Low Breastfeeding rates linked to Catholic Guilt

meeeeh

Jayop wrote: »

He didn't dismiss it because he wasn't given it. Personally if a mother wants to breast feed then she should do so and be given all the support needed and the right to do it when and where the child needs it. However if she should choose to bottle feed for whatever reason she shouldn't be made to feel guilty for that design.

The guilt tripping that I see happens more by health professionals than the church.

Either they were not attending antenatal classes and hospital appointments because they bombard you with literature on breastfeeding so much I actually think it's counter productive. The information is also easy to find from reliable sources such as WHO. Wilful ignorance can't be an excuse.

Frankly I don't give a damn what people do, I breastfed as long as it was convenient and not a day loger. But this whinging that people are forced or guilt tripped into something is nonsense. Health professionals should advise you about best options and what you do with that info is up to you.

rainbow kirby

I'm in the UK and breastfeeding an 8 month old. We had a nightmarish start - he was slow to latch, kept falling asleep on the boob and ended up back in hospital with jaundice, low blood sugar and a 12% weight loss at 3 days old, had to top up with formula and then expressed milk in the hospital. We did get some support on the postnatal ward, but got a lot more when we were re-admitted and on the children's ward. It was still hard after that, turned out that he had a tongue tie that was only diagnosed at 20 weeks and he'd outgrown his issues with it by the time he had his tongue tie clinic appointment at 24 weeks. Now it's very easy, boob at night to knock him out almost instantly feels like a superpower at times, but getting started and getting things established was hard work.

I actually think lack of support is a huge problem - "ah shur give a bottle" is NOT acceptable advice to a mother who wants to breastfeed, and the low levels of staffing on maternity wards and low levels of breastfeeding knowledge among midwives and nurses is a problem too. Lactation consultants need to be available 24/7 on the wards and for early home visits - "it's the weekend, no service" can sabotage someone's early feeding. They should be free or very heavily subsidised too - the cost should never be a barrier because the cost to the health service of another artificially fed baby is greater than the cost of early breastfeeding support.

Dolbert

In hospitals in Ireland, there is pressure from the get-go to "top-up" with formula. My son was born with a low birth weight and low blood sugars and I was strongly advised that he needed formula immediately. I could have refused, but when a doctor is telling you that your baby is in danger, it doesn't seem like the end of the world to agree to a bit of formula. I still had him on the breast practically 24/7, and even then my milk took 5 days to come in.

Hospitals and public health nurses are obsessed with the baby's weight. It's normal for newborns to lose a certain amount of weight in the days after birth, and alarm bells are rung if they've dropped below a certain threshold. What they don't take into account is that IV fluids during labour can artificially inflate the baby's birth weight, that breastmilk usually takes 3 days or so to come in or that breastfed babies generally don't gain weight as quickly as formula-fed.

In hospital, the feeding advice can change depending on which midwife is on duty. Some will tell you to persevere, that all baby needs is colostrum and to keep going. Others will be adamant that your baby is "starving" and needs a top-up. Of course this interrupts the baby's suckling reflex, which means the milk supply is never being stimulated properly. All of this before you even leave the hospital.

From speaking to friends who didn't breastfeed, their perception of it is that it's the harder option. That it's an ordeal that women "put themselves through" unnecessarily, and that you'd want to be stopping that carry on by 6 months (it's weird after that apparently :rolleyes:) I had an awful time at the start and a terrible supply despite my best efforts, but having the option to stop all crying/fussing/screaming blue murder with boob is a gift from the gods.

I don't buy the idea that it's down to religious guilt. Many European Catholic countries have excellent breastfeeding rates. What we do have in common with the Brits is prudishness. I personally found feeding in public a huge mental hurdle, or even feeding in a room with other people at first. Luckily nobody ever said anything negative to me (for them).

ceadaoin.

GreenFolder2 wrote: »

I'd say lack of maternity leave and inadequate close-to-work childcare are a huge factor.

I don't honestly think you'll get much of an issue with people taking offence to someone breastfeeding either. You see it all the time, certainly in Cork anyway.

I also saw a woman in a coffee shop complain that another woman was breastfeeding, so they gave the complainer a seat outside where she could be 'more comfortable'. She just left.

So, I really don't think there's likely to be much of an issue with anyone breastfeeding in public here. If anything you'll be stood up for by most businesses / members of the public.

I mean, what business wants to be tarnished with the reputation of being anti-breastfeeding?!

Search this forum for the term 'breastfeeding'. You'll find that prudishness and disgust towards public breastfeeding is fairly common

meeeeh

ceadaoin. wrote: »

Search this forum for the term 'breastfeeding'. You'll find that prudishness and disgust towards public breastfeeding is fairly common

In fairness you wouldn't want to judge attitudes by replys in AH.

