Be nice, dammit!

[ailbhe]

I just read something else online about women attacking each other for not breastfeeding. In particular,this was about women with problems, or mourning the loss of their breastfeeding relationship, being told "If only you'd done (or not done) this..."

Well, wow, that's helpful! That's about as helpful as the crazy make-em-cry midwife in the hospital when Emer was born, berating a woman for having been given a bottle to feed her infant by a member of staff. Ailbhe's Helpful Lactivism Tips: Calling people "stupid" doesn't make them inclined to listen to your advice. It makes them want to hit you or cry.

I believe breastmilk is the best thing to feed a baby. I believe it's best for mother and baby alike. I believe that women should be encouraged and supported when they want to breastfeed. And I can't for the life of me see how attacking people does either of those things.

Comments

[dreamalynn.livejournal.com]

I agree wholeheartedly with you, but I think the problem is that we've seen, especially on LJ, that a lot of women are touchy. They get bad advice, cling to it, have failures from it, then throw up their hands, quit and shriek "don't judge me!!!"

Don't judge, sure. But having these failure stories sitting out there in breastfeeding and other such communities is bad news for people looking for help. But if anyone dares say "wow, I'm sorry, but for anyone else reading, it was probably X that caused Y which led to Z." where Z = supply tanking or intractable nipple soreness or whatever led to the quitting then there are always certain people who will jump up to immediately label that as an attempt to shame and blame, rather than an attempt at community education.

I don't know how to settle that problem. The person who can fix that will rule the world.

[ailbhe]

On the rare occasions I have felt it would be helpful to give this information in direct response to a stated problem, I try to say something along the lines of "I'm so sorry it worked out this way for you. I'm sorry that your doctor didn't know [xyz]. We depend on our doctors and when they let us down there's nothing we can do about it. It might help other women if you could write to the practice saying [xyz] so that they can train up on it."

Blame the advice-giver, not the frightened, sleep-deprived, hormonal mother who took it.

[dreamalynn.livejournal.com]

I rarely see anyone who doesn't blame the advice giver, or the advice. Unfortunately, that's still frequently interpreted as blame on the mother, because she (and her friends) throw up the "quit trying to make me feel guilty!" thing, even when no one is saying that the mother did anything wrong at all. Some people are incapable (or are unwilling) to see the difference between "the advice you got was wrong" and "what you did was wrong."