Abortion was once ground zero when it came to women's rights, on a social, group and individual level. Although the ethics around abortion still flare up from time to time in Canada, the matter has been settled for the most part. Except for those opposed on strict religious grounds, most Canadians agree that the government has no business forbidding a woman from terminating her pregnancy, except to set limits on how far into the pregnancy she can do so.
Abortion may be receding into the background but the politics of breastfeeding continue to burn hot and bright, with little sign of dying down.
For starters, it's a moral quagmire even for ardent feminists. On one hand, the bond forged between a mother nursing her baby is powerful and sacred. Some women cast breastfeeding in a spiritual light while others have expressed that the act is the fullest expression of femininity and female power, something that belongs to women alone. Meanwhile, many other women and numerous feminists have pointed out that breastfeeding is itself another social pressure and control on adult women. A mother who refuses to breastfeed her child, opting for formula feeding, is seen by some as borderline negligent, putting her own selfish needs ahead of her baby. After a nine-month pregnancy, some women want control of their bodies back. That doesn't mean they don't love their babies but they don't want to (or can't because of personal circumstances) surrender their bodies to breastfeeding, with the commitment of time and energy it demands.
Like abortion, the final choice is both deeply personal and a political act that many members of society will unfairly judge women by.
Deciding to breastfeed then requires other decisions and more political statements.
Public breastfeeding or not.
To cover or not to cover the baby's head and the woman's bare breast when nursing in public.
Deciding the appropriate time to stop nursing a child.
Deciding to donate milk to other mothers or receiving donated milk.
Wet-nursing another baby or having a baby wet-nursed.
These were once simple, practical decisions without social significance. In modern times, however, society seems to be increasingly uncomfortable with the entire topic.
No other mammal drinks the milk of another species except for humans. In fact, many mammals can become seriously ill doing such a thing. Drinking cow's milk out of a milk jug is somehow normal but people would be horrified at the prospect of drinking the milk either straight from a cow's nipple or even out of the pail. And most people would do that over the absolute horror of drinking from a woman's breast (or a woman offering her milk or her breast to another person for nourishment) even though that liquid is biologically engineered for human consumption and women are significantly more hygienic than cows.
It's not the milk that's entirely clouding the issue here, of course.
It's the breasts.
Female breasts, for both men and women, are sexualized objects of desire. From long before puberty, girls are taught directly and indirectly how to view breasts and how their own should be seen by others once they develop. Only in pregnancy do most women consider the biological and evolutionary purpose of their breasts. For some women, that transition is easy but for others it is difficult or even impossible to make. For women, breasts and breastfeeding are questions of identity, with all of the power, preconceptions and prejudice that come with those questions.
Men (including this writer) can intellectualize and philosophize this topic until the cows come home. Understanding will always elude us because our nipples don't work that way nor are our breasts seen that way.
There is one basic truth even men can comprehend: a woman's breasts, like her reproductive organs, belong to her and her alone, as does the decisions of what she does with them. If she breastfeeds her child, other children, donates her milk so other women unable to nurse can feed their babies mother's milk or if she doesn't breastfeed at all, that's her choice. Those decisions should not be open to social judgment or ridicule because to do so is to claim public sovereignty over both space and actions that clearly reside at the individual and private level.
--Managing editor Neil Godbout
