Two-thirds refuse to breastfeed

Breast feeding is especially important right after birth.  That is when colostrum with the mother's immune protection is passed to the baby. 

Thanks for this, thomps. However, I would also question the sample survey and results as well. Since 1993, a National Breastfeeding Awareness Week takes place in the UK. This year, the campaign took place May 10th-16th.

One day it will be sold in stores. A few days ago, they announced it is good for cancer.

I think the problem is as follows.  Men run companies and men are legislators and police and men set rules.  Men have a rule that breasts should only be seen in pornography magazines, and many women accept this as well.  And so, men feel very uncomfortable seeing a real naked breast when most of the breasts they have seen were only in photographs.

In Brazil and in many other countries, it is normal for women to breast feed at bus stops, in restaurants and other public places.  And yet, in countries like the United States and Great Britain, men in the office might feel ashamed and embarrassed just to know that a woman is breastfeeding in a closed cubicle.  They sometimes demand that women breastfeed in infants in the bathroom.  (If you wouldn't eat your lunch in the bathroom, why would you expect an infant to want to do so?)

It all comes down to the purpose of breasts.  If breasts are for titilation, then they must be hidden most of the time so that men can feel excited when they finallyget to see them.  However, if breasts are for providing nourishment to newborn children, then obviously they will have to be uncovered and men and women will have to get used to seeing breasts.

If women charged their male co-workers for a look at one breast (during breastfeeding), they might find that their male co-workers were much more accepting, and even eager to pay, because then breasts would be serving their only acceptable function in Western society:  titilation. 

Here's a suggestion:  If you want to breast feed in front of others in an inhibited and overly-sexualized society, wear a large blousy blouse and hold the child under the blouse where the breastfeeding will become invisible to others. 

And then some enterprising breastfeeding mother might give this a try:  charge co-workers for a look under your shirt and you will be bringing the process of breast-feeding into the normal entrepreneurial spirit of paying to see the female body, just as men pay to see strip shows, pornographic magazines and sex videos.

How much would men pay for a video of their famous "hot" actress (or neighbor)  breastfeeding a child? I don't know, but it might be a way to profit from other people's shame while feeding the baby at the same time.  :)

I think I was nine years old when a teacher of mine visited my our house and began to breastfeed her baby.  I was so captivated that I couldn't take my eyes off this, until the teacher asked me if I felt strange.

Then I pretended that I didn't feel strange and I went and did something else.  I don't think it's possible to hide breasts obligatorily 98% of the time and then have the public and the breast-feeding woman feel comfortable when the woman bears her breast for breast-feeding.

On the French Mediterranean, it's quite acceptable for women to bear their breasts while at the beach.  And so, I cannot imagine that anyone would object if one of those women began breast-feeding a baby.

However, breast-feeding is a victim of the larger culture of sex obsession, titilation, and repression.  I don't think you can understand people's objection to seeing breast-feeding without seeing it in the larger context of the larger paradigm in which men and boys fantasize about seeing women's breasts while knowing that expressing a desire or even a willingness to do so is, in most cases, sexually unacceptable.

When men are used to paying to see the breasts of a stranger, it leaves us feeling shameful and guilty to see one breast of a stranger for free, sui generis.

And how can women be expected to feel comfortable showing one breast (during breastfeeding) if showing two breasts is illegal.  Is it logical that a woman who works in an office can breast feed from the left breast in the morning in public, and then from the right breast in the afternoon to the same "audience", but she cannot show both breasts simultaneously?

Everyone will have seen both breasts by the time the day is over, so why should it be illegal to show both breasts simultaneously?  And why is it that fat me, a man with breasts larger than those of many women, can show my breasts anywhere at any time, and yet a woman who has no breasts to speak of cannot bear her chest because . . . she's a woman!

Objections to public breastfeeding are a very deep cultural issue whose understanding cannot be divorced from our attitudes about breasts in general.

good information

very good information..thanks

    It really is important to breastfeed children.  For one thing, it helps form a loving bond and gives a parent an outlet for care and nurture, building that disposition towards her child/children. It also helps the child to feel loved, and that affects children psychologically for good.  Thirdly, there is the nutritional aspect.  You will not get proper nutrition in a bottle or from canned formula : two many "minor" nutrients and trace elements will be missing which are not added into formulas.  Why starve a child at such an early age, in their crucial early development?  Yes, I did say starve. The brains of infants and small children need high-quality essential fatty acids to develop the best transmission of signals through the cerebral cortex.  Flax seed oil has such fatty acids; but, if they don't get the "good stuff", their bodies use the next best thing available.  So, you can see that inferior foods will be less beneficial.  Also, consider all the minor nutrients the body needs in very small amounts.  An adult might need, for example, only 3 milligrams ("specks", basically) of the mineral "boron", per day.  Boron helps with retaining calcium in the bones.  An adult might also need 15 milligrams of zinc per day, and zinc is used by the body for healing and to produce over 150 different enzymes, as well as being used in the senses of taste, smell and hearing. A child will need far less, but these nutrients are still needed.  Also, zinc is poorly absorbed in the "oxide" version, yet many companies use that form in supplements because it is cheap. Hey,  do they care as long as they can say that it's in the product? 

     Finally, I think people in society need mothers to "politely" nurse their children. Why?  -- Because many in modern, western society have become so paranoid about human nudity in every form, that people too easily forget human need.  Children grow up self-ashamed and thinking that nudity is equivalent to sex or nastiness.  Then, people are urged to cover up, because of society being conditioned in such a troubling mindset.  The end result is that people become colder, hardened and insensitive to humanity -- "dehumanized", unable to identify with human need or basic human conditions, calloused. 

Men can breastfeed too. See video.

Nice to see fathers participating.