Up by Your Boobstraps
18th May 2022
To breastfeed, or not to breastfeed? it is one of those parenting decisions that, at first pass, seems to carry little to no political import. For most people most of the time, it’s the sort of thing that you can safely ignore as someone else’s personal preference, having nothing to do with anything or anyone else—none of your business especially. And for all intents and purposes, that’s right. To challenge a new mom on how she feeds her child would be utterly presumptuous, let alone extremely rude.
But as mothers across the country scramble to find ways to feed their infants in the face of a formula shortage, people have begun to wonder—why don’t more American mothers breastfeed? It’s a good question, even if for some, it carries an air of malice and blame. Unbeknownst to the critic, the economic, political, and social environment makes things infinitely more complicated than “you’re just not trying hard enough.”