A story has emerged that The Department of Health and Human Services toned down their breast-feeding awareness advertising campaign, following the heavy influence and lobbying of infant formula companies.
In an attempt to raise the nation’s historically low rate of breast-feeding, federal health officials commissioned an attention-grabbing advertising campaign a few years ago to convince mothers that their babies faced real health risks if they did not breast-feed. It featured striking photos of insulin syringes and asthma inhalers topped with rubber nipples.
Plans to run these blunt ads infuriated the politically powerful infant formula industry, which hired a former chairman of the Republican National Committee and a former top regulatory official to lobby the Health and Human Services Department. Not long afterward, department political appointees toned down the campaign.
The ads ran instead with more friendly images of dandelions and cherry-topped ice cream scoops, to dramatize how breast-feeding could help avert respiratory problems and obesity. In a February 2004 letter, the lobbyists told then-HHS Secretary Tommy G. Thompson they were “grateful” for his staff’s intervention to stop health officials from “scaring expectant mothers into breast-feeding,” and asked for help in scaling back more of the ads.
I found this story to be interesting particularly because of my unexpected reaction to it. The automatic response is to say that this is the perfect example of government corruption, and the lobbying group never should have been allowed to get involved. I agree with that. The way that this issue was handled was completely wrong, and I would like to see some heads roll over the tactics.
What I don’t see being addressed, though, is the advertisements themselves.
Reading the description of the planned campaign, I was pretty shocked. Yes, breast-feeding is best for babies. Yes, it is associated with healthier children and a lower risk of many medical conditions. That’s definitely not the same, though, as formula causing diabetes and asthma. And even if it was the same, I still don’t think that justifies trying to scare the shit out of women and making them feel guilty about their choices.
Right now, women receive extremely conflicting messages regarding breast-feeding. They’re told that they’re bad women and bad mothers if they don’t do it. This is despite the fact that many women actually have a lot of difficulty breast-feeding. It’s also despite the fact that women are simultaneously told that while they have to breast-feed, they’re also not allowed to leave their houses while doing it. They’re told that they’re not allowed to have extra breaks at work, or a special location to pump milk (we wouldn’t want them to have any “special treatment”). And women are also constantly told that the primary value of their breasts is sexual, that their worth as a feminine creature involves their breasts, and that breast-feeding with “ruin” them and strip them of sexual desirability.
Under these circumstances, I have a major problem with the guilt-trips. It’s true that the new, toned-down ads proved to be ineffective. I don’t deny that. But I also argue that it’s not really the point. The point, I think, is that we’re not going to convince more women to breast-feed until we change the public perception of what it means to breast-feed.
That means ensuring that women have the right to breast-feed in public without being asked to leave or relocate to the bathroom (ew!). It means requiring that women have the right to pump milk at work (I thought that it was interesting how Broadsheet has a post reprimanding the reaction to these advertisements, and a post questioning whether protection for breast-feeding mothers is needed within a day of each other. Two different bloggers, but still). It means awareness-raising advertisements aimed at everyone (not just the silly little pregnant women and mothers who should already “know better”), promoting the benefits of breast-feeding and the fact that it is a completely natural, in no way obscene act. It means longer maternity leave. It means a greater appreciation of what mothers do.
Until then, yeah, I do want the lobby groups out of it. But I’m also not going to defend a campaign telling women, almost all of whom are doing the best that they can, that they’re “choosing” to condemn their children to a lifetime of medical problems.
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But what you don’t get is that studies were done that showed that the scare tactics would be the ONLY effective way to change people’s perceptions of breastfeeding. And the ads would not only be seen by new moms, but by everyone one on every bus or train or in every public place that carried the ads, which would over time change EVERYONE’S perception of breastfeeding. Women complain now that they are made to feel bad for not breastfeeding, so maybe a few more would feel a bit bad if they saw the inhaler with a bottle nipple on it, but over the long term, it WOULD have been effective, possible for our whole society.
So now we’re back to square one where women are apparently being made to feel bad about not breastfeeding, and society as a whole ignores the issue and women are still forced to breastfeed in bathroom stalls. And no one needs to change what they think.
