In the latest issue of the New Yorker, Jill Lepore explores the history of breastfeeding in the Western world, and how it is practiced today. What she determines is that more and more women are opting to use breast pumps to extract milk from their breasts in order to feed it to their babies via bottles. In short, she concludes that "we are become [sic] our own wet nurses."
The interesting thing about this phenomenon is that it has been brought on by the fact that more women feel pressured to stay in the work place; this class of working women also feel the pressures of en vogue hippie-dippy health fads, like yoga and colonics, that are supposed to balance and have countless benefits (I'm not saying they don't and I'm certainly not saying that breastfeeding is hippie-dippy). What Lepore's article so succinctly points out is that western mothers' typical approach to breastfeeding has, for the past couple hundred years or so, relied heavily on just such fads (but, in generations past, did not have much to do with the limitations of a nine-to-five). In eighteenth century Paris, for instance, it was seen as decidedly brutish for women of a certain class to breastfeed their children. Later, in mid-nineteenth century America, there was, as Lepore refers to it, "a cult of motherhood," in which breastfeeding was the rage. And by 1910, a doctor in Boston formulated the "mother's milk directory," which eventually distributed bottled milk extracted from the breasts of wet nurses. Today, women need to combine the pressures of staying competitive in the workplace with the health benefits.
What I find most interesting about this issue is corporate America's response to it. Companies are lauded for the provision of "pumping stations," private rooms, sometimes with sinks and magazines, which are intended for women to take breaks and use electric breast pumps to extract and bottle their milk. This is meant to alleviate the discomfort of lactation as well as allow women to continue to feed their children breast milk for the American Academy of Pediatrics’ recommended one year (minimum), far beyond their guaranteed twelve weeks of maternity leave (I was under the impression that European countries had more forgiving maternity leave policies, but according to this table, that’s not really the case). Instead of providing childcare or longer periods for maternity leave, breast pumps are emerging as the solution to the problem of getting breast milk to babes (signs posted on the doors of pumping stations often discourage breastfeeding actual babies within). Lepore asks, “When did ‘women’s rights’ become, ‘the right to work?’”
I’ll agree that so much attention has been focused by feminists and women’s rights activists on securing equal rights in the workplace that the acknowledgment of the fact that mothers in the workplace, especially new mothers, have to grapple with manifold stresses, not the least of which is lack of sleep. Longer (read: more reasonable) time periods for paid maternity leave are essential, and in a country that has recently voted in an administration that is radically different from the last one, a country who was motivated to cast that vote by instincts of compassion and logic and justice (instincts that were portrayed as weak and unpatriotic in the last administration), it should be accomplished.
Of course, in this economic crisis, many women would be opposed to staying out of work; with layoffs so common, one’s relevance must be proven essential, ostensibly on a daily basis. It’s an issue that could possibly be addressed when it’s appropriate to address the health care system. I’m sure it will happen, but it probably won’t happen this year. Or next year. But at least, it seems, we finally have someone in office who will give an ear to these issues, someone married to a woman who, not too long ago, gave birth to two children while challengingly employed.
