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Dealing With Divorce
How the Legal System Impacts Breastfeeding By Jenn Director Knudsen
A couple of years ago, Kathryn Lask of Shawnee Mission, Kan., found herself in a not uncommon, yet very unenviable situation: She was a nursing mother going 
through a divorce.
The mother of two young children, Lask was nursing her then 18-month-old son, Nicholas, with no plan to wean him until both she and her child were ready, she says. But her soon-to-be ex-husband – who'd temporarily been granted custody of both kids – with the aid of his attorney, wanted Lask to wean Nicholas to allow for more uninterrupted time with the toddler.
The issue of breastfeeding made an already emotionally and legally complex situation even more so.
"[This situation] is not at all uncommon," says Mary Lofton, a La Leche League International spokesperson who has represented the organization in various capacities since the 1960s. In her decades of experience, Lofton, based in Schaumburg, Ill., says she's seen an increase in the number of divorce, custody and visitation cases involving nursing mothers and their babies.
One reason among many is the rise in divorce rates among couples married only a few years. These people tend to have younger children; previously, couples were splitting with elementary-age kids in tow. As unfortunate a trend as this is, Lofton says the key is to maintain the nursing relationship – for the sake of Baby, Mommy and Daddy. How can this be done?
Answers vary from state to state, county to county and even case to case. But there is still some important information nursing mothers going through a separation or divorce should know.
In a 1995 article
