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1. Infant Feeding and Rhetoric: An Overview
- University of South Carolina Press
- Chapter
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11 1 Infant Feeding and Rhetoric An Overview The recent intensification and proliferation of pro-breastfeeding messages in the United States can be traced to a highly publicized policy statement that the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) published in 1997. The statement urged women to breastfeed for at least the first year of the infant’s life and stipulated that breastfeeding is “the reference or normative model against which all alternative feeding methods must be measured with regard to growth, health, development, and all other short- and long-term outcomes.”1 This statement represented a dramatic shift from the AAP’s previous position on infant feeding and is perhaps the most significant rhetorical event in the recent history of infant-feeding controversies in the United States. To justify the organization’s dramatic shift in stance toward human milk and breastfeeding, the authors of the policy statement invoked a narrative of scientific progress. For instance, the statement begins with language that emphasizes the historical continuity of the organization’s stance toward infant feeding. The opening paragraph declares that the AAP has “from its inception . . . been a staunch advocate of breastfeeding as the optimal form of nutrition for infants” and that “the activities, statements, and recommendations of the AAP have continuously promoted breastfeeding of infants as the foundation of good feeding practices.”2 The authors then proceed by attributing the academy ’s new stance to “considerable advances that have occurred in recent years in the scientific knowledge of the benefits of breastfeeding, in the mechanisms underlying these benefits, and in the practice of breastfeeding.”3 A 2005 revision of the earlier statement places a similar emphasis on scientific progress, 12 Breast or Bottle? claiming to reflect the “significant advances in science and clinical medicine” that had occurred since the 1997 statement.4 Based on the language used in this narrative, we might surmise that the medical community has always supported breastfeeding but recent advances in understanding specific health benefits have intensified that support. Although the current recommendations differ from older recommendations, such language suggests, the difference is incremental and by no means revolutionary.5 A similar emphasis on scientific progress and newly discovered evidence was echoed in many of our focus-group participants’ perceptions of current breastfeeding information.6 In the words of Rebecca, who was expecting her first child at the time, “now there are more studies going on and more information out there about the benefits of breastfeeding.” Another participant, Mary, had two young children when she participated in our focus group and had exclusively breastfed both children until the age of six months. Mary expressed a similar faith in the currently available scientific knowledge about breastfeeding : “That’s just magical about breast milk. It’s just so amazing. My friend went on a website, and she says there’s, like, a jillion benefits. They’re coming up constantly with all these benefits of breast milk.” Many participants echoed the policy statements’ emphasis on novelty and scientific progress by stating that they felt fortunate to have access to more and better breastfeeding information than their own mothers had. As stated by Connie, a young mother who was expecting her first child at the time of focus-group participation, “I just get more information that my mom didn’t know then. She, you know, I tell her and she’s, like, ‘Oh, I didn’t know that.’” Andrea, who had breastfed her first child until the age of six months and her second child until the age of five months, also said that she had access to much better information than her own mother had: “I don’t think she had near the information I have. I don’t think there was any way she could have.” And Nancy, who had exclusively breastfed her child until the age of five months, agreed: “I think for my mom, it wasn’t the thing in her day either. And she didn’t really care about it very much in the first place, but now there’s so much education about the pros of it, that I think that a lot of women consider it.” Some focus-group participants were even more specific in their references to recent discoveries about the immune-system benefits of human milk. For instance, Mary went so far as to suggest that her husband’s asthma could have been prevented if only his mother had had access to today’s scientific knowledge : “So many things, and just all the...