Michelle Tant

There has been a call from Lesley Backhouse, chair of The Breastfeeding Network to scrap the slogan. No its not a backtrack on policy, its an attempt to shift the balance towards breastfeeding being the normal and usual way to feed a baby, rather than formula being the norm and breastfeeding being something slightly out of reach and unusually exceptional. "We've got to knock breastfeeding off this pedestal," said Lesley Backhouse. "It implies something special, whereas breastfeeding is the physiological norm, and suggests that formula is the standard way to feed babies. "Breastfeeding is the only case where the biological norm is expressed as the exception rather than the rule,". Of course breastfeeding IS exceptional, ie its amazing properties, its extraordinary ability to sustain and improve life, to improve life prospects even in terms of surviving childhood, reducing obesity and common childhood illnesses, right up to reducing pre-menopausal bre...

This year has felt like one attack after another on breastfeeding. There's been the ongoing Facebook debacle; photos of breastfeeding being removed while Playboys pages are continued to be allowed to flaunt more flesh than a whole convention of breastfeeding mothers. Then there was the ridiculous opinion piece in the British Medical Journal which many newspapers, including The Daily Fail regurgitated as fact, further undermining the benefits of breastfeeding. Just this week I saw a short piece in Practical Parenting magazine about the Chinese developing GM cows to produce human milk! One sentence says the milk will have more nutritional content in it, though its unclear whether it means than breastmilk or than formula milk. And now this. http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/campaigners-livid-as-whitehall-axes-breastfeeding-week-2287445.html Our beloved government in its wisdom has cut national support for National Breastfeeding ...