Risks of Not Breast-Feeding

Re “Formula for Guilt,” by Peggy Orenstein, Opinion, Jan. 11: In developing the National Breastfeeding Awareness Campaign, the Ad Council found that women in the focus group research, both formula-feeding mothers and breast-feeding mothers, did not express guilt regarding their decisions related to breast-feeding. When women in 42 focus groups, conducted in several cities throughout the country, were shown the risks of not breast-feeding, i.e., higher rates of ear infections, asthma, Type 1 diabetes and obesity, the mothers did not feel guilt; they were surprised and angry that they had not been told this information. Many said that they would try harder to breast-feed their next child if they had not breast-fed yet, and many said they would breast-feed longer if they had breast-fed briefly.

Women need to hear the research to be able to make truly informed infant-feeding decisions. They deserve to be shown the evidence-based risks of not breast-feeding, a common strategy when informing the public of other public health issues. Presenting factual information is not intended to provoke guilt but rather to make for more informed consumers. Guilt is a response taken on by the receiver of the information, not granted by the messenger.

Orenstein is to be commended for breast-feeding her baby, given her history of breast cancer, her C-section delivery and the anxiety that comes when one’s milk supply is less than one’s baby needs. She overcame these obstacles and needs to know that any amount of breast milk and any time of nursing are of value to her and her baby.

Karen Peters

Exec. Dir., Breastfeeding

Task Force of Greater L.A.

Redondo Beach

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While reading Orenstein’s piece on her experience with breast-feeding advocates/extortionists, I felt the almost forgotten but familiar reflexive action of my feathers ruffling. Thirty-some years ago I too experienced the whispers and innuendoes of advocates/Nazis when I chose, for reasons that are no one’s business but my own, not to breast-feed my child. Despite prophetic claims of psychological and physical damage that would befall my child without mother’s milk, my daughter proved them wrong. She is of perfect weight, rarely gets a cold and is one of the most well-balanced young women her age I know.

Perhaps baby formulas were better 30 years ago, or just maybe there is more to mothering and healthy children than breast-feeding. I prefer to believe that providing loving, stable, nonneurotic parenting is at least of equal importance. I do, however, confess an advantage to the breast-feeding advocates in forming my opposing opinion. I wasn’t breast-fed either!

Maureen Ardron

Yorba Linda

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Evidence-based research has proved that not breast-feeding is a risk factor for many diseases or illnesses for both baby and mother. Research suggests that babies should be breast-fed exclusively until approximately the middle of the first year of life and then for an extended period of time. Even the American Academy of Pediatrics policy on infant feeding says that babies should ideally be breast-fed for a minimum of one year, and then for as long as mutually desirable by baby and mother. The World Health Organization recommends breast-feeding a minimum of two years.

Everyone knows people who were formula-fed and seem fine, but George Burns’ smoking and living a good life to age 100 does not mean that smoking is not a huge health risk. Smoking rates have decreased since the U.S. surgeon general made educating the public about the risks of smoking a public health priority. The dissemination of public health information must be founded on research. The truth is that the risks of not breast-feeding are profound.

I commend Orenstein’s tenacity to breast-feed her baby and to supplement her baby when appropriate in spite of poor advice, but suggest that choosing banked human milk, instead of formula, would be a far preferable insurance policy for protecting her baby’s health.

Chele Marmet

Director, Lactation Institute

Los Angeles