A visitor from outer space might be forgiven for thinking that breastfeeding is a fundamentalist religion.
What do I mean?
Breastfeeding is routinely touted as having “magic” powers. Breastfeeding advocates (lactivists) have continually come forward with ever more outrageous claims about the benefits of breastmilk. At the same time, they’ve dreamt up ever more stringent requirements around breastfeeding to make what was once modestly difficult even harder. And they’ve justified it all by invoking a past that never existed.
[pullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]The real benefits of breastfeeding are never enough for breastfeeding advocates.[/pullquote]
It’s almost as if they cannot tolerate the idea that breastfeeding, a bodily function, is no more likely to be perfect than any other bodily function. It’s absurd when you think about it. We know that pregnancy has a natural miscarriage rate of 20%. That means that 1 in 5 pregnancies end in the death of the embryo and most women will have at least one miscarriage in their reproductive lives. There’s no reason to think that breastfeeding is any more magical than pregnancy, but that hasn’t stopped the outrageous claims.
Consider this recent piece on the website BlogHer, 15 Magical Benefits of Breastfeeding. The piece is filled with lie after lie after lie.
Breastfeeding does NOT promote bonding. There’s no evidence to support that claim, zip, zero, nada. Lactivists just made it up.
Breastfeeding is NOT nature’s greatest protector. Consider that the countries with the highest breastfeeding rates have the HIGHEST infant mortality rates. The truth is that our brain is nature’s greatest protector. Only countries with easy access to technology (including infant formula) have low rates of infant mortality.
Breastfeeding does NOT provide any greater support for developing brains than formula. That’s hardly surprising since formula is designed to mimic breastmilk as closely as possible.
Breastfed babies do NOT have better facial muscle and speech development compared to formula fed babies.
There’s NO evidence that breastfeeding is more environmentally friendly than formula feeding. Sure you cut out the cow and the packaging of formula, but the calories have to come from somewhere. In breastfeeding, they come from the food the mother eats, which is obviously more elaborate and requires more elaborate packing materials than grass.
Breastfeeding mothers do NOT get more sleep. That is absolutely nonsensical. A bottle feeding mother can get a full, uninterrupted night’s sleep every night so long as there is someone else with whom she can share bottlefeeding duties. That lactivists would even make such a ridiculous claim is a testament to their desperation to inflate the benefits of breastfeeding.
Perhaps the most outrageous lie currently making the rounds is the theory of spit backwash.
Breastfeeding researcher Katie Hinde and others have noted that when babies are sick, the antibodies content of breastmilk rises. They’ve fabricated an extraordinary mechanism for how the baby communicated to its mother that it was sick. Their theory is known as “spit backwash.” Baby saliva is literally sucked into the breast where the mother’s body senses the pathogen and makes antibodies in response. There is NO evidence of any kind, zip, zero, nada that spit backwash occurs.
There’s a far simpler explanation for Hinde’s observations. It’s hard for two people to be much closer than a mother and her feeding infant. If a baby has a cold, for example, the mother can simply breathe in the virus expelled when the baby sneezes and make antibodies to the virus to protect herself from the cold. Those antibodies then end up in the breastmilk incidentally as a result of being in the mother’s bloodstream. If researchers had looked, they would likely have found that the father and siblings were making the same antibodies as the mother, not to transmit them to the baby, but to protect themselves.
That would be impressive enough, but the real benefits of breastfeeding are never enough for breastfeeding advocates.
Breastmilk worship is like a religion, but how is it like a fundamentalist religion?
Activists are constantly creating ever more arcane restrictions for breastfeeding itself in the breastfeeding version of asceticism: You must breastfeed in the first hour! You must breastfeed exclusively! Even one bottle of formula is risky! Never use a pacifier! You must breastfeed exclusively for 4 months! … no for 6 months! … no for a year! Food before one is just for fun!
There is no evidence that breastfeeding needs to be surrounded by so many restrictions. There is no evidence that breastfeeding is such a tenuous behavior among babies that a pacifier or bottle of formula will ruin the breastfeeding relationship. These restrictions are part of the oneupsmanship beloved of breastfeeding advocates and have nothing to do with what is good for babies.
The outrageous claims and the ridiculous restrictions are justified by appeals to “Nature.” But the “Nature” that lactivists envision never existed. Nature is filled with infant death in spite of breastfeeding and in some cases because of breastfeeding. Not all mothers make enough milk to fully nourish a baby. Not all babies can extract enough milk from the breast to fully nourish themselves. Moreover, indigenous peoples around the world have always given babies fluids in addition to breastmilk. There’s very little about contemporary breastfeeding that recapitulates breastfeeding in nature.
There’s absolutely nothing magical about breastfeeding, and the endless efforts of lactivists to insist that there is tells us more about their need for self-justification than about breastfeeding itself.
If they want to worship something about the human body, they ought to worship the brain. It is our brains and the resultant technology that save countless infant lives each year, NOT breastfeeding.
