Attitudes Towards Breasts and Breastfeeding

Breastfeeding is as natural as, well — motherhood and apple pie— yet in the United States many people are upset to see it in public. How did this come to pass?

During the Victorian era and up to the turn of the 20th century, female décolletage became truly fashionable for women, and women were expected to have firm breasts.

Breasts were for the pleasure of men in the bedroom. Breastfeeding was a vulgar necessity, and wealthy mothers hired ‘wet nurses,’ lower class women who were or had been breastfeeding their own children, or as was common, had lost a child early on. Sagging breasts were a sign of a lower-class status, giving evidence you could not afford a wet nurse. Mothers who could not afford a wet nurse found themselves obligated to hide themselves while breastfeeding. This was the beginning of a huge change in how Western society viewed a woman's breasts.

The Breastfeeding Answer Book, by Nancy Mohrbacher, Julie Stock, LA Leche League International, Edward Newton. 720 pages, La Leche League International; 3rd Revision edition (January 1, 2003)

In 1930, some 12 years before the initial marketing of commercial baby foods in the United States and prior to widespread acceptance of infant formulas, 90 percent of all mothers breast-fed their infants and rarely introduced solid foods before one year of age.

Formula and Busy Lives Decrease Breastfeeding

In the 1940s inexpensive plastic bottles, artificial nipples, and infant formula were invented. Now not only upper-class, but middle- and lower-class women had choices about whether to breastfeed or not. Women were in a sense symbiotically liberated from the necessity of nursing and could be freer to pursue other roles.

At the same time, breasts began to be abnormally portrayed as erect and pointed, like two cones rising vertically from a woman's chest. By the 1950s, women, deprived during WWII, wanted glamour. They had seen the Hollywood stars like Jane Russell who had real uplift.

We now know what should be obvious—that breast milk contains the exact proportions of fats, proteins, carbohydrates, vitamins, minerals, and water that a newborn child needs. Breast milk also contains all of the antibodies the mother has accumulated over her lifetime that help protect the baby from potential infections. Obviously, manufactured formula cannot match what God has made.

Breastfeeding and infant experts recommend that mothers exclusively breastfeed their infants until six months old. The obvious benefits of breast milk for infants are almost universally acknowledged.

Breast milk contains a number of anti-infective agents, including::

1. Immunoglobulins IgA, IgM, IgG
2. Interleukins
3. Complement
4. Lactoperoxidase
5. Chemotactic factors
6. Lactoferrin
7. Lysozyme
8. Cytokines
9. Lactobacillis Bifidus growth factor
10. Macrophages
11. T and B cell lymphocytes
12. Plasma cells and neutrophils

But there has also been a huge rise in the number of women working outside the home. It can a considerable challenge for a women to continue to nurse when she returns to her job. If she pumps and stores her breast milk, she needs a private, relaxing location to perform the task. Only quite recently have some workplaces begun to accommodate the nursing employee. By the early 1970s, the percentage of U.S. infants being breast-fed after six months of age had dropped to nearly 5 percent. It has since risen to about 33%.

False Assumptions About Breastfeeding

Western society has embraced four false assumptions about female breasts and breastfeeding:

• Breasts are for sexual relations
• Breastfeeding meets only the child's nutritional needs
• Only very young infants should be breastfed
• Breastfeeding (like sexual relations) should be done in private.

Many of the cultural challenges women have with breastfeeding can be traced to these four unspoken assumptions.

Furthermore, everything a woman reads about breastfeeding mentions the possibility that a woman could derive sexual pleasure from breastfeeding.

Women Who Nurse Can Have Orgasms

Masters and Johnson studied 24 women who nursed for at least two months. They found that these women's sexual desire increased more quickly than for women who did not nurse for comparable periods. The mothers who nursed often experienced sexual arousal to the plateau stage, and three had orgasms as a result of nursing. Not coincidentally, nursing triggers uterine contractions that shrink the uterus after childbirth, just as orgasms cause the uterus to contract. In other words, the turn-on a woman may received during nursing is perfectly natural and perhaps even necessary.

