La Leche League eliminates mothers?

Breastfeeding misinformation emerges in a gender-confused world

Lucy Leader does not usually plagiarize other writers, but the title and subtitle used here are from this article (and reprinted here).

This article makes a lot of claims, which in the opinion of many long-term Leaders who believe in the embodied sexual relevance of birth and breastfeeding are all, unfortunately, true. But first, a bit of background information that may be useful.

La Leche League International (LLLI) is based in the USA, where it was founded in 1956. As it globally expanded, a need arose to differentiate and separate some administrative duties, removing the day-to-day administrative tasks to local Leaders who were ‘on the ground’ where women were being helped. After all, in a pre-internet age, snail mail back and forth to Schaumberg, Illinois where LLL was based, became unworkable, especially when dealing with time sensitive issues such as medication inquiries from mothers. Here is an explanation of how this works now. (NB that these Leader numbers are not up to date; there are many fewer Leaders now than what is stated here as Leaders over the last few years are resigning and are not being replaced.)

Another reason that drove the divisional structure of LLL is the need to be culturally appropriate and aware, (a skill sometimes described as cultural competence) something that the US based organization has proved itself to be woefully inadequate in accommodating globally.

So, although it is not obvious to the general reading audience, the article I have referenced in my first paragraph is about the entity of LLL named LLLUSA. Just to make it even more confusing, there are two ‘separate’ Leagues in the US; the other one is referred to as LLL Alliance. Their origins are geographical, but now their divisional approaches to supporting breastfeeding are ideological.

LLLUSA goes rogue!

The Mission Statement of LLLI (and every entity other than USA) is crystal clear and totally unambiguous:

Our Mission is to help mothers worldwide to breastfeed through mother-to-mother support, encouragement, information, and education, and to promote a better understanding of breastfeeding as an important element in the healthy development of the baby and mother. (May 89; rev Apr 93)

Succinctly summed up as “mothers helping other mothers to breastfeed”.

Despite it being an integrated part of LLLI, the Mission Statement of LLLUSA is very different:

La Leche League USA helps parents, families, and communities to breastfeed, chestfeed, and human milk feed their babies through parent-to-parent support. LLL USA encourages, informs, educates, supports, and promotes the use of human milk and the intimate relationship and development that comes from nursing a child for as long as mutually desired.

This is not as easy to sum up, but how many see it is something like this: we help everyone to feed a baby somehow or another; it doesn’t matter that much anyway, and mothers are expendable.

According to this source:

A mission statement is a brief description of an organization's reason for existence. It succinctly outlines your company's values and vision, communicating your purpose and direction to employees, customers, vendors, and other stakeholders.

Many concerned Leaders contend that the two differing missions are fundamentally incompatible and that the mission of LLLUSA is biologically impossible and inconsistent with the mission of LLLI, under which LLLUSA operates. Despite many official complaints and letters to the LLLI Board, they have failed to act to preserve the overall integrity of LLLI by reining in the Gender Borg Leaders of LLLUSA.

Inclusivity has to exclude some people

Once you have read the official LLLI Inclusivity Policy, it is obvious that if this is carried out to its logical extremes, it is fundamentally impossible to fulfil the guidance set out in the current May 2018 PSR Inclusivity Statement, which presumably was designed to reflect the provisions of the original Mission Statement that has guided the work of LLL volunteer Leaders since 1956:

LLLI is committed to serving everyone inclusive of race, ethnicity, religion, sex, national origin, ancestry, age, marital status, physical or mental ability, socio-economic status, political views, gender identity, sexual orientation, family structure, or other protected status.

There is no mention of serving “everyone” in the Mission Statement (unless there is an underlying social contract understanding that everyone means every mother).  Under the terms of the inclusivity policy Leaders are in effect pledging to support men with lactophilia (which is a sexual fetish that manifests around breast milk), or to participate in medical experiments on babies, sidelining women who have given birth and not breastfeeding (because someone had to gestate the baby the man is intending to feed), which has a profound negative effect on their long-term health. Equally pertinent is the fact that if you are female, but have had surgery to remove your breasts, I’m very sorry, but LLL really can’t offer you very much in the way of practical help with feeding your baby because caring for a breastfed baby is not the same as caring for a formula fed baby. Formula feeding is not in a Leaders scope of practice.

