Love and RelationshipsMichelle Obama Urged to Speak Out for Breastfeeding
Michelle Obama breastfed both her daughters and advocates are hoping she will use the platform of her anti-obesity campaign to promote breastfeeding and share her own experiences.
Page 2 of 2Looking at Low Breastfeeding Rates
Black Women Breastfeeding: a Multi-generational Story
Obama"s obesity initiative comes at a time when breastfeeding advocates are intensifying their efforts to understand why African American women have the lowest breastfeeding rates in the country.
Last December, the CDC held its first national expert panel to investigate what health leaders can do about the relatively low breastfeeding rates among African American women, which dropped, along with breastfeeding among other women, when infant formula became a cultural norm in the 1950s.
"It is hard to explain to a young mother that formula is really not necessarily the best when society and advertisement is saying something else," said Terry Jo Curtis, founder of the Indiana Black Breastfeeding Coalition in Indianapolis.
Loveless, also a breastfeeding support technician at the largest maternity hospital in Cincinnati, says that African American women lost breastfeeding generations ago.
"In Ohio, not even half of the black mothers are breastfeeding," the 33-year-old African American mother of five said. "That explains why diabetes and obesity is so high in black communities. Why our babies are not as healthy as others."
In lieu of Obama"s public endorsement, a community of breastfeeding activists have pinned their hopes to a do-it-yourself linking of her to breastfeeding by finding references on the Internet. They say Obama"s breastfeeding story has the power to validate a movement to normalize breastfeeding.
"No one as high profile as Michelle has come out and spoken positively about their breastfeeding experience," Berggren said. "By not speaking about it, we confirm the tacit assumption that breastfeeding is somehow dirty or private or not normal."
Piecing Together a Picture
One day Loveless scavenged the Internet for hours, looking for information about Obama"s breastfeeding experience, which she said could be used to encourage mothers she works with.
"I looked, looked, looked," she said. "I found some articles referring to her breastfeeding but no outright details."
One article is the 2007 People Magazine story, which reported that Obama was "still breastfeeding her newborn second daughter," when she interviewed for an executive position in Chicago.
There are a few more news references, all posted in different blogs and forums, forming a collage of Obama breastfeeding items.
Shealy also collects links of news stories that mention Obama breastfed.
"Michelle Obama really understands mothers need maternity leave to be able to breastfeed and go back to work," Shealy said, citing a 2008 article from the Toronto Star in which Obama reportedly said that as soon as you learn how to breastfeed, "you"re back at work."
One find made Loveless particularly happy. The passage is in Barack Obama"s 2006 "The Audacity of Hope," in which he says:
"While Michelle was getting some well-earned sleep, I would stay up until one or two in the morning, changing diapers, heating breast milk, feeling my daughter"s soft breath against my chest as I rocked her to sleep, guessing at her infant dreams."
Malena Amusa is a New York-based reporter completing a book about her adventures in New Delhi, India.
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