by Amy Spangler
September 01, 2009

A Momlogic contributor made it abundantly clear in a recent post that she wants everyone (especially doctors) to stop telling her to breastfeed. “It is not my mother’s choice, it’s not the pediatrician’s choice, and it isn’t your choice. It is MY choice,” she wrote.

I am guessing that there is more to this story than meets the eye. But if talk of breastfeeding is off limits, what about other health-related topics? Can her doctor tell her about the risks of smoking while pregnant? What about the effects of alcohol on her unborn baby? Or the use of car seats, bicycle helmets, and seat belts? Does she prefer that her pediatrician not discuss the importance of placing babies on their back to sleep?

Who decides which health and safety related topics merit discussion and which are taboo—patients or doctors?

Doctors have long been criticized for not talking about breastfeeding. Amidst growing concern over rising health care costs, greater emphasis is now being placed on disease prevention rather than disease treatment. As part of this paradigm shift, doctors are charged with giving parents the information they need to keep their children healthy and safe. What parents choose to do with the information is entirely up to them. But to suggest that important information not be shared would be both unprofessional and unethical.

If you believe the data (surely countless studies can’t all be wrong), breastfeeding offers numerous health benefits for mothers and babies and has rightly earned a place on the ‘tell her all about it list’ along with smoking, drinking alcohol, car seat safety, immunizations, and SIDS prevention. As a matter of fact, breastfeeding should probably be near the top of the list given that 13 percent of all infant and young child deaths, the equivalent of 1.3 million lives, could be saved each year if 90 percent of children were breastfed exclusively for six months.

For too long breastfeeding has been absent from the conversation in schools, homes, churches, doctors’ offices, work places, and classrooms. Without the conversation, breastfeeding ceased to be the norm, and the infrastructure essential to breastfeeding success, failed to be constructed.

It’s never too late to change course, as demonstrated by the release of The Business Case for Breastfeeding by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office on Women’s Health. But rebuilding a breastfeeding culture will require teachers talking to children, mothers talking to daughters, employees talking to employers, and doctors talking to patients.