I think most often is the mental block in our own heads. Plus it's awkward at the beginning just to latch baby on without making complete meal out of it andtrying it in public doesn't make it any easier. I never had any negative reaction from anyone. My partner's family needed to get used to it but I was never made to feel uncomfortable.

Jayop

Also anyone who thinks bottle feeding on formula is the 'easy' option clearly hasn't done it then. You have to make bottles up every time you need them, the days of making a full day's bottles in advance are gone.

Is it too much to expect that people on an Irish website could have the independence of mind to not regurgitate all these British Protestant stereotypes of Catholics and their supposed guilt and other supposed backward characteristics?

The way they carry on this traditional demonisation of the "otherness" of Catholics, and Irish Catholics in particular, you'd swear their own society was not poisoned with puritan and Victorian - a byword for repression - values. For instance, it's only since 1974 that the ban in England on playing soccer matches on a Sunday was lifted; and only in 2015 that the most "Protestant" part of the UK ended their ban on playing soccer on a Sunday. Bizarre. And don't even start about the ban on Catholics becoming their head of state. Yet still idiots accept their deeply rooted stereotyping of Irish Catholics as backward without questioning similar things in British society.

This whole "Catholic guilt" thing was never in the Catholic culture I was brought up in. It's a decidedly WASP invention imposed upon us.


Cultural Cringe

conorhal

ectoraige wrote: »

The biggest issue is that many Irish people don't have much exposure to breastfeeding. A study in the past suggested that most women have decided by the age of 16 whether they would breastfeed or not, indicating that public health promotions would be more successful if they were aimed at secondary schools rather than prenatal clinics.

Women are more likely to breastfeed when their mothers, aunts, or sisters have breastfed. More crucially, they are more likely to continue breastfeeding for longer when they have seen their peers breastfeed successfully.

The default position for Irish women seems to be one of doubting whether they'd even be able to breastfeed. Yes, it's difficult at the start, and can be very painful, but when you don't have the in-built confidence and knowledge that would you are trying can succeed, it is no wonder so many who try stop early on. There has always been a certain number of women who failed to breastfeed, but by-and-large, thanks to good peer support, women throughout the ages have not had a problem. There is nothing different about Irish breasts that makes breastfeeding hard, it's the mental attitudes and beliefs are held in Ireland.

It's about the cultural norms in a society.
Women today are far more likely to be working mothers, so breast feeding is simply out.
Combine that with the fact that they are having fewer kids and leaving it till later to have them, this often means they have no contact with breasfeeding women in their family or peer groups growing up so it's seem as something scary and unknown becaue they just have no one with experience to call on for advice.

GreenFolder2

meeeeh wrote: »

In fairness you wouldn't want to judge attitudes by replys in AH.

I think most often is the mental block in our own heads. Plus it's awkward at the beginning just to latch baby on without making complete meal out of it andtrying it in public doesn't make it any easier. I never had any negative reaction from anyone. My partner's family needed to get used to it but I was never made to feel uncomfortable.

The one time I did see a negative reaction the "reactor" was the person who felt the scorn of glaring eyes, snide comments and people tutting, not the woman who was breast feeding.

Autonomous Cowherd

There was a time when there was some sort of ''guilt'' abroad in the land, be it Catholic or not. On her visit to me after I gave birth to my first-born my mother declined to enter my house and chose to stand outside in the rain as I was breast-feeding inside ''like an animal'' on the couch. What did I do in the face of this bizarre reaction? I put up my feet and me and the baba took our good time about it.

deisemum

I breastfed my children, they're young adults in college now so breastfeeding wasn't as common back then. I got some pretty weird negative comments at times and it was always from women, never men, in fact men were very positive about it.

Arghus

To be fair, it only says in the report that supposed Catholic guilt may act as a factor in explaining comparatively low rates for Breastfeeding in Ireland.

The people behind the study aren't claiming that they've reached that definite conclusion; it's just a theory that they have at this moment. Amongst many others, one would assume. Of course it's hard to actually tell this for sure, because the media coverage has focused in on one tiny facet of the research, to the detriment to the big picture, because the headline will guarantee clicks.

A pretty simplistic way to approach it, but, even so, if you actually read the article it's clear enough that they are far from stating as fact what is claimed in the headline. They could have another dozen potential conclusions, not that the article cares about that.

Never ceases to amaze me how whenever someone starts a thread here on Boards based upon an article that they'll link to in the OP, the thread will just run and run, with the majority of posters clearly having not read the article that sets it all off.

meeeeh

The discussion evolved about many more things than just article. Besides while conditional 'may' it is used, it's clear it was major element of the study.

cyning

I don't think it's a catholic thing at all... I really feel it's cultural. People are obsessed with getting babies to sleep the whole night through asap: never mind that lots of adults don't. Grannies want to babysit, everyone wants to hold the baby and give it a bottle, we have a national obsession with going out on the tear (and plenty of myths that you have to pump and dump if you want to have a drink). Whole generations before us haven't breastfed so it's a skill that's partly lost unless you have the support of an ibclc or others. The midwives in the hospital pestered me (and subsequently I got a written apology) to take my baby to the nursery so I could get some sleep, never mind that I had to say no 5 times. Something that isn't that uncommon. So for me it's cultural not catholic anyway!

