Breastfeeding and Feminism

This is a snip from a longer article here by Katie:

http://www.babble.com/CS/blogs/homework/archive/2009/08/05/breastfeeding_2C00_-feminism_2C00_-activism.aspx

“Lately, I’ve noticed what can only be described as something of a “breastfeeding backlash” in the media, and among some mothers. The message of this backlash can best be summed up as something like this, “the health benefits of breastfeeding have been wildly exaggerated by a bunch of weird and nasty breastfeeding zealots who get their kicks from harassing bottle-feeding mothers in an attempt to make them feel guilty.”

There are variations and nuances on this theme, depending on the medium and message-bearer, but that pretty much covers all the bases. The most prominent recent example of the breastfeeding backlash was Hanna Rosin’s much-discussed piece in The Atlantic, provocatively titled, “The Case Against Breastfeeding.” Jennifer Block already wrote a definitive and specific rebuttal to Rosin’s piece, so that’s not my intent with this particular blog post. Instead, I want to explore the current reaction to perceived breastfeeding “zealotry,” and offer some context that I think might be helpful when considering how and why we are seeing this bubble of contrarian commentary at the moment.

The current breastfeeding backlash is a reaction to a certain intensity surrounding the issue of breastfeeding that did indeed gain currency over the past decade or so. But what today’s mothers – the ones who are fueling the breastfeeding backlash with their criticisms and complaints – don’t appreciate or maybe even realize is that the activism and advocacy they are slamming was actually an important, grassroots women’s health movement that managed to fundamentally change the way our culture views and treats breastfeeding within only about ten years (!!!). And any time you have a movement that erupts out of a sense of frustration and oppression, and manages to turn that frustration into the kind of power it takes to create meaningful change on a big issue, that movement is going to have to be both pushy and loud.

The group of people on the leading edge of most social change movements are often later criticized as “too radical” by the very people benefiting every single day from that radicalism. Example: 20 and 30-something female executives who today speak with disdain about those “radical, bra-burning feminists,” without appreciation for the fact that they are trashing the very women who effectively blasted open the doors of corporate America’s steno pool so their daughters and granddaughters could instead take up residence in the c-suite. So if these younger women are defining “radical” as “assertive, unrelenting, outspoken, political and visionary,” well then, yeah, I guess the objects of their criticism qualify for the label. But really, they should be thanking the feminists who preceded them into the workplace instead of criticizing them.