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8. Promoting Breastfeeding, 1980-90
- Wilfrid Laurier University Press
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128 Chapter 8 Promoting Breastfeeding, 1980–90 A t the beginning of the 1980s, the federal government launched a national campaign to promote breastfeeding. This campaign brought together a range of activists, health professionals, and mothers, and it contributed to changing beliefs, values, and practices associated with breastfeeding . An article by Health and Welfare Canada official Tony Myres was published in the Canadian Consumer in 1979. In their introduction to the article , the editors of the magazine wrote, “In our guilt-ridden society, where breasts are exclusively identified with sex, breast-feeding has been relegated to the washroom in many locales. That this attitude is wrong is easy enough to say; changing it will not be easy, as A.W. Myres points out. Time, perhaps, to bring babies suckling at their mothers’ nippies off the pages of National Geographic and into Canadian society” (Myres 1979b, 12). In the 1980s, breastfeeding promotion became part of ongoing efforts by health professionals to gain support for breastfeeding, international initiatives to regulate the infant formula industry, and the growing family-centred childbirth movement. Unlike in the 1920s, in the 1980s the promotion campaign was directed at all women and occurred at a time when a strong movement towards breastfeeding had already been initiated. It also garnered support from health organizations , health professionals, and La Leche League. A National Promotion Campaign Following the release of the 1978 CPS position paper in the Canadian Journal of Public Health, the federal government launched a national campaign to promote breastfeeding. With the endorsement of eight professional societies that were members of the Canadian Science Committee on Food and Nutrition, this paper was considered “a catalyst for the generation of a national commitment to the promotion of breastfeeding” (Myres 1988, 101). The task force assigned to the campaign included members from the Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada, the Department of National 129 Promoting Breastfeeding, 1980–90 Health and Welfare, and La Leche League Canada. National strategies for the promotion of breastfeeding included (1) improving the quality, timing, and targeting of breastfeeding information to both health care professionals and the public; (2) stimulating professional support for breastfeeding within the health care system; (3) forming national alliances from government, professional, and voluntary sectors to create a national emphasis on breastfeeding; (4) supporting mothers’ groups and citizen coalitions; (5) developing a national advocacy position to culminate in a national policy position on breastfeeding; and (6) monitoring and influencing patterns of breastfeeding in Canada through policies and practice (Myres 1988). The national campaign to promote breastfeeding was launched in 1979. Although this represented the federal government’s first visible support for breastfeeding since the 1920s, some individuals in Health and Welfare Canada and the CPS had shown interest in breastfeeding promotion in the early 1970s. However, it was thought that, without a strong, authoritative position paper from the medical profession, national programming to support breastfeeding would fail: “It was believed that if first the medical profession could be influenced to be more supportive in motivating women to breastfeed and secondly, that if this was followed up with practical and helpful advice, a significant step forward would be made which would have a cascading effect throughout the health care system” (Myres 1988, 101). Subsequently, the first phase of the national campaign focused on increasing professional awareness of breastfeeding. Without professional and institutional support, it was admitted that mothers’ knowledge about the value of breastfeeding would do little to increase actual breastfeeding rates (Myres 1979b). The professional awareness campaign took the form of an information kit directed at health professionals, including physicians, public health nurses, and hospital staff. The kit included the 1979 CPS/AAP position paper, a paper on the practical management of breastfeeding, a fact sheet on breastfeeding, a fact folder on La Leche League, and a contact sheet containing provincial sources of information and teaching aids. The kit also contained a poster that could be used in offices, clinics, and waiting rooms and letters of endorsement from the minister of National Health and Welfare and the president of the CPS (Myres, Watson, and Harrison 1981). In November 1979, 40,000 kits were distributed to health professionals across the country. By March 1980, another 23,000 were distributed in response to requests (Myres, Watson, and Harrison 1981). One of the primary goals of the professional awareness campaign was to increase the knowledge and skills of health professionals. Although there were few studies of physician knowledge of breastfeeding, one study in British...