I’m in favor of scaring a few moms into breastfeeding, if we can persuade everyone that it’s worth trying to do.
i am going to agree here…it’s no different than the pictures of horribly diseased children in immunization clinics, scaring people into immunizing their kids. no one seems to complain about looking a rubella victims…
breastfeeding is SO GOOD for babies…and for lower income women, better than cheap b/c it’s free. even if you have to go back to work, workplaces are mandated to provide a time and a place to pump, and health departments loan pumps out free or no cost! if scaring women into nursing gets the world to open up a little bit about where we can breastfeet, and how socially acceptable it is to do in public…then i am all for it! i understand, and have experienced first hand, the guilt that new moms feel b/c they worry they are doing enough…but this is a genuinely good thing that noone should be afraid to try!
i might catch flack for saying so…but i would endorse such campaigns. i was scolded too many times b/c it was ‘indecent’ to feed in public, or how my daughter’s father told me it made him feel bad b/c those were ‘his’ boobs and it was prejudicial against fathers…(needless to say, we are not together) whatever…we need to make nursing feel as normal and healthy as it really is for our babies…
also, i should add…i hold nothing against people who don’t nurse b/c they can’t, or people who ultimately choose the bottle…but i really think everyone should try and feel great about it!
“workplaces are mandated to provide a time and a place to pump”
Are you sure about that? How sure? I looked up local laws, and ’round these here parts, employers are “encouraged to support breastfeeding,” but not legally obligated to actually DO anything about it (provide time/place, etc) other than say “Hey, good luck with that.”
Maybe if we actually had a culture that (legally) supported breastfeeding instead of paying it useless lip service through these ads, we wouldn’t need these stupid ads.
So, yeah, put me down as very against the “scaring women into breastfeeding” ads until this country has reasonable paid maternity leave and laws supporting women who want to breastfeed.
You’re right, akeeyu. There are different types of state legislation mandating that workplaces provide a place to pump, but they are far from the norm, and there is no national law. The last link in this post is about national legislation that is being introduced to guarantee exactly that.
Besides state laws mandating that women be given a time to pump at work, there are also laws in almost every state that that give a woman the right to nurse in public, “even if the nipple is exposed” and any person or business who asks them to do otherwise can be fined.
But Cara is right that the real problem is public perception. Stress and comfort has a lot to do with a woman’s success at breast-feeding. I would feel so uncomfortable at times with the disapproving stares I received, (not only because I was nursing in public but also because I am a young mother) that my milk would stop flowing. When my baby was 4 months old, I lost my milk completely and had to bottle feed.
So I am conflicted to hear about the debate between the formula companies. On the one hand, I agree with the other commentators that the most extreme circumstances can be the most effective. On top of that, formula companies have an atrocious track record of lying to people to make them believe that formula is better for babies than mother’s milk. There was recently a huge protest in Indonesia because of this. And in this country, the formula companies had it so that doctors would give every woman a shot after she gave birth that would prevent her from nursing. So as I see it, the companies were getting what they deserve. They’re terrible corporations that take advantage of the poor and ignorant. However, I think the federal health officials should focus their efforts more on changing society’s opinion about nursing and about breasts in general than a few extreme health risks.
This is a very loaded issue for me, and I think I have to process more before I’d be ready to comment. But I do want to come back, so remind me if you notice I forgot?
Okay– I was actually really interested in hearing what you think, Dew!
Well, I’m a pro-breastfeeding woman who was physically unable to breastfeed. On top of that, my babies were allergic to BOTH formula made with cow’s milk AND formula made with soy. So it was a very difficult thing for me to accept that my options were so limited (a prescription for some type of pre-digested sort of formula was the answer). There’s a lot of guilt drummed into new mothers in SO many ways; it’s not just how they feed their babies but what sort of diapers they use, whether they sleep with their babies, whether they feed on schedule or on demand, whether they use daycare or not, whether they work or not, etc. I had particular guilt because it’s not even like normal formula was a reasonable alternative.
Dictating whether or not women SHOULD breastfeed is just another way of taking over women’s bodies and telling them what to do with them. Telling women that their breasts are their baby’s only path to good health and then telling them that their breasts are nasty and not to be seen in public places puts women in a position of having to defend their actions, defend their use of their bodies no matter which choice they make. It reminds me of the whole “welfare mothers are a drain on society but if they abort, they’re murderers” attitude. Because a breastfeeding mother WILL get dirty looks and comments in public and a bottle-feeding mother WILL get dirty looks and comments in public. There’s no winning. Yet all a man has to do is seem to be aware his child exists, and he’s heaped with praise.
And I strongly believe that the only reason anyone objects to public breastfeeding at all is that breasts have been co-opted and overly sexualized, so that people feel internally as though a woman is actively molesting her baby when they see the baby engaging in what they’ve only ever perceived as a sexual act — sucking on a breast. They say it’s about seeing the woman’s breast, but that’s bullshit. Women’s breasts are on display everywhere, and no one mentions it unless there’s a baby receiving nourishment.
Interesting remarks. It’s good to see that a woman who has been through the process thinks that I got it right!
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