Shaming new mothers isn’t working. The medical profession needs to change its tune

For decades, the public health response to lift breastfeeding rates has been to promote the benefits of breastfeeding, ad nauseam. All while tightly policing information about any feeding alternatives. As a signatory to the World Health Organisation’s International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes (1981), Australia has implemented the Marketing in Australia of Infant Formula: Manufacturers and Importers Agreement until 31 July 2024. This agreement places strict parameters around what infant formula manufacturers can say, in a bid to protect breastfeeding rates. But Reynold’s study indicates that when it comes to breastfeeding success, the issue is not intent — it is execution.

Our pro-breastfeeding public health messaging has overcorrected. Mothers are exposed to countless reminders on the importance of breastfeeding — in the doctor’s office, at midwife appointments, and most zealously on social media. You cannot enter an infant formula website without first accepting a pop-up informing you that breastfeeding is best for your baby. Worst of all, the hospital midwives and medical brochures endlessly referring to formula as ‘artificial feeding’, akin to feeding your precious baby plastic.

Ramming these messages down mothers’ throats is clearly not having the intended outcome. Mothers do not need to be convinced of breastmilk’s superiority. The problem is not education, it is access to affordable and high-quality breastfeeding support.

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Visiting an International Board Certified Lactation Consultant (IBCLC) — who provide the gold standard of lactation education and care — can cost upwards of $200 per session. If we genuinely want more women to breastfeed, allowing Medicare plans for lactation support, as we do for other allied health issues, is a good place to start. All the way back in 2007, a Parliamentary Inquiry into breastfeeding recommended giving all IBCLCs a Medicare provider number, but in 2023 this is still a pipedream.

This World Breastfeeding Week, health professionals and policymakers would do well to confront an uncomfortable possibility — that pressuring new mums to breastfeed without providing critical supports to do so is setting them up for failure. Guilting mothers into breastfeeding at all costs is handling the wrong end of the stick.

Support is available from the PANDA National Helpline on 1300 726 306 or Lifeline on 13 11 14.

Emily Cook is a mother of three young children and a freelance writer based in Sydney.

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