Worlds Apart

Breastfeeding's Popularity Varies From Place to Place

By Teri Brown

There has been a revolution of sorts in the United States regarding breastfeeding. While misinformation and prejudice still abound, things are looking up with an increase of available lactation experts, La Leche League groups and hospitals encouraging breastfeeding. But what about other countries? The answer to that depends on which country you are talking about.

Lucy Thairu is working toward a doctoral degree in international nutrition. She is currently writing her thesis on breastfeeding in sub-Saharan Africa. She conducted research in Kenya, Tanzania and South Africa and found the attitudes there to be very different from those in other countries.

"In contrast to Western cultures where breastfeeding is practically nonexistent in the public eye, and where fully-exposed female breasts typically have sexual connotations, using breasts for feeding a baby is a common feature of everyday life in many settings in sub-Saharan Africa," she says. "African women often come to the experience of breastfeeding with little or no doubt and trust in their ability to produce enough milk or milk of the right quantity."

Thairu says that in many Western cultures, notions of timing, regularity, repetition and scheduling are deeply entrenched within notions of good mothering. "Scheduled and measured feeding sessions are a common feature, and limiting the baby's demands is related to notions in Western society around civilizing babies," she says. "In contrast, in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa, baby-led feeding or feeding on demand is a common feature of good parenting."

Gillian Marshall is a breastfeeding mother from Halifax, West Yorkshire. She says the attitude toward breastfeeding is still mixed because so many women go back to work right after childbirth. "There is the ideal and the reality," she says. "I think the ideal is that more mums would like to be able to breastfeed for as long as possible, but the reality is that we might have allowances for people to step outside the workplace for a cigarette, but there is no such allowance for a mum wanting to breastfeed her baby."

Marshall says there is also a divide as to how long you should breastfeed. She receives looks of horror when people find out she nurses her 2-year-old. Breastfeeding in public is also very much taboo. "I only ever saw one woman breastfeeding in public," she says. "It isn't readily accepted. The majority of people still don't think it is appropriate. Some shops have specially designed rooms for mothers to go into to either change or feed their baby."

Though Marshall believes that breasts and talking about them are very much off-topic in England, she is quick to note that things are changing. Midwifes are gaining popularity in Great Britain, and most are very pro-breastfeeding. And like other countries of the world, the attitudes in Great Britain vary from area to area.

Want to see more?

• Breastfeeding in Public: The Right Way
• La Leche League International: Mothers Helping Mothers
• Lactivism 101: 5 Ways to Support Breastfeeding
• Talk about it!