Thanks For The Mammaries

The toxic weirdness of the breastfeeding discourse

There are some things about parenting about which I'd previously been blissfully ignorant. One of them is breastfeeding.

I knew breastfeeding was a thing. I knew that health care professionals encouraged it. I didn't know that having a baby would suddenly make what was in my bra everybody's business.

I did not anticipate people who should not be concerned about my breasts asking me about whether I planned to breastfeed. I did not expect so many of them to be men.

I didn't know that breastfeeding was a painful and traumatic experience for many mothers. I didn't realize that people go absolutely apeshit about unrelated strangers' decisions about breastfeeding. I'd never heard the term "lactivist."

I had never heard of "nipple balm" before. I didn't know what mastitis was. I didn't know about breastfeeding only hospitals and nurses that shamed women who couldn't produce enough colostrum to sustain their newborn's body weight. I didn't know how many hours per day babies spend eating.

When I was pregnant, I went back and forth over whether or not I wanted to do it, which sent me down an internet rabbit hole on breastfeeding. You won't be shocked by what happened next.

It was nearly impossible to find a discussion of breastfeeding that didn't immediately escalate to an 11, with either "side" acting as though they have life-or-death stakes in some random woman's boobs. Online mom groups were a horrifying example of this.

The Online Moms love to tussle over each other's parenting decisions that they have absolutely no stake in, from cosleeping to BLW (which I learned from one of the fights stands for Baby Led Weaning) to sleep training to the discontinued Fisher Price Rock N' Play and Owlet Sock to vaccines. It's a miracle that parents have time to get any parenting done, what with all of the judgement they pass on each other online.

Some of the biggest judgiest fights were over breastfeeding. Mothers who do it are giving their babies superpowers and teaching them how to love like little sentient robots; Mothers who do not breastfeed are cold and selfish and hard, like Disney stepmothers.

In the online cage match, those who are militantly pro-breastfeeding don't seem to have empathy for mothers who don't want to or couldn't breastfeed. "Successful" breastfeeding is waved like a banner of superiority by those to whom it came easily. Judgement abounds.

I tweeted something about how weird it was for strangers to weigh in on my personal decision whether or not to breastfeed, and a few of the replies were strangers who insisted that I should breastfeed. It was like they couldn't help themselves.

I understand why breastfeeding is encouraged; human milk is the ideal infant food and the way that formula was pushed on midcentury American mothers was some capitalist bullshit. It offers established health benefits for both mother and baby. Breastfeeding in public should be normalized and accepted, because human breasts are not inherently or exclusively sexual. Images of breastfeeding should not be censored from the internet due to "obscenity," because breastfeeding is not obscene. But the extent to which breastfeeding is shouted as the only acceptable choice in America feels extremely unhealthy.

Unwelcome opinions on breastfeeding are just another way that our reproductive bodies are seen as public property. What another person does with their breasts is none of my business, what I do with mine is none of theirs.

This is a long way of saying that the opinions of other people are overrepresented in the conversation about breastfeeding, while the person who the breasts are attached to is erased. She is given no room to feel anything about breastfeeding besides serene maternal joy. She is not allowed to have complicated feelings or negative emotions. She is not allowed to talk about pain, discomfort, regret, guilt. She is not allowed to be glad that she did it, but relieved that she no longer has to do it.

(Knowing that a woman who is a mother is anything short of a happy martyr upsets people, because it means that perhaps their own mother sort of hated it sometimes.)

I was curious to hear about other women's experiences with breastfeeding because I wanted to write about it in a way that included experiences besides mine, so I made a bare bones survey about it and posted a link to it on my Instagram stories. I expected to get maybe 10-15 responses, since the questions are pretty personal.

Reader, 900 people responded.

Clearly, mothers have a lot to say about it. Some of them need to talk about it with somebody but don't seem to have anybody to talk about it with. Some of them seem to have residual trauma and resentment, for others, things are less complicated. It feels like nuanced, honest conversations about breastfeeding should happen but are not happening because of all the screaming judgement and general patriarchal idea that if women hear anything negative at all about breastfeeding, they won't do it.

So, this is the first in a series about breastfeeding-- what it demands, what it costs, what isn't discussed. Commence screaming in the comments.

Image via Shutterstock