GreenFolder2

I never, ever got the reason for the hang up about breastfeeding! It's literally about the most natural part of being a mammal!

rainbow kirby

conorhal wrote: »

Women today are far more likely to be working mothers, so breast feeding is simply out

I wouldn't necessarily agree. I went back to work in mid-November when my son was 7.5 months old, so off for long enough to have a very well established supply and to have him comfortably eating solid food. I pump at lunchtime and get enough to cover most of his needs for the next day, and we feed at home in the evening. Going back to work doesn't have to be the end of the road.

MeatTwoVeg

I'm a big fan of both feeding and breasts.

Fuzzytrooper

rainbow kirby wrote: »

I wouldn't necessarily agree. I went back to work in mid-November when my son was 7.5 months old, so off for long enough to have a very well established supply and to have him comfortably eating solid food. I pump at lunchtime and get enough to cover most of his needs for the next day, and we feed at home in the evening. Going back to work doesn't have to be the end of the road.

Fair play to you. THere's a lot of mothers that give up on breastfeeding after the first week or two. My wife found it hard at the start due to inexperience and our son having a lip tie. SHe pushed through and baby#2 has been so much easier. The best bit of advice she was given was don't decide to quit when in the middle of a difficult time e.g. having trouble latching in the middle of the night.

I totally get if people can't breast feed for medical reasons but I think a lot of people give up way too early on.

_Jamie_

TheDoc wrote: »

Have to say on our second child, now two months old, I didn't appreciate the forcefulness of signage and staff pushing breastfeeding. No one in the hospital was able to provide any scientific evidence, all the sentences and "benefits" used were about bonding and basically things that are not quantifiable. The only thing that appeared to be concrete from the information we asked for was "it helps the mother lose babyweight quicker" : /

I'm really surprised they didn't give you anything more concrete. Here's a big one; the baby's immune system is underdeveloped for the first six or so months of life, and the mother's milk gives them the antibodies they have not yet developed themselves. So the mother's milk boosts the infant's immunity to infection. Your kids seem to have got through unscathed but infants that are not breastfeed will be more prone to developing infections and because of their immature immune systems, less able to fight infections they might develop.

_Jamie_

seamus wrote: »

Many people in Ireland have been raised to think that boobs, bums and genitals are dirty and should be covered up. Women in particular are often raised to think that sex is something which should be reluctantly endured and soon forgotten.

In the past, I'm sure, but present tense? Not generally, no. You said to a poster above that just because she is not surrounded by people who think this way, doesn't mean it doesn't happen. Sure, but it's a pretty bold claim to make that it often happens. I really don't believe that, not nowadays. It's an outdated view that I doubt you can back up.

JupiterKid

seamus wrote: »

Many people in Ireland have been raised to think that boobs, bums and genitals are dirty and should be covered up. Women in particular are often raised to think that sex is something which should be reluctantly endured and soon forgotten.

It's not hard to see why they would also consider breastfeeding, or indeed any normal bodily function to be disgusting.

It may not be direct catholic guilt, but it can be by proxy. Parental influence on children is huge and the majority of new mothers today have parents who were raised under the jackboot of Catholic authoritarianism, and encouraged to be ashamed of themselves.

In the 1950s maybe, but a little thing happened long since called the Sexual Revolution and that even found its way eventually to Ireland.

But I do agree that there is a prudishness around breastfeeding in public.

seamus

_Jamie_ wrote: »

In the past, I'm sure, but present tense? Not generally, no. You said to a poster above that just because she is not surrounded by people who think this way, doesn't mean it doesn't happen. Sure, but it's a pretty bold claim to make that it often happens. I really don't believe that, not nowadays. It's an outdated view that I doubt you can back up.

Ironically data about sexual attitudes in Ireland are surprisingly hard to come by because we don't tend to study it.

http://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/health-family/sex-survey/let-s-talk-about-sex-the-full-survey-results-1.2263907

Which in general show men to be more liberal (only just, to be fair) about sex.

I have no doubt that younger women probably have more open attitudes about it now, but specifically when you're talking about breastfeeding, the average new/recent mother was born and raised in the 1980s and 90s, when attitudes were only starting to change.

meeeeh

seamus wrote: »

I have no doubt that younger women probably have more open attitudes about it now, but specifically when you're talking about breastfeeding, the average new/recent mother was born and raised in the 1980s and 90s, when attitudes were only starting to change.

