a brief rant (on maternal breasts)

I have no use for parenting dogma.  At best, I find it rather irritating. It assumes a sort of moral superiority that begs to be taken apart at the seams. We're all just slogging through the trenches, doing the best we can with what we've got. This shit, as I've been known to point out, is difficult. At worst, I find it harmful. And here's an example of how and why I find it thus...

Doing a search on Dr. Google for some unrelated issues, I've recently stumbled across some particularly yucky statements about breastfeeding.  Uttered by self-professed feminists.  Statements that included gems such as "Everyone should breastfeed," "There is no excuse to use formula," and my personal favourite, "formula should be taxed" (I could write a whole separate rant about the class-based violence of this particular statement, but it shall have to wait for another blog). 

And for the record, I breastfed both my babies for a total of three years. I breastfed through excruciating pain, bleeding nipples and three, count 'em three violent bouts of mastitis.  Never once did my care-providers suggest that bottle-feeding might be an alternative.  Though I likely would not have taken up this option, it would've been kind if they had).  I'm not saying I don't believe in the value of breastfeeding.  I do.  I believe.  I'm a believer. I believe the world should be a breast-feeding friendlier place and I have whipped my boobs out in every imaginable corner of this city and along several highways to boot (and heck, if asked especially nicely, I still might!)

I don't, and here I mean emphatically do not, however, believe that pushing us baby-carriers (What? What's that you say? You mean those are actual people?!) to do things that, for whatever reason, cause stress or emotional discomfort, makes any kind of good sense.  In fact, I find it ridiculous and all kinds of offensive. 

The aforementioned statements about the moral superiority of breastfeeding blow my bleeping mind.  Blow it right out my ears.  I've said it once, I've said it twice, and I will keep saying it until I'm blue in the face. Mothers are people. Folk. Women-people-folk. Women-people-folk who need to be able to make autonomous choices about what they do and do not do with their bodies. Arguing that women should *have* to breastfeed because it is better for babies, helps with attachment, its more child-centred, blah, blah, blah is really not all that different than saying women should have to bear the babies resulting from unintended zygote-making bc it's more child-centred. Or that women should have to stay home with their children because studies have shown this results in healthier offspring.  Seriously. Maybe breastfeeding is better for children.  Maybe it does help with attachment. (Though, for the record, there are many, many ways of building attachment, breastfeeding being just one of them.  Just ask my children's other mother, who did not breastfeed our children. Trust me when I say that they are all mightily attached).  As feminists, it behooves us to be equally concerned about the welfare of those whose bodies might undertake the work (yes, work) of breastfeeding.  Anything less than this is profoundly anti-choice, anti-woman, and anti-feminist.

Bodily autonomy is bodily autonomy. Pro-choice is pro-choice. Our bodies do NOT belong to our children, past, present or future.  My body did not belong to my children when they inhabited it and neither does it now. Breast feeding is a choice. Formula feeding is a choice. Anything in-between, yes, also a choice. We need to trust women to make the best choices they can for themselves, depending on their resources and the life circumstances they find themselves in.  

And you know what? 

They will.