Some women find a combination of breast and genital stimulation very enjoyable. Women's bodies need some time to get physically ready for sexual relations. Just like a women's clitoris, her breasts tend to be more responsive to stimulation after some foreplay, when blood flow to the areola and nipples is increased.

A woman who has not been pregnant can still breastfeed if her nipples are repeatedly stimulated over a number of days by suckling activities. This is pregnancy stimulates the area of the brain known as the hypothalamus. which tells the pituitary gland to release two hormones called oxytocin and prolactin. These cause what is called "let-down." Once the baby begins suckling activities, the pituitary responds by manufacturing oxytocin, which cuases the tiny muscles lining the lobules containing milk in the breasts to contract and squirt milk out from the breast. This experience of the milk actually squirting into the baby's mouth is called let-down, and can occur unexpectedly during sex or even the middle of a business meeting. The sound of a crying baby can trigger let-down, indicating how big a role psychology plays in nursing. Suckling, whether by a baby or if regular enough, a woman's lover, does two things: it stimulates prolactin to make milk, and it stimulates oxytocin to deliver milk. It is very much a demand-and-supply process. Oxytocin also stimulates the muscles of the uterus, causing it to contract after childbirth.

Although society seems generally to value big breasts, studies have found that women with larger breasts tend to feel less when their breasts and nipples are stimulated, perhaps because the nerve endings are spread over a larger physical area. Women with small breasts have no problem breast-feeding, because the glands necessary are still present. The milk supply grows to feed the demands of the child.

Breasts' Functional and Sexual Purposes are United

What these responses show us is that the functional purpose of a woman's breasts are not separate from their sexual role. A woman's nipples' sensitivity helps her to know if the baby has latched on correctly and causes let-down. What a women experiences during sexual activity is a byproduct of her breasts' role in nursing.

The sensitivity of women's breasts, areola, and nipples vary greatly from one woman to another. The reasons are both physiological and psychological. Some women have more nerve endings in their nipples than others. A woman's attitude toward her breasts and her body can influence her openness to nipple stimulation. A negative perception can cause her to interpret any erotic or sexual feelings negatively and to shut down her receptivity and responsiveness to these feelings.

If a woman is uncomfortable with the potential sexual aspect of her nursing, she may decide against breastfeeding as a result. New mothers are also often the target of marketing campaigns by forumla companies, efforts that include free coupons for and samples of formula. Unfortunately, these marketing campaigns are often aided by hospitals.

In truth, society's take on women's breasts, with the nursing role largely hidden from the world at large, had shifted from a functional to a largely sexual viewpoint.

In 2000, the company Epinions.com, which offers consumer-written product reviews, produced a TV advertisement featuring a mother demonstrating the Medela Mini Electric Breast Pump. No nipples were bared. Milk streamed from the pump covering her breast into a clear plastic cup. Station managers rejected it based on "content." Breasts can be seen on television, as long as they aren't functional.

Breastfeeding in Public

Breastfeeding in public is completely legal in the United States, though sometimes people simply don't know it and therefore might complain about it. Some women attempt to breastfeed discretely by covering their breast and especially the nipple, if not the entire baby, with a blanket. This is because breasts have become so sexualized that it is the common belief that men will become aroused by the site of a breastfeeding mother. While a woman can cover up while nursing, there is no law compelling them to do so. It is only unfortunate, uninformed social pressure that causes breastfeeding women to hide.

While a mother breastfeeding her infant in a Kosovo refugee camp on the cover of Time magazine is acceptable, a mother breastfeeding in public may be harassed. Many nursing moms can tell stories about security guards or employees who have asked them to stop breastfeeding in a mall, store, or other public location. In 2001, WalMart in Ohio was sued by two nursing mothers when WalMart employees ordered them to move to the restroom or leave the store. Since 1993, about 20 states have added laws to the books that explicitly permit women to breastfeed in public.

In fact, while a man may look with interest for a few moments, virtually all are polite and will not stare, and the unusualness of the event goes away after a few minutes. Since breasts have become such sexual objects, and because public breastfeeding is less common, men are often just curious about female breasts and breastfeeding.

Next in our tour of attitudes towards breasts are Bras and Bikinis.