters to working mothers.
The second section of the
chapter entitled "Womanly Arts" is subtitled "The Manly
Art of Fathering." This is an analysis of the changing view of
the father’s role from the first edition, where the father was
assumed to be most useful as an authority figure, to the present. LLL
does express the view that parents have complementary roles, providing
different kinds of nurturing. The discussion of the role of shared labor
in the feminist perspective versus what is promoted by LLL is informative.
Hausman notes that:
Breastfeeding does confer
substantial burdens on women: it takes time, it can be physically
challenging, and it binds the mother to the baby in a demanding physiological
relationship. It can also be tremendously rewarding, but as Sarah
Blaffer Hardy argues, all women make decisions as mothers that balance
perceived rewards with actual costs. La Leche League reliance on maternal
domesticity can be understood as pragmatic—to feed a baby in
what she perceives to be a biologically appropriate manner, a mother
needs to be available to her child—and the ideological bias,
the promotion of good mothering through intensive maternal-infant
contact through toddlerhood, follows from that pragmatism.
Hausman believes that there
are economic and racial barriers to successful breastfeeding:
But poor children also
represent a population most in need of structural and economic changes
in order to be breastfed. For example, black women, like working-class
and poor women in general, are likely to work in jobs that do not
offer an opportunity to express breast milk and save it for the baby.
As LLL Leaders, we volunteer
to offer information and support to help mothers breastfeed. Not all
Leaders are interested in breastfeeding advocacy or in taking political
action—and some Leaders are opposed to these activities completely.
However, regardless of their interest in engaging in advocacy activities,
many Leaders and others interested in breastfeeding will find this book
identifies some possible barriers to breastfeeding and provides valuable
insight into the perspective of others and how they view our messages.
Resources
Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention, Department of Health and Human Services, National
Immunization Survey 2003.
American Academy of Pediatrics Work Group on Breastfeeding. Breastfeeding
and the use of human milk. Pediatrics 1997; 100(6):1035-37.
Sara Dodder Furr has been
a Leader in Lincoln, Nebraska, USA since 1999. She and her husband,
KC, have three children: Nat (9), Abby (7), and Nora (4). Sara is the
Area Professional Liaison for LLL of Nebraska. Leaven Book reviews are
edited by Christine McNeil Montano. She lives in Connecticut, USA with
her husband, Tony, and their children, Jay and John.
Last updated May 20, 2007 by jlm.
Page last edited Sun Oct 14 09:32:16 UTC 2007.
