Breast-feeding: The politics of mother’s milk

last updated 8 January 2015

It seemed like a perfectly harmless suggestion, said Lynn Sweet in PoliticsDaily.com. But First Lady Michelle Obama took flak from Sarah Palin and other conservatives last week after she encouraged mothers to breast-feed during their children’s first six months of life. Obama’s statements—made as part of her anti-childhood-obesity campaign, “Let’s Move”—followed a recent IRS decision that made breast pumps a tax-deductible medical expense. Kids “who are breast-fed longer have a lower tendency to be obese,” Obama said, noting particularly low breast-feeding rates in the black community, “where 40 percent of babies never get breast-fed at all.” Obama wants hospitals to make it easier for mothers to breast-feed, and to cut down on the use of infant formula. But by “throwing the spotlight on nursing,” Obama inadvertently attracted a harsh glare herself.

“Big Mother” knows best, said Michelle Malkin in National Review Online. “As a proud mom who breast-fed both of her babies,” I am the first to defend a woman’s right to nurse. But we don’t need the government to tell us how to nurture and raise our kids. Somehow, generations of women managed without Michelle Obama’s hectoring. Ironically, Obama may have more in common with her high-profile critics than with the women she’s trying to help, said Danielle Friedman in TheDailyBeastâ€‹.com. Both Palin and Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann blasted Obama, with Bachmann decrying Obama’s breast-feeding campaign as a “new definition of the nanny state.” But each woman acknowledged having breast-fed her own children. Less-privileged women, however, are not always so fortunate. Nursing in public is still largely taboo, and few workplaces have lactation rooms. “If you wouldn’t prepare a sandwich for your child in a bathroom, why should you pump your breast milk in one?”

“What is it about the campaign for better nutrition and healthier lifestyles” that gets people in such a lather? said Jonathan Cohn in The New Republic online. This should be easy. Obesity costs America $117 billion a year. A Harvard Medical School study found that if 90 percent of mothers followed breast-feeding guidelines, we could save “$13 billion a year in health-care costs, while saving the lives of 900 infants who would avoid or survive infections.” So why not try steering mothers in the right direction? said Dana Sullivan Kilroy in TheWallStreetJournal .com. Are we so polarized that a political “uproar” can spoil even mother’s milk? It seems “even when children’s health is involved, politicians can’t put their ideology aside.”