The push the breast feeding seriously needs to be calmed down. The stress and shame it causes can’t be good for mothers or babies.
‘Breast feeding is great if you can do it’ is fine but the state line is only just short of being ‘if you don’t breast feed you’re a terrible mother.’
This attitude leads to groupthink and polarization. You read the source from your ideological group, which leaves out inconvenient facts, leading to your "reasonable conclusion." Another person reads different sources from a different ideological group, which mentions women who are incapable of breastfeeding but doesn't mention the health benefits for the general population and that person draws a totally different "reasonable conclusion."
We'd all be better off if both of you would admit your news sources are incomplete and find better sources instead of drawing "reasonable conclusions."
What I get from the story is that no explanation was given, to anybody. Thus no, there is no such other site, and the GP's position is perfectly reasonable. I would be glad to hear that this is not the case.
The story doesn't include any comment from US government officials. It also doesn't include that they failed to comment (excluding the one ambassador, who is too low level to comment). Lacking a "declined to comment" line, the default assumption is that the newspaper didn't ask for a comment.
It's lazy journalism. With good journalism, newspapers figure out who did what and why. Here we are mostly missing who and we have speculation to why but no hard facts. Story needs another week of research before it is published.
> The United States Embassy in Quito declined to make Mr. Chapman available for an interview.
Mr. Chapman is Todd C. Chapman, the Ambassador to Ecuador[0]. He was a primary actor in the actions discussed in the article. Ambassadors absolutely aren't "too low level to comment", and your characterization of an article with a no-comment from a high-ranking primary actor in the events discussed as "the default assumption is that the newspaper didn't ask for a comment" is absurd.
I also haven't been able to find any alternative explanation for this on the State Department's press site[1]. It might be there though; I'm not a journalist and I find that site maddening to navigate, so I gave up pretty quickly. But like your parent commenter said, this is a discussion site, if you have a good source for the other side of this story, I and many others here are likely to be all ears.
Of course it's implied that you cannot exercise if you didn't have the limbs needed for exercising.
In the same way of course it's implied that you should breastfed, if you can.
Additionally I think it should be a matter between a mother and her pediatrician/lactation specialist and not the government.
You make the final call, but it should not be a struggle to feed your baby breast milk.
> subsidize breast pumps
Especially given that they can be rented, this is probably a clear positive to do.
> subsidize breast milk banks
Donor Milk is extremely expensive ($3-$5 an once). While infant consumers do see reduced rates of gastrointestinal tract infection and eczema, other benefits are less clear. Some more research would be needed to see if this is the best use of health dollars; perhaps a minimal amount of donor milk (several onces), combined with formula may be optimal.
> subsidize lactation consultants so that everyone can afford them
I'm down with this, as long as lactation consultants are more regulated. The ones we used were far overzealous in over-pushing breast feeding (e.g. overstating benefits)
I bet formula companies know all of this. They shipped a pallet of "free" formula to our address as soon as our daughter was born, unrequested.
I have actually gone as far as seeing people buy breast milk (legit sources - some sort of breast milk bank) to ensure their kid has the best. Why would someone do this if formula was just as good?
Because they don’t know any better. There are women who feed their babies juice or even soda. That doesn’t mean it’s a good choice.
There is some evidence that breast fed children have some minor immune benefits. There is to my knowledge no evidence that children fed from breast milk banks have any benefit over formula fed children. The health benefits are not well understood but one reasonable theory is that the feedback loop from breastfeeding (bacteria/viruses migrate from the child’s mouth through the mother’s nipple) is what allows the milk to provide useful antibodies. If the milk is from a bank or the mother exclusively pumps, that feedback loop does not exist.
The bonding/nurturing that is sometimes hypothesized to help the child is also missing with bottled milk, no matter the source.
I don't think it is fair to characterize the immune benefits are merely minor. Eczema rates halve (6.3% to 3.3%) while gastrointestinal tract infections are cut by a third (13.2% to 9.1%).
See https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/193490
We're already seeing the same thing with the whole plastic straw thing: The overwhelming majority of people have no need or benefit to using disposable plastic straws, so to abate the conversation the narrative was quickly misdirected to the very small minority of disabled who truly need them (and who could easily and obviously be accommodated).
To me this is something you decide on a private level. I don't see what the government or the society has to decide about what you do at home, as long as you don't actively, purposely aim at making your children suffer.
There was so much pressure to breastfeed. It wasn't necessarily institutional pressure (I'm in Canada). Maybe a couple of your friends were hard liners and would say stupid things like "it'll work, it's evolution, just keep trying" or you'd encounter a hard line nurse who wouldn't suggest trying formula.
Breast feeding was going well for us, until about the 3 month mark when my daughter suddenly became grumpy and irritable all the time. She stopped sleeping well. We were so spun up by the 'breast is best' crowd that it was a major discussion point if trying formula was the right thing to do vs letting our daughter starve. I still remember the night I felt like a terrible father for breaking out the free formula sample at the back of our pantry to feed to our starving kid.
So, long story short, even at a private level external opinions can highly influence your private decisions. In fact, there was a women in BC that committed suicide because of postpartum depression. The general consensus was the pressure to breastfeed exacerbated her PPD. (https://www.self.com/story/postpartum-depression-florence-le...)
I don’t think we should just let ignorant parents hurt or kill their children because of some idea that it’s a private matter. Obviously you can take it too far, but if you refuse to feed your baby what it needs, or seek treatment for serious medical problems, or put the baby in a dangerous environment, that should be stopped even if the parent thinks it’s just dandy.
Ultimately it should be your choice, but you should not struggle to make the choice.
I suppose you are alluding to this, but FMLA permits 12 weeks of unpaid leave. (obviously this doesn't work if you are self-employed, but that's clearly a private matter) Some states may additionally offer partial compensation (e.g. CA has 55% of salary for 12 months).
It's a deeper question whether the US' stress on individual responsibility is a good or bad thing. Regardless, in our "parents pay for things" environment, it's a rare case where you'll be able to afford raising a child (while working) if you haven't been able to save enough money while NOT raising a child to take 3 months off work.
The US would be in a world of pain as far as an aging population if not for the influx of immigrants. But no worries. We’re gonna “fix” that.
I think I see the problem here and it's not in promoting breast feeding.