Joan Wolf, the author of “Is Breast Best“, was featured on “The Doctors” television show this week. If you are in need of a jarring spike in blood pressure, take a minute and watch the segment.
There’s not much to write about what Joan said, because these “doctors” hardly let her speak. It was clear that they invited her on not to discuss how the benefits of breastfeeding had been oversold; nor to engage in a productive debate; but merely to attack her. One doctor reminded her – as if she was a child, or completely ignorant to the exact issue she had researched for several years, that “there ARE benefits to breastfeeding”, even if it was just the “bonding” and “gastrointestinal issues”.
But that was NOTHING compared to what another talking bobble head – er, doctor – used as her main argument against Joan’s thesis. The doctor in question was no other than psychologist Wendy Walsh, (who wrote this gem for BestForBabes). (Seriously, if any of you do actually have high blood pressure, be warned: clicking on the aforementioned two links may be hazardous to your health.) Once upon a time, Ms. Walsh dramatically intoned, she was a cold, success-driven career woman. And then she breastfed her baby, and it changed her. “I just want to remind you,” she lectured Joan, “That when a woman has a baby, that is her. That is her happiness…giving to her baby is giving to herself.”
At this point, Joan seemed to realize it was a losing battle, and responded, “…Not anti-breastfeeding.”
Sigh.
I have to give Joan props for agreeing to be on the show, considering the background of its co-hosts. It’s ballsy. One of the other doctors on the show is Jim Sears, the progeny of the (in)famous Dr. William Sears, (whose name is not allowed to be invoked in my home unless someone is referring to the department store), who calls himself an “attachment parenting (and) breastfeeding advocate” in his bio. I can’t imagine she had any clue that it was going to be this much of a witch hunt, however. It was seriously blood boiling to watch, and if the comments on the show’s website are any indication, I’m not the only one who feels this way. It is a real shame for those trying to normalize breastfeeding that these doctors couldn’t engage in a mature, semi-coherent discussion, because it would have looked a lot better for the cause if they could have backed up their own claims with anything other than sneering contempt. It just feeds the three-headed hydra that is the breast vs bottle battle, creating an us-against-them mentality that is counterproductive for everybody.
As for Ms. Walsh’s theory that breastfeeding “changes” women, I’d like to argue that motherhood changes women. Oxytocin is also released when a mother holds a baby, and through skin-to-skin. You don’t need to pass a baby through your birth canal to love it. Plenty of women find their priorities changing once they become mothers. Hell, I know a lot of dads who have been irrevocably altered by the birth or adoption of a child, too. Love is not delivered through breastmilk.
The post Physician, heal thyself (from being a complete douche): Joan Wolf on “The Doctors” TV Show appeared first on Fearless Formula Feeder.