If you want to start a fight, The New York Times recently opined, write a story about breast-feeding. The paper's recent article "Breast-feed, or else" -- a piece that highlighted a government agency's public service campaign that likened the risks of not breast-feeding to competing in a log-rolling contest or riding a mechanical bull while pregnant -- jockeyed for days on the paper's "most e-mailed stories" list.
A follow-up editorial, while waving a white flag of sorts to formula, stood by assertions that breast-fed babies not only have a health advantage and that it might be hazardous to a baby's health not to nurse, at least in the short term.
The happy fact is that most women these days -- nearly three quarters, estimates La Leche League -- will breast-feed their children for some duration. It's long been known to stave off diabetes, childhood obesity, and ward off things like ear infections and allergies.
But the government's all-or-nothing attitude leaves mothers who can't breast-feed their children out in the cold the same way the consciousness raisings of the 1970s did to women who stayed at home to raise kids.
click to read more...
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment