Posted on 07/30/2005 8:15:50 AM PDT by Asphalt
True. I would venture to guess, however, that those men you described are more calloused when it comes to getting flashed my nursing moms. It's the ones who aren't like this that are more likely to get offended/annoyed/grossed out. As I have said, I personally don't give a hoot, so long as you take precautions, it's none of my buisness. As for laws, that's rediculous. People don't have any buisness making laws about nursing.
Men, as you described them, being outraged at women breast-feeding is the equivilent of someone sleeping around in college being horrified when the find out their friends is having an affair
...does that make sense?
peeping toms!
good point. And crack babies, and AIDS babies can be thankful for formula now too.
For this reason alone formula is good.Third worlders should stay away from it. Even if the U.N. does send water for baby formula their is no guarantee that the people who need it will get it.
As I understand current national policies -- everywhere, politicians, pediatricians, state legislators endorse breastmilk as the best possible nutrition for infants.
In re UN policies, what do you think of this, put out by Independent Women's Forum
snips:
"In January, the [World Health Organization] recommended the adoption of an extreme anti-bottle-feeding resolution at the 57th World Health Assembly -- the WHO’s annual meeting, set for mid-May in Geneva. The immediate objective of the resolution is to force infant-formula packages to carry warning labels akin to those on cigarettes or liquor. The ultimate goal is to scare mothers into abandoning bottle-feeding."
The irony is that there’s no evidence whatsoever that infant formula is bad for babies. Its manufacturers are long-established companies like the Swiss firm Nestle, and millions of middle-class mothers in Europe and America who can’t breast-feed for one reason or other give their infants bottles of formula without the slightest ill effect. It is true that in many Third World countries, the water that must be mixed with the formula isn’t safe to drink without boiling first--but that’s a matter for public-health educators, not formula manufacturers.
As Glassman writes:
"There’s a correlation between high rates of infant-formula use and low rates of infant mortality. The reason is not that infant formula is better than breast milk, but that, as a country develops, infant health and nutrition improve, and the use of formula, at the same time, increases.
"Nestle sells more infant formula in a healthy nation like Belgium than it does in all of Africa, which has 60 times Belgium’s population. The best way to boost good health in Africa is to boost African economies. And time-saving technologies like infant formula can help.
"This means that Africans should be able to choose, and not to be scared or shamed into breast-feeding. Radicals and their supporters at the WHO, however, want to keep African women, in effect, barefoot, denying them the choice, as they modernize, of a healthy, convenient product."
The anti-bottle-feeding movement seems to have several impetuses. One is a strand of Third World romanticism prevalent among Westerners that idealizes primitive lifestyles--padding around barefoot in the rice paddy rather than commuting to an office park to sit in front of a computer all day.
Another is yuppie-mama faddism. Back in the 1930s, bottle-feeding babies was--believe it or not--a snooty upper-middle-class fad, eagerly embraced by college-educated women who could then look down on the breast-feeders as cows from the country who chewed tobacco and married their cousins. Now, the socioeconomic tables have turned: It’s upper-income moms who religiously nurse their babies (and take classes in and buy books about how to do so), while it’s working-class moms who don’t have time for that sort of thing and rely on formula to keep their infants fed. The elite types who want to outlaw bottle-feeding essentially want to push the folkways of upper-echelon parenting onto the rest of the world.
And don’t forget the anti-capitalist angle. Big companies manufacture infant formula--and we can’t have that.
---end snips
I know we are sending tons of AIDS money to Africa. I've dug and dug, but I don't think anyone knows for sure whether or not HIV can be passed through breast milk.
If children do not develop into good people,its because they do not stay on a moral path.
I agree with you.
Plenty of people reared on formula have turned out bad.
Is there a survey or statistical report you can point me to for this data? I find your postulation quite suspect.
This sounds so cool! I'm looking into it.
We are on the same page, Tax-Chick. Going to the military hosp for basic appoints... was an all-day matter. Which is also why I never joined HMOs or Kaiser, or clinic-based medical operations (the U-Health prototypes). I want a private physician as my constant. I pay more; but its a price I'm willing to pay. Seeing the same doctor each time is worth it.
Precisely. And my beef is with the non-discreet.
Unfortunately, the concensus here seems to be it does not matter; you should be able to breastfeed in public period.
Some may be La Leche league hacks, pushing a larger ideologic agenda.
And I've been through the ideologic breastfeeding arguments since...the early 1980s. Here's the rub: The zealotous ones will not listen to reason nor any point of view, or perspective which differs from their "beliefs". So arguing with them is often ugly, and principally a waste of time. I'm fully aware of the ideologic indoctrination that takes place via many (not all) nursing consultants and organizations. It's become a political football.
But I have come across freeper mothers who simply cannot abide the concept that they cannot maintain a life they experienced "pre-baby" and nurse at the same time. They consider this "discrimination". A crime punishable by constant ad hominems, and inane argumentations.
There is quite a learning curve to "breastfeeding". It's a total life change. But then, having a baby is a total life change. Period. Whether one nurses or bottle-feeds.
What offends me, troubles me..is that the most passionate breastfeeding posters seem to come from a place of fear -- posting out of fear -- that somehow someone is going to "banish" breastfeeding mothers to a back cabin, or chained to a dirty toilet. This is hidious. Makes me question where they are getting this fearmongering FROM.
There are now National Breastfeeding Months, weeks. Legislators, politicians, celebrities.. just name it -- have all gone on record in SUPPORT of breastfeeding. So, this "fearmongering" is absurd, IMHO.
What I despise most? Is seeing new, first-time parents fearmongered over this issue. I consider it abusive.
And if the passionate BFers are indeed worried over the "banishment of breastfeeding" -- they should look at their sisters who are doing "exhibitionist" breastfeeding and in-your-face-politicking, as creating a backlash against breastfeeding. Period.
Sometimes, I do think women are hysterical. -- If one woman is being arrested for "nudity" in public (breastfeeding) -- ALL WOMEN ARE BEING ARRESTED FOR PUBLIC BREASTFEEDING. It's like, the hysteria is there. It's right out of the feminist handbook on domestic violence and rape.
We each have the liberty to pursue what we think is right. Sometimes we get nailed, properly or improperly. It happens. Most people don't demand that LAWS BE CHANGED to accommodate the "minority". But liberals do. Zealots do. I do not think public breastfeeding should be legislated for or against.
I don't think it belongs in the lawbooks. All it will create are newer taxpayer funded BUREACRACIES -- "pro-bono boob lawyers", newer costs to Joe Public to buy consumables from stores which have been forced by law to create "nursing zones" in their stores.. etc.
We've seen how the beast of onerous taxation and lawsuits arise.. It applies to this subject matter too!
Pretty much.
LOL, that was funny.
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