Note some comments have been deleted at the request of the commentator.  This may have lead to some replies also being deleted.

To coincide with World Breastfeeding Week 2016, we will be holding virtual versions of our Breastfeeding Dilemma Workshop at 10am and 4pm GMT on Tuesday 2nd August 2016.  

The Breastfeeding Dilemma:  how do we encourage breastfeeding and support women in doing so, without subjecting those who choose not to breastfeed, or are unable to do so, to shame and guilt with potentially devastating consequences? 

We explore philosophical mistakes in the way we talk and think about infant feeding choices and the impact pressure to breastfeed can have on maternal health and the experience of new motherhood. 

​To join in,

(1) Listen to the Introduction to the Virtual Workshop (recording available here, transcript available here.)

(2)Have a look at the abstracts, recordings, and links to papers which can be found here. (You can look at as much or as little as you wish but I'd suggest beginning by listening to the Overview of Talks.)   

(3) ​Look at the discussion questions, available here.

​(4) Take part in the discussion in the comments section below and follow along as others comment.  I'll be here to respond from 10-11am and 4-5pm (and hope lots of other people will be too), but if you can't make it then, you are still very welcome to post and I will get back to you.

(5) Fill in our feedback form to let us know what you thought about the workshop. ​

Note:  If you are joining us for the scheduled discussion times,  you may want to do Steps 1-3 ahead of time.

Today is an exciting day in the breastfeeding world.  The All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Infant Feeding and Inequality has held an action packed meeting.  I’ve been following the twitter stream avidly (twitter.com/APPGIFI)
 
Although many, many fascinating issues have been raised, I’d like to pick up on a couple which resonate particularly with my own research in the Philosophy of Pregnancy and Early Motherhood.
 
Early in the day, Sally Dowling tweeted a slide from Sally Etheridge’s talk asking if feeding babies is personal or societal.   The slide points to reasons to see it as a societal issue (majority want to breastfeed; Breastfeeding as a public Health priority) but also reasons to see it as person, including worries about making women feel guilty. 

Emma Pickett (@makesmilk) tweeted that on Thursday UNICEF’s BabyFriendly campaign will launch a Call to Action arguing that government action is needed and that feeding choice is not about pressure on women

​I think my work on breastfeeding and the reason/ duty distinction is relevant here.  We can have a reason to do something without a duty to do it.   Reasons make a course of behaviour a good one; while duties leave us liable to guilt and blame if we fail to comply without a good justification.  Women do not have a duty to breastfeed: this means that guilt, blame and requiring women to justify not breastfeeding are utterly inappropriate.  Nonetheless, the huge benefits of breastfeeding mean women have reasons to breastfeed.  And society has a duty to support them in doing so, whether that is through information, practical support or simply defending the rights of women to breastfeed in public.  So infant feeding can be a societal matter without licensing pressure on individual mothers. 
 
Infant feeding is an emotive subject.  Many people do make the mistake of assuming that because breastfeeding is so beneficial, women should breastfeed and are bad mothers if they don’t do so without a good enough excuse..  (Just take a look on social media if you want some examples!)  At other times, someone who just wants to inform and support may be perceived as pressuring or condemning.  That’s because this mistake between reasons and duties, the mistaken assumption that if something would benefit her child, a mother has a duty to do it and can be blamed if she doesn’t, is so common in thinking about maternal behaviour.  So we need to be aware of this when promoting and supporting breastfeeding.  We need to know that women are surrounded by guilt.  But we need to find a way to convey that when we talk about the benefits of breastfeeding, we aren’t implying there is a duty to breastfeed.