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Home › Articles › Breastfeeding Advocacy › The Next Generation

The Next Generation

Passing on the Importance of Breastfeeding

By Teri Brown

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If you ask a group of women why it's important to be a breastfeeding advocate long after your last baby is weaned, you will get many different answers, but one idea shines through all of them. If you teach the next generation the importance of breastfeeding, they will breastfeed.

This is a subject that Lisa Betancourt, a mother of three from McMinnville, Ore., is passionate about. "I want my children to know the importance of breastfeeding, because I want them to breastfeed their babies," she says. "It is the perfect food for babies, and I want my future grandchildren to get the best."

Brenda Brownlee, mother of three from Beaverton, Ore., agrees. "I just hope that the next generation will study out the pros and cons of breastfeeding," she says. "Mothers should make sure their children understand the importance of breastfeeding because not only does breastfeeding allow for a bond to form between a mother and baby that cannot be formed through formula feeding, it also has significant health advantages to both mother and baby."

Mother: The Perfect Position
Elizabeth Reifsnider, professor and associate dean of research for the University of Texas' nursing school, feels mothers are in a perfect position to pass on the importance of breastfeeding to the next generation. "Moms have a great deal of influence on what their children think of health practices, what they think is normal or abnormal, what is good to do and what is harmful," she says. "If moms let their children know the whole time the children are growing up that breastfeeding is the best way to feed babies, they will be more likely to decide to breastfeed or [if boys] to encourage their wives to breastfeed. Boys need to know that breast is best as well as girls. Children should be taught that breastfeeding is the norm that's how babies were designed to be fed and that bottle feeding is only a second choice, to be used if breastfeeding can't work out."

Dr. Lori Feldman-Winter, associate professor of pediatrics for Children's Regional Hospital at Cooper in Camden, N.J., believes that mothers can help change our culture into one that is more breastfeeding friendly. "The societal norm for infant feeding in the United States remains infant formula given by a bottle," she says. "To shift this cultural norm, more women need to be breastfeeding instead of bottle feeding. There is good evidence that feeding decisions among women begin well before conception and may emerge during adolescence or even before."

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