I became quite passionate about breastfeeding while pregnant, but could easily have gone in another direction if I'd become a mom at an earlier time in my life. And while I'm passionate about breastfeeding, I am also passionate about supporting moms where they are. If more of us can find a way to see past our own perspectives, maybe we truly can achieve better support for moms.

"The push back against the author of the book in this thread is thinly veiled internalized misogyny in its finest form: misguided, mislabeled, misused constructs of feminism used as a way to oppress other women. I see right through it, and directly to the courage, intelligence and depth to which Ms. Barston goes to actually help other women--using evidence based medicine, solid journalistic skill, and unwavering commitment to throw the covers back on a social construct of women that needs to be just as scrutinized as any other."

Thank-you for bringing forward the concept of "evidence based medicine" for readers to consider. As a lesbian mother who currently shares full joint custody and equal access of a minor child who is being fed breast milk by both parents your wise words are a welcome relief.

In my community I am expected to be a "feminist" but, I strongly feel that the expectations of "feminism" and "parenting" are often miss aligned. The ideas and concepts don't fit well. For a while, by sharing equal responsibility and access of our child I felt that I was some how failing feminism. Research and education has demonstrated that my initial anxieties were just that - unfounded anxieties based on personal fear and not rational thought. I am now a proud shared parent who pumps breast milk, doesn't fret and fear that our child will die if our child's father doesn't feed the child my breast milk when equally residing with him. The biggest obstical for doing this important thing for our child (equal 50-50 access) was truly understanding the gaps in the research and the gaps in the views I had on what defines "feminism". I now advocate for "parantisim" - if you can even use that label.

The father of our child (a gay man) often is often verbally assaulted (ontology my fellow feminists like to miss-use quite often) by over-anxious breastfeeding parents (both men and women) when ever our child is with him in public places. This is during our child's access time with him.

He has been subjected to lectures, literature, and having personal insults hurled at him in public places.

Having done a quick background on your materials posted publicly, it appears that you have a significant background in the understanding of parental anxiety and related subjects (e.g. PTSD).

What I am observing from the feedback I am getting from our child's father is that most of the parents who choose to "confront him" on his use of a bottle is that the people appear to be very anxious.

I can only provide subjective statements third party to the conversation (hearsay) but, it appears that these parents are struggling with some form of parental anxiety and choose to publicly humiliate a perfect stranger to possibly justify their own fears (worries, anxieties, etc...).

As you will note I quoted a well cited publicly posted decision from a senior family law justice in this thread which explicitly identifies the parental concerns (argument presented by the mother) that there should be no over night access. The judge identified the possible root cause of the dispute - an over protective (over anxious) parent influenced by her readings on the internet.

What I am seeing is that there is an ever increasing impact to overall social anxiety being injected into society since the advent of the internet. Even the justice in the above mentioned citing identified this in paragraph 1.

What I am wondering is why there is so little "evidence based medicine" on parental anxiety in general. We as a society seem to think it is "ok" for parents to be overly anxious - to the point that these parents choose to verbally assault other parents for doing something they "feel" is wrong.

These parents that take their advocacy to the public in this manner appear to be crossing the line of "emotional reasoning" with logical possibly like this:

"I feel that breastfeeding is the best therefor you, Mr. Bottlefeeding gay man, by bottle feeding your child is disproving how I feel about myself and making me second guess my choices for my child.

I feel compelled to insult, belittle and spout beliefs unsupported by facts at you to make *me* feel better. Oh... and to protect your child from your horrible, awful and bad parenting."

An specifically to your point:

"misguided, mislabeled, misused constructs of feminism used as a way to oppress other women"

I would expand that statement to remove the gender and suggest that it is a way to oppress other parents whom are gay, transgender and male identified.

Thank-you for your article and perspective.

1. The issue on this motion is overnight access. The petitioner’s position is that there should be no overnight access while she is breastfeeding. The petitioner’s child rearing philosophy gleaned from the Internet and other sources is to breastfeed until the mother and child mutually agree to stop. The respondent’s position is that the petitioner is using breastfeeding solely for the purpose of defeating his access to the child.

2. The respondent has been actively involved in the child’s daily schedule since birth. The respondent prior to separation regularly bathed the child at night, fed the child and spent time with the child. Despite this involvement the petitioner after separation was reluctant to allow the respondent to have access to the child. The petitioner and respondent have been through two mediations and two court orders with a psychological assessment pending over the issue of access. When the petitioner has to leave the child at daycare or for access the parting is a 10-minute to 30-minute ordeal. The petitioner submits that access is stressful for the child. On these facts the source of the stress in my opinion is an over protective petitioner.

