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Breastfeeding Rate is Increasing in the US

posted by cmn32480 on Wednesday August 24 2016, @03:12PM   Printer-friendly
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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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Thexalon on Wednesday August 24 2016, @04:49PM

    by Thexalon (636) on Wednesday August 24 2016, @04:49PM (#392654)

    The mere fact that something has been done for a long time doesn't prove or even imply that it's better than modern alternatives.

    Quite true. However, decades of research do in fact imply that in this case, breastfeeding is better.

    But today, there is an absolutely insane amount of pressure on women to breast feed.

    Based on said decades of research that have determined that breastfeeding is good for the baby and probably good for mom too. As for enjoying it, all I can say is that every mother I've known whose breastfed their children enjoyed it most of the time.

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  • (Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Wednesday August 24 2016, @05:41PM

    by AthanasiusKircher (5291) on Wednesday August 24 2016, @05:41PM (#392686) Journal

    But today, there is an absolutely insane amount of pressure on women to breast feed.

    Based on said decades of research that have determined that breastfeeding is good for the baby and probably good for mom too.

    Yes, but in the grand scheme of things you can do to ensure better outcomes for your baby, breastfeeding's benefits aren't really very strong. The proven effects for breast milk are even less, yet how many young mothers spend time nowadays stressing out with a breast pump rather than spending that time holding and interacting with their child (which almost certainly has more benefits than the breast milk itself). There are a number of recent studies, in fact, which suggest that most of the "benefits" of breastfeeding are potentially due to sample bias. (See my post above.)

  • (Score: 2) by jdavidb on Thursday August 25 2016, @01:51PM

    by jdavidb (5690) on Thursday August 25 2016, @01:51PM (#392990) Homepage Journal
    I will say the pressure is nearly insane. I know whole subcultures where women who don't breastfeed are shamed, where women teach their children that another mother with a bottle is a "bad mommy." And my wife couldn't breastfeed due to surgery, but we received countless admonitions from people telling us that nearly any woman could breastfeed regardless of surgery, and if we'd only really try it exclusively it would be enough. For awhile it seemed like every stranger we met felt that it was their business to find out if we were going to breastfeed our children, find out about the surgery, and then tell us with no real knowledge of our situation that breastfeeding was possible. Our second son was referred to a lactation consulting center by his pediatrician because we tried this - he was in bad shape at one week and the lactation consulting center told us we had better start giving him formula, so we did. They were scared to death we were going to refuse. Then our next son was born with neonatal hepatitis and a severe protein intolerance that made it impossible for him to digest human milk. We had friends offering to pump for him because they really just couldn't comprehend the situation.
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