All Choices Entail Risks and Benefits
Every action has risks and benefits, costs and savings. Tradeoffs are unavoidable, and ostensibly risk-reducing behavior is virtually always accompanied by costs or new risks. Breastfeeding and bottle-feeding are no different.
Breastfeeding benefits the environment by reducing pollution and waste from the production, packaging, and transportation of infant formula. It also decreases food expenditures for lower-income families. Yet breastfeeding also has costs, such as the labor value of women’s nursing and the potentially negative impact of breastfeeding on family dynamics, women’s career trajectories, and women’s emotional and physical health. It is only “free” if these costs are not taken into account.
Breast milk contains environmental contaminants. Despite the fact that most lactating mothers have detectable and at times highly elevated levels of these environmental agents in their milk, breastfeeding advocates and even environmental activists have been reluctant to emphasize this concern for fear of discouraging women from breastfeeding. Conventional risk assessment methods, based on adult body weights and food consumption data, do not consider the ways in which infants and children are uniquely susceptible to chemical exposures via mothers’ milk. Breastfeeding advocates who point only to the hazards of formula, such as that it can be contaminated in production or improperly prepared, neglect the fact that breastfeeding, too, has risks.
Extensive research indicates that babies in homes where mothers are psychologically depressed or economically stressed are at risk for a variety of developmental and health disorders. For women who find the demands of breastfeeding overwhelming or who cannot reconcile breastfeeding with employment, formula-feeding might well be not simply as good as breastfeeding but the less risky way to feed their babies.
Research demonstrates not only that most people fail to understand the inevitability of risk but that when strong emotions, such as fear, are involved, people tend to focus on worst-case scenarios, not probability. Telling pregnant women and mothers of newborns that not breastfeeding is risky, or that formula-feeding will harm their new babies, is both false and manipulative. It misrepresents the science, and it exploits the concerns and fears of women when they are likely to feel most vulnerable.
In the past, many doctors routinely and wrongly challenged women’s ability to feed their babies from the breast, and they encouraged bottle-feeding based on misinformation. Those mistakes, however, cannot be rectified by misrepresenting the value of formula.
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Let's turn this around for a minute. I hear a lot about a mother 's choices a lot, but nobody ever mention the choices of children . We you choose to have a baby , you also choose to have that baby take priority - for the next 18 years of your life. It starts from the very beginning. What is better for my child ? Not "what is more convenient for me?"
disclosure: I'm still breast feeding my 3.5 year old, who has never had a can of formula. He's in the process of self-weaning and he''s down to one feeding a day, and not before bed time. I have a full time job . I never took maternity leave and instead chose to telecommute.
When you put the child's priorities first, there is no choice for the mother to take. The child is born, best thing for child is breast milk, so that is what we try to do. Everything else you can go around. Need to go back to wok? Pump. As for the rest of the arguments - negative impacts on family dynamics and health and so on, I have yet to see proof. I have only read about (and seen, first and second hand ) the positive impacts of breastfeeding on a mother's health, both mentally and physically.
What negative impacts I have felt came from the naysayers - the people who tells me to wean at 6 months / when the teeth comes out. If people around the breast feeding mother supports the decision, I can see no negatives.
The only time formula feeding is a "choice" is as an absolute last resort. In the case where what is "best" for baby is only formula, then that is the choice of your child.
A few of the risks parents should consider regarding formula.
Hexane is used in the extraction of oils from algae. The oil is then used as an ingredient in infant formula. Hexane residue is found in the formula. Hexane is neurotoxic even at 'trace' levels and infants are particularly vulnerable.
http://www.cornucopia.org/replacing-mother-infant-formula-report /
Bisphenol-A (BPA), a potent endocrine disruptor, leaches out of plastic baby bottles at levels shown to cause harm.
http://www.sailhome.org/Concerns/BodyBurden/Burdens/Bisphenol-A.html #migrates
Also, liquid formulas are generally packaged in containers lined with BPA.
http://www.ewg.org/reports/infantformula
Infant formulas are typically made with soy which is allergenic, mimics estrogen, and increases the level of glutamate. Excess glutamate impairs a baby's nervous system and can contribute to developmental delays. It can lead to juvenile obesity. It can lead to sudden infant death (SIDS).
http://www.sailhome.org/Concerns/Excitotoxins.html #formulas
If a mother truly has no option but to use formula, she will be wise to learn as much as possible about the toxins she exposes her child to and how to responsibly minimize them.
(In spite of the toxins passed through breastmilk due to mother's toxic body burden, natural breastmilk is still the superior source. Dr. Wolf's suggestions that formulas are on par in health reeks with the conflicted influence of formula manufacturers.)
Joan Wolf said:
"[B]reastfeeding also has costs, such as the labor value of women’s nursing and the potentially negative impact of breastfeeding on family dynamics, women’s career trajectories, and women’s emotional and physical health."
This statement implies that:
* Breastfeeding is more labour-intensive than artificial formula.
* Breastfeeding could have a negative impact on family dynamics.
* Breastfeeding could have a negative impact on women's career trajectories.
* Breastfeeding could have a negative impact on women's emotional health.
* Breastfeeding could have a negative impact on women's physical health.
Where is the evidence for any of these astounding claims about breastfeeding?
M. Glass
I agree with Michael. There is no evidence for Joan Wolf's wild assertions. Putting out this propaganda as truth can be damaging to moms and babies. What if a mom who can breastfeed decides not to because she thinks it will have negative impacts on her? What will really happen is there will be negative impacts for her baby, who at the very least would have a much stronger immune system with breast milk. As a matter of fact, I found the opposite to be true for all of the above points.
All of these things are likely true in a great many cases, but even if we had the "evidence" Mr. Glass seeks, it would not justify the government's position. If, for example, reliable studies showed that in four cases out of five, breastfeeding had no negative impacts in any of these areas, why should we deny one-fifth of families the freedom to make the best choice for themselves? The point is that we should not presume to decide what's best and then spend taxpayer money insisting that all families conform to our conclusions. Instead, we should all individual families to make choices based on their own situations.
This debate is not about the government spending money. Wolf inserted her opinions about the ad campaign into a debate concerning whether formula feeding harms babies. This is also not a debate about whether the government should legally prevent the sale or purchase of formula.
I have asked for the evidence that breastfeeding is more labor-intensive than artificial feeding that it could have a negative impact on the physical, emoitional health of women, that it could have a negative impact on family dynamics and women's career trajectories. This has nothing to do with the rights and wrongs of women's choice. This has everything to do with supplying the evidence. The ball is in her court.
M. Glass