World Breastfeeding Week is coming up, does anyone have any questions or suggestions for blogging topics? :o)
Search This Classical Life:
categories:
in the middle of:
read in 2016:
Paterson, The Great Gilly Hopkins
Sloan, Ajax Penumbra 1969
Mandel, Station Eleven
Elliot, Shadow of the Almighty
Shakespeare, As You Like It
Bolz-Weber, Accidental Saintsarchives:
i bet you’ll come up with a few things to say… ;)
Ooooh! Thanks for the reminder! In the back of my mind I knew it was soon, but I didn’t realize HOW soon.
I’d be interested in the 20th-century history of formula feeding advocacy. Like why would DOCTORS believe that raw eggs are better for a baby than what God supplies? (I think that was one of the ingredients in my mother’s home-made formula. No offense, Mom!)
That may be a more time-consuming topic than you had in mind, though!
That’s sort of on the theme, Lenise, so I’ll try to get a post together… good suggestion!
For a long time, we didn’t know what was in breast milk, and there was a time when we (society) thought modern science had all the answers. In a sense, modern science DID provide a lot of answers, but just not the answers we were expecting. I can imagine a line of argument (I’m not saying this is what was actually thought) that says something to the effect of “We know what’s in formula, we don’t know what’s in breast milk, so we don’t know it’s better.” Faulty and weak, I know, but there are many things in our society that are based on faulty and weak arguments/logic.
There was a time not so long ago that many people, including doctors, who held all sorts of funky ideas about what is good and healthy. There are still many ideas in our society, in and outside our culture, which we will look back on in the coming decades, and say “That was pretty stupid.” Such is the nature of science, medicine, and shifting paradigms.
It’s also worth noting that there are many things that God supplies that isn’t all that great. Like the neurotoxin in fugu fish, or botulinum spores in honey, etc.
Part of formula-feeding advocacy is very much a sociological phenomenon when formula was seen as more “classy” and something for the social “elites,” while breast-feeding is seen as lowbrow. Many segments of our current population today still think this (visit your local urban center and ask around, especially among low those of lower socioeconomic status). The reasons for this pervasive idea are varied and many, but it probably stems from a bit of advertising, a bit of information trickling down too slowly, and just some old ideas that die hard.
It is well-understood and characterized now that breast milk is far and away the best thing to feed babies (with VERY few exceptions).