Where's the profit in mandatory breastfeeding? Nestle and other formula manufacturers would ensure any such legislation went nowhere.

breastfeed their babies and the way to encourage it is to provide real maternity leave time and real support to mom's. The breast feeding rate in the US is at something dismal like 20%.

I do think a child has a right to real milk from it's mammalian mom. And 2 years is right, not 2 months....

Sorry, I do not understand NOT breast feeding, and see it as highly exploitive that mom's are expected to be back at some stupid job weeks after giving birth. Our US attitude that only money matters creates this horrible reality, where mothering is reduced to something considered not worthy of respect or societal support. It becomes something only the wealthy and super motivated can pull off and further separates the have from the have nots.

If anyone tried to force me to breast feed for TWO YEARS because it's my childs right, could stick it right where the sun don't shine.

Making it mandatory for ANY amount of time is unacceptable. Two years is ridiculous, and honestly I see this as just one more attempt to control women and take away their autonomy.

and encourage, please don't create a problem when there is not one.

I have a really different perspective that came out of having a horrible time trying to nurse my first baby. I am one of those few that had horrible problems with latching (despite being in a hospital in a university town with La Leche reps on site and lots of support). With the baby losing weight we finally tried pumping - but being hooked up to all the equipment (and in a lot of pain I might add from trying unsuccessfully to breastfeed for 2 days) I felt like an animal.

I couldn't take it and told them to feed her formula. My husband was able to have his turns feeding her as well which meant I actually got some sleep at points.

In my view mandatory breastfeeding is the same as taking a women's rights away from her. I agree folks need to be educated (no problem with a mandatory course on the nutritional value of breast feeding for example) - but anytime someone says to me "you must do this with your body" I get a little stabby to be honest.

I said wish, not mandatory. I said encourage and educate and support. Please, plenty of women who try cannot for all sorts of reasons. But, for the women who can, it is important for them to be supported while doing it.

I do not support anything mandatory. But I do support support and encouragement and destigmatizing breastfeeding in public.

agree completely. If this is not a component of middle/high school health classes it should be. Plenty of teenage moms out there & I would bet many don't know the health benefits of breast milk for the baby.

but legislating this as mandatory is *way* over the top.

Way, WAY over the top.

it does illustrate how frustrating it is to see generations of people injured by the marketing practices of the formula manufacturers who have made billions on formula and presenting it as the way to live a "modern" productive life.

I was a Peace Corps volunteer in West Africa in the late 70's and the bottle formula ads were all around the capital city. I had a picture in my photo album of my sister breastfeeding her baby. This picture was taken out of my album and showed to all the women in the village that I lived in by the first wife of the head man in the compound that I lived in.

This was the very first picture any woman in this village had ever seen of a white woman breastfeeding a baby. All the ads made it seem as though the way to the "prosperity" of the modern white world was through giving babies formula, that was somehow scientifically better than breastmilk. As though they were reducing their children's chance of success BY breastfeeding them.

I think that unless you have been exposed to the tactics of these multinationals peddling this stuff, you may not understand the very bad effects on the population.

I am not advocating this approach, but I am not surprised to see a backlash against the multinationals peddling formula so relentlessly.

I really am curious about your question. Can you answer me please?

Encourage and support are quite different from making mandatory. Even these guys making it mandatory are going to pay for the wet nurses somehow. Where does anyone say starve the child?

Do you think that formula is better than human milk or even closely equivalent to it?

--on the mandatory regimen, then what? You do realize that way back when everything was all natural that the human infant mortality rate was 25-50%, right?

Why are you arguing with me?

Have you ever lived outside of the US? Do you realize how the formula mega corporations have marketed their products for generations now?

Do you believe that formula is a better than human milk?

Do you actually think those mortality figures are about breastmilk? If they are correct I would assume that they had more to do with sanitation and immunization development and advances in medicine in general.

My mother wanted very badly to breastfeed me and my twin brothers, but never had enough milk. I'm seeing promotion of breastfeeding as an attack on my mother, even when this was not the intent at all.

or anyone.

There are plenty of women who have trouble producing enough milk. Or are taking medications that make it an unwise choice. I had a really hard time myself. I guess because I saw the effect on the moral of the women who befriended me in West Africa who honestly thought that they were inferior BECAUSE they breastfed their babies.... which is why that photo went viral in the village before the Internet. No one should feel inferior FOR breast feeding. And I do think that is why the reaction in some countries seems so over the top to us.

This issue is such a hot button for so many.

I agree with you that we are short-changing infants here, but I don't know why. It seems that many women here have issues which prevent them from doing this. I hope that some organization looks into the issues faced by women here and other western countries, vs. the issues faced by women in developing countries. Perhaps we could find some answers and enable more mothers here to give their kids a head start via natural feeding.

I have read of one tribe where it's normal for Dad's to atleast go thru the motions when mom is away. Seems fitting they should take equal time to bond with their child.

milk production? Mom can pump milk if dad wants to feed with a bottle. Or not, whatever, I think it is known by most everyone that formula is only there as a last resort. The trouble is, that it has been presented as BETTER than breast milk and the way to achieve modernity in third world countries in particular. And these ads have belittled women in these parts of the world and made them feel backward and unsophisticated. Really sick and awful!

I think you would see the Powers that Be do a U-turn, toot sweet. So I intended to suggest if the men in these places think it's so important for the babies to be breast fed. They have them as well and a little Prolactin will have them producing milk for their babies.

If men are given prolactin, they can produce adequate and comparable milk to a woman's? Learn something new everyday!