If mothers who breastfeed often face the world. Breastfeeding in today's society is full of obstacles: bad information about the environment that repeats many false topics, poor training of toilets, contradictory messages and pressures of all kinds. All this makes women who manage to exclusively breastfeed until six months are much less than those who want to do it. But if until now they faced the world in general, now, Breastfeeding mothers will face "The World."
It has appeared in the Sunday of October 17 of the newspaper "The World" an article that women who breastfeed have found enormously controversial, because compare mothers who breastfeed with cows.
Breastfeeding organizations and mothers have felt offended and have started a frantic protest activity on their pages and blogs that will culminate in more direct actions.
Breastfeeding is not incompatible with women's work. Breastfeeding protects from many more diseases than the ailments that may be associated with it such as mastitis or cracks. And, of course, although raising is not exclusively breastfeeding, for that reason precisely that a breastfeeding woman does not exclude the father from caring for the child.
The World Health Organization, UNICEF and the Spanish Association of Pediatrics recommend exclusive breastfeeding up to six months for scientific reasons. And, fortunately, despite the difficulties, the numbers of women who breastfeed are increasing, even if they can be improved.
Improving breastfeeding rates is not the interest of antifeminist groups, but of health promoters and a natural right of mothers and children. Quite simply, human women produce the milk of human children. And although there are problems and women who give up breastfeeding, breastfeeding does not make us cows.
Breastfeeding is health. And health is always progress. Let us mention, for example, data such as those we published not long ago, which explained that breastfeeding would save a million and a half lives a year.
The bottle has nothing to do with progress or feminism, artificial milk exists and should be used to feed children who cannot have breast milk for medical reasons or the woman's decision, but not of course, as a progressive social conquest.
The movement has already been picked up by the media, as a Digital Journalist who has defined it, citing Ileana, the author of the blog We got boobs, in this blunt way:
A shameful cover, which will be kept forever in the archives of the history of human stupidity, as proof of the raving that this dehumanized society can reach.
The mobilization, in addition to letters to the director of the publication, will materialize in complaints before the Observatory of Women and the Ministries to which the protection of children, women and health, in addition to numerous public teats scheduled for Thursday before the local headquarters of "The World".
Also, on Facebook, a group called Me Indigna has been created that “The World” makes this attack on Breastfeeding, which in two days has almost 4,000 users and continues to grow.
The controversy, which is surely what was sought with the article, has exploded and, in my opinion quite rightly. An image of women like the one presented and such a partial text can fool many people who do not have correct information,
Fortunately, not all popular media enter this game of commercial interests and biased vision, because, for example, last August, "El País" published an extraordinary article that dealt with this same issue from the objectivity and seriousness expected , entitled "Learning to be mammals again."
We are not cows, we are human, and, within the freedom of each woman and her circumstances, it is normal and natural for us to feed our children with our milk, not with the calves. Breastfeeding is not a war between mothers and is, of course, not a matter of modernity. Using artificial lactation is a decision of each woman attending to multiple causes, but breastfeeding does not make us cows.
Progress cannot happen by depriving children of breast milk, a recognized source of health, but by giving mothers and children the chance to enjoy breastfeeding without being deprived of rights and possibilities for it.
We are not cows, we are human. Therefore, the mobilization of nursing mothers against "The World" It will make noise and a lot. The mainstream media have a commitment to their readers, to inform from the objectivity and with real data. And, in this case, they have let us down.
