Never mind breastfeeding in public. The mere knowledge that a woman breastfeeds her children, at all, leads people to view her as less competent in the workplace and less good at math, according to a new study.

In one of several experiments testing attitudes toward breastfeeding, 60 students were told they’d be forming general impressions of other people, based on a brief meeting and reading of a short profile. Each met a woman whose profile described her as a married transfer student and psychology major. During the course of the experiment, this woman—actually a confederate of the researchers— checked her voicemail and played out loud a friendly message that varied in one way: It expressed understanding that the woman wanted to push back a social event because she had to go home to 1) breastfeed her baby; 2) give a baby a bath (emphasizing her motherhood but not breastfeeding) ; 3) change into a strapless bra (emphasizing the sexuality of the breasts); or for an unexplained reason.

The students rated the “breastfeeding” woman lowest of the four on overall competence, workplace capabilities, math ability—and also whether they’d hire her, if they were in a position to do so.

(Interestingly, there was no penalty for motherhood per se, although the sexualized woman was downgraded on all the attributes.)

Labels: breastfeeding, culture, gender, motherhood, parenting, women

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...That, at least, is the view of Elisabeth Badinter, a French philosopher who has shaken her fellow feminists with a frontal assault on the breastfeeding, pumpkin-peeling, earth motherhood ideologists who she believes are a threat to women’s liberation.

Her latest book, Le Conflit, La Femme et La Mère (The Conflict, The Woman and The Mother), which is topping the bestseller lists in France amid intense debate, maintains that women have thrown off the shackles of male domination only to impose a far more pernicious tyranny on themselves — that of their own children.

She advocates a return to the old French model, which involved whatever necessary — powdered milk, baby minders, nurseries, you name it — to prevent les enfants from taking over their mothers’ lives. ...

But Badinter backs her arguments up by contrasting the fertility rate in France (2.0 children per woman) with that of Germany (1.3 children). The explanation she gives is that France is more resistant to earth motherhood, with only just over half of mothers breastfeeding, for example, compared with almost 100 per cent in Germany.

“We’ve always been mediocre mothers here,” Badinter said (pointing out that in the 18th century French women farmed their children out to nurses “so that they could continue to have social lives and sex with their husbands”). “But we’ve tended to have happier lives.” In other words, you can still be une mère and une femme as well — even if the tension between the two is rising in France as it is elsewhere.

For die mutter, on the other hand, “once you become a mother, you are only a mother” — an unacceptable choice for the quarter of young German women (more than double the French proportion) who are opting not to have children at all.

Britain is somewhere in between, she says — pulled by tradition towards the French model and by fashion towards a touchy-feely, child-centred future. We should stop before it is too late. “The English tradition of sending children to boarding school from a young age is like the 18th-century French tradition of sending them to nurses — a way of getting rid of them.”

And that, to Badinter, is no bad thing.

Labels: breastfeeding, demographics, feminism, France, gender differences, Germany, motherhood, United Kingdom

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The day Charles Moses Martin Goodrich entered the world, a new community was conceived.

As the newborn breathed in life, his mother, Susan Goodrich, began to die. Less than 12 hours after having her son, the 46-year-old mother of four was gone. The cause was a rare amniotic fluid embolism.

It was January 2009, and shell-shocked widower Robbie Goodrich was forced to immediately think of the baby's most basic need: milk.

Labels: breastfeeding, motherhood

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