Two glaring examples of this difference in care are:  

• safe co-sleeping (which can only be done safely by a birth mother who is fully breastfeeding) and

• in the case of a mother living with HIV who, rather than receiving appropriate drug therapy while  exclusively breastfeeding her baby, instead practices any other mixed feeding combination involving formula which leads to a greatly increased risk of mother to child transmission of this disease.

Human milk feeding is not the same as breastfeeding

Human milk is a dehumanizing term that separates the process and the product. Literally anyone can feed human milk and by a variety of different methods of delivery (spoon, cup, bottle, supplemental nursing system, finger-feeding etc.) as long as some woman puts the work in to produce it. Conversely, breastfeeding is far more about building a relationship than a mere baby feeding method and as time goes on the nutritional aspects of breastfeeding can recede into the background, while the relational aspects around breastfeeding become very obvious.

Right from that very first breastfeed after birth so many other things are happening. Mutual oxytocin release creates a bond between a mother and her baby that can’t be replicated. The benefits of breastfeeding for oral and visual development of the baby can only be achieved by the continuous physical contact that breastfeeding provides. By choosing to forgo breastfeeding, women are making the choice to deny these benefits to their babies.

Although no one would deny that human milk is the physiological (so normal) choice for feeding babies, particularly compared with infant formulas, very few people seem to realize that feeding human milk to babies in bottles is not equivalent to breastfeeding.

This study found that babies who were bottle fed in early infancy were two to three more times likely to empty a bottle or cup in late infancy than babies who were breastfed in early infancy. What was in the bottle during the early period was not a factor, which means that bottle fed babies may be overeating right from the start. This isn’t surprising as when you can see it, who wants to waste it (especially if it’s human milk that you have purchased!)? The appetite self-regulation of the breastfed baby doesn’t develop without the breast.

Another study discovered that infant weight gain was linked not only with the type of milk consumed, but by how it was delivered (even human milk bottle fed babies gained more per month than those who were breastfed). One of the ‘selling points’ for breastfeeding is that it doesn’t contribute to the ever-increasing childhood obesity rate, but if the delivery method makes a difference, then this is information that those caring for babies need to know.

This research examining modes of feeding in relation to coughing and wheeze in the first year found that bottle feeding either formula or breast milk could be a risk for this occurring in babies. Breastfeeding is promoted as a method of reducing allergies, but once again it seems that there is something about breastfeeding (not just feeding human milk) that is an important factor, working to alleviate an illness that can be life threatening and persistent.

Related to this is the protection against ear infections; it’s not just the anti-infective elements of human milk, but the position of the baby’s head and the way that babies suck, swallow and breathe while breastfeeding that can’t be replicated by bottle feeding.

And what about mothers? It is understood that women’s health also improves though breastfeeding, but who knows if the benefits of breastfeeding (postnatal weight loss, reduced risk of postnatal depression, decreased likelihood of various cancers, rheumatoid arthritis, osteoporosis, Type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease) translate to women who pump instead? Considering the direct pathway between a baby’s gut and a mother’s immune system that is regulated by the baby’s saliva entering his/her mother’s body via direct breastfeeding, the separation created by bottle feeding means that women’s long-term health is diminished by not breastfeeding.

It’s not just gender identity working against the mother/baby dyad

The pressure on women to return to work as quickly as possible, particularly in the USA, has fed into the phenomenon of pretending that infant nutrition is not really very important. There are basically three ways to cope with the difficulties of women returning to work and continuing to feed their babies their own milk: longer maternity leave, on-site childcare or pumping. The monetarily cheap way is pumping. However even pumping means upsetting the flow of the workday and employee productivity hence the rise of newer hands-free “wearable” pumps. The message is clear; babies and their needs are not as important as a woman’s ‘real life’ and her job.

