Over the weekend Jessica Martucci, medical ethicist and feminist historian, reached out to me on Twitter to ask how I deal with hate mail. Recently she’s been getting a lot of it, death threats included, in response to a paper she and colleague Anne Barnhill wrote in the journal Pediatrics.
Death threats about breastfeeding? Naturally!
[pullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Martucci and Barnhill didn’t merely step into a hornets nest, they were perceived by the hornets as stomping on it.[/pullquote]
In Unintended Consequences of Invoking the “Natural” in Breastfeeding Promotion, Martucci and Barnhill write:
…[W]e are concerned about breastfeeding promotion that praises breastfeeding as the “natural” way to feed infants. This messaging plays into a powerful perspective that “natural” approaches to health are better … Promoting breastfeeding as “natural” may be ethically problematic, and, even more troublingly, it may bolster this belief that “natural” approaches are presumptively healthier. This may ultimately challenge public health’s aims in other contexts, particularly childhood vaccination.
I found the title of the paper a bit clumsy, but their identification of the problem — the reflexive glorification of the “natural” — is spot-on.
In the world of healthcare, there is nothing intrinsically better about “natural.”
Approximately 30% of Americans are “naturally” nearsighted; correcting their eyesight with “interventions” like glasses and contact lenses dramatically improves their quality of life.
Approximately 20% of diagnosed pregnancies “naturally” end in miscarriage. We can’t currently prevent those miscarriages but if interventions are discovered that preserve these pregnancies, a great deal of pain and anguish could be eliminated.
It is deeply problematic to promote breastfeeding as superior because it natural, as Martucci and Barnhill point out, when it results in the belief that natural methods are better than technological innovations like vaccination.
Martucci and Barnhill didn’t realize that they weren’t merely stepping into a hornets nest, they were perceived by the hornets as stomping on it. Why? Because natural parenting (natural childbirth, breastfeeding, attachment parenting) isn’t about children, it’s an expressions of maternal identity. In the view of lactivists, the naturalness of breastfeeding marks them as superior to other mothers and Martucci and Barnhill were obliquely (and inadvertently) calling the superiority of these “Sanctimommies” into question.
Given the important of breastfeeding to some women’s self-esteem, the vicious response was entirely natural:
… “This reads like an Onion article. I can’t believe this is not satire,” opined one woman on Facebook, while another said, “Extremely upsetting. And simply ridiculous. I mean let’s call a fucking spade a spade. It IS by all definitions of the word the natural way to feed your baby. How is calling it what it is potentially unethical?”
“You and Anne Barnhill both need to be Killed the Natural way the sooner you two are Killed the better off women will be,” wrote a Twitter account with an egg for an avatar… [M]any of the comments on Facebook and on the news stories were from mothers who seemed to have a very emotional attachment to the concept of mother as breast-feeder.
“For the most part, the email response has been very cruel and personal,” says Martucci …
Earth to Sanctimommies:
Go back and read the paper again. The authors did not say that breastfeeding isn’t natural. They questioned the idea that natural equals superior, because it doesn’t. When public health advocates imply that something is better because it is natural they inadvertently diminish the value of public health interventions that are technological like vaccination.
Let’s be honest, vaccination saves far more lives than breastfeeding does. In fact, the countries in the world with the highest rates of infant mortality have the HIGHEST rates of breastfeeding.
In countries with access to clean water, the benefits of breastfeeding are trivial, limited to a few less colds and episodes of diarrheal illness across the entire population of infants each year. Breastfeeding maybe have advantages but NOT because it is natural.
This episode ought to inspire the breastfeeding industry to take a long, hard look at itself. What does it mean when lactivists send death threats to anyone who questions anything about breastfeeding? It means that breastfeeding has gone from one of two excellent methods to feed a baby to a way for breastfeeding mothers to torment anyone who doesn’t agree with their assessment of themselves as innately superior mothers. It has gone from a child rearing choice to an opportunity to bully women who don’t mirror lactivists’ choices back to them.
Remember the girls in the middle school cafeteria who wouldn’t let the unpopular girls sit with them at lunch? Hopefully, as adults we recognize that such behavior is a pathetic attempt to boost their fragile self-esteem by victimizing others.
Those girls have grown up and now hang out at the playground where they are still pathetically attempting to boost their fragile self-esteem, this time by victimizing women who don’t breastfeed. If you question their superiority, they send you death threats on social media.
The medical profession ought to take a long, hard look at itself, too. Doctors and hospital administrators have allowed this to happen by giving in to the breastfeeding industry lobby and promoting breastfeeding far, far beyond it’s actual benefits.
The American Academy of Pediatrics did not cover itself with glory in this incident, either:
The AAP Section on Breastfeeding Leadership read with interest the Perspectives in Pediatrics article, “Unintended Consequences of Invoking the ‘Natural’ in Breastfeeding Promotion” by Martucci and Barnhill. While we agree that the words we choose to encourage healthy behaviors certainly matter, equating breastfeeding as “natural” with the supposed “natural” of the anti-vaccine movement is neither logical, nor appropriate. Furthermore, this direct link is not substantiated in the literature.
Martucci and Barnhill were entirely logical and totally appropriate in questioning the strategy of framing breastfeeding as superior because it is natural. They are absolutely correct to caution that such framing strategies have had deadly unintended consequences by implying that natural is always better.
Let’s get a grip here, people. Breastfeeding simply isn’t that important. It’s time that the AAP disengages itself from the breastfeeding lobby and returns to promoting the interests of babies and mothers instead of the interests of lactivist. In fact it’s long past time to return to a more nuanced, science based policy than the one they currently promote.
