First soda, now baby formula:
Mayor Bloomberg is pushing hospitals to hide their baby formula behind locked doors so more new mothers will breast-feed. Starting Sept. 3, the city will keep tabs on the number of bottles that participating hospitals stock and use — the most restrictive pro-breast-milk program in the nation. Under the city Health Department’s voluntary Latch On NYC initiative, 27 of the city’s 40 hospitals have also agreed to give up swag bags sporting formula-company logos, toss out formula-branded tchotchkes like lanyards and mugs, and document a medical reason for every bottle that a newborn receives.
Over to you, Hanna:
The question here is not whether breastfeeding is better or worse, we can all agree that breastfeeding infants is somewhat better than not breastfeeding them. The question is, as I have written many times before, that we do not want to feed into a culture that has made the failure or lack of desire to breastfeed seem like a shameful and even criminal affair. By the statistical odds, that woman those nurses are talking down to at the hospital probably has to go back to work in less than a month. … Take away infant formula and the millions of women who fuel our economy would no longer be able to work, because American employers are certainly not going to pay them to stay home and breastfeed.
Gayle Tzemach Lemmon lays out more reasons a mother might prefer formula:
Some cannot breastfeed because they must take anti-depressants or other medications that prevent healthy breastfeeding. Several women I know simply could not make breastfeeding work because a battering of infections and their body's inability to produce sufficient milk made it both painful and unworkable. Others insisted on breastfeeding, only to find that they could not give their baby enough milk to help them put on weight and grow.
But that is not the point. … The real reason the Gotham policy is so objectionable is it infantilizes women by telling them they are no longer adult enough to decide for themselves what is best for their families and themselves. It is strange. Somehow we have reached a point where people who speak angrily of the "war on women" when it comes to family planning do not hesitate to exercise suffocation of choice when it comes to breastfeeding.
If you missed Hanna Rosin's 2009 Atlantic cover-story, "The Case Against Breast-feeding," it's here.
The Dish 