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Support Breastfeeding Mothers

Updated August 8, 2022
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Support Breastfeeding Mothers essay

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Have you heard the phrase “Breast is Best?”. Although many professionals in the medical community agree breastfeeding is the best, many women choose not to because of the social injustice and stigma around breastfeeding. Mothers are often discriminated against for their choice to nurse in public. Mothers often feel embarrassment and awkward nursing their children in public places. Do you get uncomfortable seeing a mother nurse her child in a park, restaurant or grocery store? Why? It is natural. Our society as a crude view of what breastfeeding is. It is not sexual, indecent or attention-seeking. Often, other people feel uncomfortable when a mother nurses in public. Why the baby is hungry? Society and mainstream media have sexualized the female physique so that breastfeeding is now somehow looked at as a sexual act by the observer. Not as nature intended it to be, a mother using her breast as they were designed to do.

I read an article written by Rachel Gate about a billboard in Los Angeles, California that pooped up with a breastfeeding mother with the words “Jealous?” written on it, promoting a dating site aimed at older women to meet younger men (CougarLife.com). “This billboard instead sexualizes the act of breastfeeding, a natural act between mother and child. This sexualization is appropriates the intimate act of parenting to instead be about the sexual desire of the observer.”(Rachel Gates) The billboard sexualized the natural act of breastfeeding between a mother and child to evoke desire in the observer. The billboard used mothers as sexual objects and the act of nursing as a sexual desire. Along with the hyper sexualization of the female physique, has come a decline in the acceptability of breastfeeding in public places.

Even though this example is shocking it is not uncommon. Advertising has long objectified women’s bodies, but to use a nursing mother undermines the gift of breastfeeding-the ability to give and sustain life. Society and the media frowns on nursing mothers that choose openly to breastfeed in public vs mothers that choose to bottle fed in public. Try to remember a movie or commercial where you see a mother nursing her baby in public place without a cover. Nerely impossible. “By openly omitting nursing, the media is erasing it as a choice mothers get to make, and forfeit an opportunity to offer the public some insight into how women make that choice.” It is legal in all 50 states to openly breastfeed in public without fear of legal repercussions, but there is no national law in place.

California law states: “Notwithstanding any other provision of law, a mother may breastfeed her child in any location, public or private, except the private home or residence of another, where the mother and the child are otherwise authorized to be present.” (Right to Breastfeed in Public (1997) – AB 157Civil Code Section 43.3) Even with the law on the mother’s sides some women still feel shamed for publicly breastfeeding. is natural, the genetic makeup is nearly perfect with just the right amounts of vitamins, proteins and fats. Did you know that a mother’s milk changes as needs of the child change? Breast milk creates anti bodies to viruses, reduces the risk of SIDS (sudden infant death), and has all the nutrients a baby needs for the first six months of life.

Breastfeeding is not only beneficial to infants there are many benefits for the mother as well. The skin to skin contact creates a strong emotional bond between the mother and baby, reduces the risk of postpartum depression, reduces the risk of breast cancer to name a few. Despite the benefits of breastfeeding to both women and infants, and government policies and laws to protect nursing mothers and promote breastfeeding, breastfeeding in public remains a controversial issue. I have been exclusively breastfeeding for the past five years. I feel strongly about the rights women have to nurse in public and the challagnes they face. I didn’t plan tonurse both my daughters till they self-wean (Self-weaning is when a baby stops breastfeeding on his or her own. Self-weaning usually happens at a gradual pace over time).

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Support Breastfeeding Mothers. (2022, Aug 08). Retrieved from https://sunnypapers.com/support-breastfeeding-mothers/