There is spillover even for the few “birthing persons” (sic) who don’t have to go back to work, leaving their babies before they and their babies are ready. A review (tellingly on a tech website) for the Willow pump) declares that “New mothers have to pump several times per day for months, and it sounds like the Willow can make that experience easier. For starters, the Willow can be worn under a normal nursing bra, which means frazzled moms can continue to get other things done (or just hold on to their newborn) while pumping.”

I am slightly amazed at the assumption that all mothers “have to” pump and I question whether this is just one more expectation placed on women who are already trying to juggle the demands of caring for a baby, working, running a household, staying fit, and maintaining a relationship. It would seem that an additional requirement now is pumping to provide human milk so that everyone can feed the baby, in the spirit of the “parents, families, and communities” as referenced by LLLUSA.  

There is no such thing as virtual intimacy

In our technology obsessed age, a new must-have accessory has come between women and their babies.  Many women feel naked without their phones, feeling dependent on them to regulate most of their lives and this can lead to a disconnect between mothers and babies. Unfortunately for any phone addicts I need to say that the iBaby does not exist and the needs and expectations of a baby born today are identical to a baby who was born at any point since we separated as a unique species.  

People in the age cohort who are now having babies have been raised with and love gadgets and rely more on their peers and online information than on perceived authority figures. They often don’t realize that technology can be isolating (an incredible sense of intimacy can be built quickly online with people they never actually meet) so the importance of physical intimacy in building competency in an activity like breastfeeding, which is in every aspect a physical act, isn’t appreciated. Many women have never held a baby before having their own and breastfeeding can help them learn how to handle their baby. This gives them confidence in their mothering abilities and can lead to an improved body image. And as one mother said, “breastfeeding also loosened me up a bit, made me a bit more inclined to touch people”. Hands-free pumping and its widespread promotion on internet sites supports the world view of baby free breastfeeding without mentioning any downside to radically changing how mothers and babies connect.

The danger is that human milk feeding can be reduced to a task that others in the family can undertake (or not, bottles can be propped) and the special relationship between a mother and her baby is undermined and diminished. And even worse, in the age of ignoring the sexed reality of bodies, someone else (in the “breastfeeding community”) can pressure women to ‘let them have a turn’, ‘bond with the baby’, engage in ‘gender free parenting’ or any number of other harmful practices that disrupt the fundamental need for each other that babies and their mothers share.

Normalizing pumping for all mothers has major societal implications. Social support for breastfeeding could be diminished. Legislation to support maternity leave could be deemed as less important if there is widespread acceptance of efficient breast pumps that don’t take women away from their desks. Expectations around “infant feeding” prioritize human milk feeding by “everyone” over breastfeeding.

Breastfeeding our babies has faced many challenges over the last century. Bottle feeding human milk is not the same as breastfeeding and this lifestyle choice is fraught with many more problems than those I have just discussed.

The price of gender ideology; could this mean losing Leaders?

LLLUSA’s stance is welcomed I’m sure by the infant formula manufacturers’ corporate honchos because by promoting the use of human milk over breastfeeding, they are endorsing the use of bottles, nipples/teats and all the paraphernalia that is needed to feed a baby once a mother is removed. However, I really wonder why they are encouraging their own unpaid volunteers to use their time to promote an industry that already spends $3 billion on advertising alone (out of their profits which are upwards of $55 billion/year).  Especially since, by their own admission, they need more Leaders to carry out their own administrative work.  Recently all members of LLLUSA received an email from the LLLUSA Council headed “LLLUSA Needs You!” encouraging Leaders to take up administrative and committee duties:

Unfortunately, being able to identify the Leaders to provide that support and leadership is becoming increasingly difficult. Fewer Leaders are offering to take on additional supportive roles in LLL beyond the Group work. We want to be sure that LLL USA Leaders understand the dire position we find ourselves in of being short-handed in handling the work that enables all of us to keep reaching families who want to breastfeed. At all levels, volunteers who step into roles that support LLL Leader are be being stretched thin and having difficulties finding replacements for their important positions. Areas and Area Networks are finding it difficult to recruit Leaders to help manage their administrative needs. In addition, LLL USA Council has experienced a shortage of Leaders interested in joining LLLUSA Committees, which are essential to the efficient operation of LLL USA and often serve as preparation for new Council Delegates. LLL USA Council has only half the number of delegates it should, with more seats becoming vacant in the coming year.

