Alison Barrett: Legislation must support breast feeding

With Matilda just about weaned, maybe it's not such an act of bravery for me to come out of the closet about breast feeding. But better late than never, I suppose.
I've plucked up my courage thanks to my son Colin. At 15, dreadlocks down his back, and the drum kit to match, Colin is the epitome of cool. In the way of first-born children, he's always been my wisest teacher.

Last month was no different. I took Colin to his music lesson at high school. I had been waiting for him on the bench outside, but when he finished, he found me inside the car instead. When he asked me why I had moved, I explained that Matilda wanted to breast-feed.

He said: "Well, Mom, wouldn't it have been better to stay outside on the park bench? Wouldn't that have been good role-modelling for some of the girls that go to my school?"

And so I felt embarrassed. I was embarrassed at my embarrassment.

Which leads to the sort of painful self-examination that only your kids can generate. "Your haircut is ugly, Mommy"; "Anna's mother is funnier than you"; wasn't that stealing when the storeman gave you too much change?"

Was I being a hypocrite? Maybe. Probably. Yes. I've always felt that breast feeding in public should be every woman's right. And those who have a problem with it do, indeed, have some sort of problem. But where I thought I was pushing the limits of respectability and opening myself up to the chastisement of disapproving strangers had to do with the age of my breast-fed child.

You see, Matilda is 4. Truth be told, she's closer to 5. So, among closet breast feeders, I suppose I've made an 'x-treme' sport out of it.

Just how extreme this sort of behaviour is isn't really known.

In the United States, fewer than 18 per cent of women breast-feed their babies to one year. In Britain, that figure is no more than 14 per cent. It is unlikely we are doing any better here.

On the contrary. At least most US states have laws that protect breast feeding. And in Britain, a campaign using the slogan "The Way Nature Intended", was started in March to ensure that women and children are afforded the same legal protection.

These low breast-feeding rates fly in the face of the World Health Organisation recommendation that, ideally, all babies should be breastfed up to 2 or beyond. It's just that no one collects the data for almost 5-year-olds. I am nearly as surprised as anyone about the length of time I have done this. It's not like I embarked on this long-term mission with any sort of end-point in sight.

Yes, laziness on my part might have had something to do with it. And maybe there was an element of addiction for both of us. But basically I just thought I'd leave it up to Matilda to decide when she should stop. And then I was pleasantly surprised at the volume of research that supports both the medical and psychological value of extended breast feeding,

Occasionally, I find out that I'm not alone. There is at least one other woman who came out of the closet and into the cloak-bay of a Montessori school to breast-feed her toddler. The problem was, she was told to leave and not come back until her child was weaned.

It's enough to keep people like me from coming out of their cars and on to the park benches of high schools.

Yes, the sight of an older child breastfeeding can be unexpected. But the age at which a child should be weaned is not the age of having teeth, or of requesting a breast feed in a sentence that contains more than a subject and a verb.

It is tied to our culture, and unlike others in the past or in traditional societies, for whatever reason we do not breast feed with the frequency or the duration we could or even should. Perhaps we're too worried about what other people think.

And surely the age of weaning is nobody's business but the individual partners of the breast-feeding couple.

Tomorrow, a forum of the Human Rights Commission will discuss breast-feeding rights. First will be a discussion of the Government's obligation to protect the right of children of all ages to be breast-fed, and the right of mothers to breast feed them any time, anywhere.

Children, of course, are powerless to argue for this right, despite the enormous benefits that breast milk has for them, in infancy, toddlerhood and beyond. And so, children's right to be breast-fed has to be fulfilled through their parents' decisions.

These are set by culture. And at the moment our culture is a lot more supportive of babies being bottle-fed in public.

I find it a lot more disturbing to see a four-year-old drinking Coke out of a can than breast milk from a breast, and the Government should support breast feeding any way it can. One way is through appropriate policies and legislation. I am not saying that mothers should be forced to provide breast milk for their children. But at the very least the Government can and should be made responsible for ensuring all parents have accurate information about the benefits of breast feeding and for enacting laws that allow mothers to breast feed their children wherever they happen to be.

Legislation is not everything, unfortunately, our culture still has hang-ups about breasts. And other people's hang-ups become other mothers' fears of ridicule and embarrassment.

My son's comments have gone a long way to changing my attitude about breast-feeding my child in public. It would be nice to know the law stands behind me, too.

* Dr Alison Barrett is the clinical director of maternity services at Waikato Hospital.