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Breastfeeding Rate is Increasing in the US

posted by cmn32480 on Wednesday August 24 2016, @03:12PM   
from the mmmmmmmm-lunch! dept.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

In 2013, 81.1 percent of U.S. mothers said they started out breast-feeding their baby. That's up from 75 percent in 2008, and 70 percent in 2000, according to the CDC.

[...] 52 percent of U.S. mothers said they were still breast-feeding their infants when the babies were 6 months old, and 30 percent said they were still breast-feeding when the babies reached 1 year.

How should society handle breastfeeding in public and the workplace? Should there be any restrictions on the age of the child?

Breastfeeding has obvious benefits for a child's development, but breast milk is also a fluid of the body that can carry disease.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/mum-still-breastfeeds-daughter-aged-4881835

http://www.livescience.com/55846-breast-feeding-mothers-united-states.html

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Original Submission

• Re:Not surprising (Score: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday August 24 2016, @06:18PM

  by Phoenix666 (552) on Wednesday August 24 2016, @06:18PM (#392705) Journal

  I can't speak to what things were like in the 70s and 80s. But today, there is an absolutely insane amount of pressure on women to breast feed. Not just to do it, but to enjoy it. If you don't enjoy breast feeding, basically, you're a monster. There is something terribly wrong with you. You have post-partum depression, or you're selfish and impatient, or you're too lazy to try to make it work properly -- and those latter two reasons mean you shouldn't be permitted to have kids, you disgusting, reprehensible, utter failure of a woman.

  It is possible to breast feed wrong, at first, with your first child. If you don't have a knowledgeable woman there to help you, it can be rough going. And having breast-fed a child before does not necessarily make a woman knowledgeable, because a great many women have little recollection of the early weeks, afterward (possibly as an effect of oxytocin flooding their system). A formal or informal lactation consultant can be quite helpful to get past initial difficulties in getting the kid to latch on. Once those hurdles are overcome the same oxytocin seems to render the breastfeeding experience generally pleasant; pumping breast milk for feeding when the mother has to go to work is the chore.

  --
  Washington DC delenda est.

  Parent

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