3. The petitioner may have an honestly held and well-intentioned theory on breastfeeding. This breastfeeding however must come to an end at some point. The petitioner in an earlier affidavit indicated that she intended to breastfeed until at least the child was two years of age. Dr. Newman’s letter indicates that pediatrics recommend breastfeeding for at least a year with no upper limit. The petitioner will have breastfed for two years beyond the minimum recommended. This child is not an appendage of the petitioner. The child will very shortly have to leave the petitioner for day care, junior kindergarten and other outside relationships. It is important for the child’s good that she learn to adapt outside of the petitioner’s constant attention. The petitioner should therefore end breastfeeding over the next four months and the child should then experience overnight access with the respondent."

http://canlii.ca/en/on/onsc/doc/2003/2003canlii2121/2003canlii2121.html

"We need to be willing to "listen to the myriad of reasons that women may choose not to nurse" AND we need to realize that "just try formula" isn't a welcome or useful solution for someone who feels passionately about nursing her baby and just wants quality support."

You know what though? I didn't feel passionately about nursing my baby when I had my first child, that came much later. So I’d argue that in hospital, “just try formula” is not useful for any new mother. I was going to bf "if I could" and not “beat myself up" about it if it didn't work. And I was absolutely going to wean to formula at 6 months because “that's what people do”. So when I had problems, though no one expressly said "just try formula", they *did* say he'd be fine if I couldn't bf (while not directing me to help to continue doing so). It wasn't a stretch for me to go out and buy bottles and formula, since I planned to do that eventually anyway, and no one, not the medical community, not family (my mom ff from the start), not friends (all of them either weaned to formula or strictly ff), was making me feel bad about it. And yet I felt bad. Fortunately, bf did work out, but I think I had a small glimpse of what women who wanted to bf but could not might feel like. And I believe as a result that a lot of the guilt women feel is internal--valid, yes! Absolutely. I’m not trying to minimize those feelings. I just have doubts about where that guilt comes from. And having been through the bad hospital advice, the lack of knowledge and support, I know there are many, many systematic reasons why so many women don't meet their goals, and by no means do they deserve to be shamed as a result. It’s the system that needs to change. I also know that even if we eliminated the "booby traps", there would still be some women who simply can't bf, and some who choose not to, and they don't deserve to be shamed either.

But I have to agree with the FeministBreeder that currently, ff is done at least in part by the vast majority of North American women--so who is doing this supposed guilt-tripping? I can honestly say the only women, other than myself, that I know who did not use formula at some point are moms I met via the internet *because* I couldn't find anyone IRL who was doing what I was doing. And I think I'd be included in the "class" of women referred to in some of these comments: I'm white, urban, educated, professional, had generous mat leave. The women like me that I know? They ff, at least part of the time. All of them. Because of bad advice, because of supposed convenience, because of whatever, that really doesn’t matter. And I know this about all of them because it's not something that is considered shameful or strange (I’m not saying it should be). These women certainly aren’t going around giving the stink-eye to bottlefeeding moms in the mall. Yet, I bet these same women would be shocked that I not only never used formula, I bf my children for 2.5 and 3 years. I know for a fact I’ve been gossiped about by those that do know (and that was for bf past 3 MONTHS).

So yes, when I'm living in a bottle-culture, surrounded by ff mothers, where pregnant women who plan to bf are given bottles as gifts and the advice that ff is “just as good if you can’t bf” before they’ve even given bf a try, it is a bit hard for me to believe women are being guilted or scared into bf by others, or that there is judgment of moms that bottlefeed in public. Facebook doesn’t take down pictures of bottlefeeding. You can’t find teenagers posting about how “gross” ff is on Twitter on any given day. Bottlefeeding moms don’t get asked to leave public places on a regular basis. I'm not saying any of this *should* happen, btw, just that bottlefeeding/ff is the norm.

It seems that in any other time or place I would have been one of those wet nurses because I had the problem breastfeeding that no one wants to acknowledge - over production. A problem which may actually force me to choose formula.

My breasts would only have been healthy had I had a child attached to each breast 24 hours a day. Yes, this is not what women who struggle with production want to hear and the first response is "donate!" but taking more out only produces more and my production caused almost daily incredibly painful plugged ducts and multiple bouts of mastitis.

I had everything a breastfeeding mother should have to be successful: an incredibly supportive community (including a husband who did all of the housework and baby care so that I could feed, pump, massage, make herbal tinctures, whatever I could to bring my production under control), access to a team of lactation consultants, an incredibly supportive workplace that let me fit five pumping sessions into my schedule when I returned after a 6 month leave, and yet I was in constant pain or fear of it.

My struggle finally ended when my son was 11 months old and a combined bout of recurrent mastitis, blebs and thrush completely shut down my left breast. I am currently 6 months pregnant and while I plan to try and breastfeed again, I do not plan to struggle through the year of pain that I experienced previously. If I cannot bring my production under control then I will turn to formula because my children will do better to have a healthy mother who can interact with them than one who cannot hug them because it brings her to tears from pain.

We both know that these issues are volatile to both our audiences, for different reasons. It says a lot about your approach and your character that you'd consider another POV and respond to it with sensitivity.

It feels weird to comment further on a review of my own book so I will leave it at that - but please know that I appreciate what you did here. :)

I have a lot more respect for Barston's work than I do for that of Joan Wolf (or others like Hanna Rosin for that matter). Some people are more likely than others to cherry pick studies or quote things out of context than others.

I'm curious which comments you see as "thinly veiled internalized misogyny". Would you care to elaborate?