I promise that not every post here will pertain to parenting. In fact, this one is more about judgment of people than it is about parenting issues.

I should note upfront that I strongly support breastfeeding, attachment parenting and co-sleeping with children. I strongly disagree with “cry it out,” carrying babies around in their carseats or strollers all the time, and time outs.

Breastfeeding, in particular, is my pet cause. A ridiculously oversimplified history on the subject goes as follows: humans, being mammals, evolved and began reproducing. We fed our babies at our breasts just as our genetic forebears had fed their babies. A lot of time passes, and we reached a scientific age (in the late 1800s) where we decided that science was better than nature. We started choosing artificial methods to feed our children. Promotions by formula companies, kickbacks to doctors and marketing that equated nursing mothers to cows lead to a dramatic decrease in breastfeeding. The 1950s through around 1972 could be considered the breastfeeding “dark age.” In the mid 70s the La Leche League began educating people about the importance of nursing, and since that point, they’ve continued fighting an uphill battle to make breastfeeding the norm. However, there is now an entire generation of mothers who not only did NOT breastfeed, but they don’t understand why it is important. Therefore, they do not and cannot support their own daughters who DO choose to nurse their children. We are on our own to find the absolutely necessary support needed in our first weeks with our newborn nurslings.

There is plenty of information on the internet about the benefits of breastfeeding. I’ll leave you to your own Google-foo for that for now, because as much as it seems otherwise, that still isn’t the point of this post.

The point is that breastfeeding is one of those parenting issues about which I feel strongly, and I find that I actually judge people negatively if they choose not to breastfeed their children. While I also judge parents on other parenting issues, this is the one upon which I judge the most harshly. In my mind, mothers who simply choose not to nurse their children are sad and lazy. My opinion on this tends to get in the way of my friendships, and I’m not sure how I feel about that.

On the one hand, I want to be a crusader for the breastfeeding cause. I feel like it is that important, and that simply ignoring that even the people closest to me are still not nursing perpetuates this issue at the most basic level! It is a tough conversation to have, and it has even made close friends of mine very uncomfortable with I have the breastfeeding conversation with them. But if we aren’t even talking to close friends about nursing, then we all fail on some fundamental level.

But what happens after that? What happens if I’ve given all the information I have to give, and offered all the support that I can possibly offer, and people still *choose* to formula feed their babies? This is where I fall short. It is devastating to me. I feel sad for the baby, like somehow I have personally failed that child (AND the mother!). And then I have a difficult time being friends with the parents, because every time they pull out the formula bottle, my heart breaks a little. I find my thoughts wandering to, “how can you possibly DO that, given all that I told you?” I don’t understand, and my opinion on the parents changes.

The issue is that I don’t WANT to necessarily end friendships with people who have different parenting techniques than mine. I want to find a way to express the things I feel passionately about regarding birthing, parenting and breastfeeding, but in a way that doesn’t leave the parents feeling like I’ve just preached to them for two hours. And then I want to find a way to deal with it when they don’t follow any of my suggestions. But that’s extraordinarily difficult for me.

Can you continue to be friends with people that do things that you consider to be barbaric? Or is that an unrealistic hope? If you write off all the people in your life that do things you think are silly, do you end up alone in the world?

For reference, here’s a link to the history of breastfeeding: http://www.breastfeeding.org/articles/alookat.html

Parents today are very concerned with finding every way possible to substitute other things in place of themselves in their children’s lives. Planned surgical removal of a baby from a mother’s body, replaces a natural birthing process. Pacifiers replace breasts when a child has trouble going to sleep or is in need of comfort. Strollers replace the arms of a parent, leaving the child far from human touch. Cribs replace night-long snuggles in the bed with family. Bottles and fake nipples replace breasts as a baby’s nutrition. Formula replaces breastmilk. Baby bouncers and toys replace interaction with mom and dad. TVs replace interaction with anyone at all.

Some of the above things are even being defended as a better approach. Until recently, formula feeding a child was considered to be scientifically superior to breastfeeding. Marketing campaigns, doctor kick backs, and a new expectation for women to work out of the home paved the way for an entire generation of mothers who choose fake milk products for the nourishment of their children, rather than breastmilk. Now, baby bottles and pacifiers are accepted symbols of a baby. Despite the fact that much scientific research has now proven that breastmilk is FAR superior to anything else for infant nutrition, doctors STILL recommend “supplemental feeding” of formula or rice cereal for babies. In fact, research has shown that feeding a child anything other than breastmilk for AT LEAST the first six months of the child’s life can have detrimental effects on the child’s health. Why, then, are people still substituting a bottle in place of a breast?

What happened to make us think it was okay to substitute all kinds of things in place of ourselves in our children’s lives? No wonder people think it is expensive to have children.