What has attitude to sex to do with attitude to breastfeeding? I am all for sex but are able to think of breasts just as sexual object? It's actually that kind of attitude that is not helpful. Prudish women through the history were well able to breastfeed, it's seems that when breasts became overwhelmingly a sex object problems started.

Day Lewin

Just for context - I breastfed all my children for many months, I nursed them in planes, trains and automobiles, restaurants, parks and anywhere I happened to be.
This was in the 1980's and 90s.
In all that time, nobody ever gave me a negative word or a dirty look. Absolutely true fact. Occasionally an older woman would give me a smile of encouragement or a few words about her own babies, but that's it.
The nearest to prudery I ever saw was when a very conservative aunt of my husband's offered me a separate room in her house to feed the baby during a Christmas party.
People may expect more prudishness than they would actually find!

whiskeyman

cyning wrote: »

I don't think it's a catholic thing at all... I really feel it's cultural.

Autonomous Cowherd wrote: »

There was a time when there was some sort of ''guilt'' abroad in the land, be it Catholic or not. .

ceadaoin. wrote: »

Search this forum for the term 'breastfeeding'. You'll find that prudishness and disgust towards public breastfeeding is fairly common

Dolbert wrote: »

I don't buy the idea that it's down to religious guilt. Many European Catholic countries have excellent breastfeeding rates. What we do have in common with the Brits is prudishness..

Lia_lia wrote: »

I don't know would I call it Catholic guilt but many Irish people are prudes.

When I first heard about the report, I scoffed at it linked it to religion / Catholic guilt.
But the more I think and talk about it to friends, the more I see it's true.
People seem to forget the influence of the Catholic Church on our society.
Generations were brought up that their bodies were disgusting and that any bodily functions were frowned upon.
It's no wonder so many feel uncomfortable with breastfeeding. I know so many of the older generation, and even the new, who are very uncomfortable with the sight of a breastfeeding mother, and many often voice their opinion on this.
No wonder so many new mothers are put off the idea of breastfeeding.

I can't remember seeing breastfeeding on TV at all. Did it ever happen on any of the soaps? Glenroe / Fair City etc...? We probably had a gay kiss first before a mother was shown breastfeeding!
We think we've come on as a society, but we're still so backwards in many ways.

GreenFolder2

GreenFolder2 wrote: »

I never, ever got the reason for the hang up about breastfeeding! It's literally about the most natural part of being a mammal!

Maybe that is the problem. Maybe many people do not like things that remind them that we are in fact animals and mammals. They like to maintain the illusion that the world is somehow tiered - plants at the bottom - animals above that - and us somehow separate and above it all. Something else - something special.

cyning

Our culture is undoubtedly heavily influenced by the Catholic Church. But we aren't the only Catholic country, and there is quite a bit of religious iconography showing Jesus breastfeeding. But we are still the country with the lowest rates. I was feeding in my husbands granny's house one day: she has no problems with breastfeeding but her daughters do. They left the room along with their teenage daughters when they realised I was doing that. My granny wasn't allowed breastfeed as she was told that she wouldn't have enough milk and she could afford the "proper" stuff. Everyone in my family breastfed I was in my 20s before I realised not everyone fed for the first few months

There was a serious cultural "thing" here too that only teachers and travellers breastfeed (what used be said!). Which is ironic now because members of the travelling community are not allowed to breastfeed in Irish hospitals until the results of their beutler test is given.

IvyTheTerrible

I was chatting to my sister the other day on the phone, I said I'd have to go because I was going to have to give the boob to the baby. She said disgustedly "Don't say that! That's disgusting" oh and I'm to make sure I don't say the "boob" word in front of my father at Christmas. Cos it'll make him uncomfortable, apparently.

Lucyfur

IvyTheTerrible wrote: »

I was chatting to my sister the other day on the phone, I said I'd have to go because I was going to have to give the boob to the baby. She said disgustedly "Don't say that! That's disgusting" oh and I'm to make sure I don't say the "boob" word in front of my father at Christmas. Cos it'll make him uncomfortable, apparently.

Oh god that's really sad I get that breastfeeding isn't for everyone and tbh I don't give a hoot how Mary down the road feeds her baby but it is sad to hear of our own generation describing something so natural, convenient and so good for mum and baby as disgusting

seamus

IvyTheTerrible wrote: »

I was chatting to my sister the other day on the phone, I said I'd have to go because I was going to have to give the boob to the baby. She said disgustedly "Don't say that! That's disgusting" oh and I'm to make sure I don't say the "boob" word in front of my father at Christmas. Cos it'll make him uncomfortable, apparently.

Day Lewin may be onto something when she stated earlier that perhaps people are less squeamish for themselves about breastfeeding, but more worried about whether it makes other people squeamish?