It should be noted that LLLUSA has lost one of their allocated LLLI Board seats this year due to a significant loss of Leaders. The answer, according to one Leader posting on LLL Leaders FB page is this:

I would start with LLL writing and enforcing more clear EDI policies. Stop allowing leaders to just change DCEs when they don't want to comply with diversity requirements. Require continuing education on diversity and inclusion for all leaders. Remove transphobic and racist leaders from all administrative positions.

So, according to this Leader the problem isn’t too much emphasis on inclusivity and replacing “mothers” with other words; what’s really needed to keep Leaders hanging in there is more education and promotion around gender ideology. Hmm, somehow I doubt this is the case.

Also on the LLL Leaders FB site, there was an illuminating discussion around language where several LLLUSA Leaders were complaining about women (not other Leaders, but mothers contacting LLL for breastfeeding help and support) pushing back against the use of inclusive language. One Leader posted that,

I receive push back almost weekly. I replied with our inclusivity statement and reminded them that everyone is welcome because parents require a robust support system. 

And:

I have had negative comments a few times, usually transphobic. I respond saying we support anyone who wants to feed their baby human milk and link this.

Other measures to cope with women not happy with the disappearance of women and mothers from a breastfeeding support organization were discussed:

But, how to handle the negative comments..... Our group has a zero tolerance policy for anti-inclusion. Most often, the comment will be deleted, but if it's on the mild side, we respond with something along the lines of "La Leche League is proud to provide equitable support to ALL who are providing (or hoping) to provide human milk to their babies. We will use our best efforts to use language that most accurately reflects this inclusion and support of everyone.

Thank you! I had changed the language from breastfeeding and chestfeeding for those reasons. We were getting nastiness about that.

Substituting one for the other is what seems to be the issue here. We still deal with mothers who feel erased by inclusivity in our community. It is what it is. For my part, I try to do what was suggested above, by choosing things that are without gender. So instead of saying, “Hey, mamas!” I might say, “Hi, all!” Or “For those of you who are interested…” I find the word YOU is particularly helpful in these discussions because it makes people feel included without being othered.

When I see it, I delete it. Don’t give them airtime. They can’t have permission to take over when inclusive language is important. And some Leaders are more inclined to want to support all families and some of my coleaders are people I also have to educate. I had one coleader tell me I should change my “parent and partner” meeting title but I refuse to do that. Don’t change the wording if it is best practice.

The first two entries are from gender critical Leaders, but of course the third comment is a necessary “correction”.

So, what this is telling me (and the mothers who contact LLL for breastfeeding support) is that inclusive language is more important than making sure new mothers get the help with breastfeeding their babies they are seeking.

Oh, and just by the way, in global health messaging it is not “best practice” for groups involved in public health promotions to aim their messages at a tiny minority (the less than 1% of “birthing persons” not identifying as women), rather than at the vast majority of the audience who stand to benefit from your message. If you want to know the justification for using gendered language in the maternity sector, read this as it gives a very detailed view of the importance of using unambiguous language for effective communication.

Clearly the so-called Inclusion Policy does not include anyone with gender critical views who believes that birth and breastfeeding are the exclusive preserve of natal females (even the ones who refuse to call themselves women).

Do some countries use transphobic languages?  

Recently on a group chat for Leaders who have Spanish as their first language, there was a mix of despair and fury as some of the Leaders were chastised for how they were phrasing their messaging to the women they serve. Unlike English, Spanish is a gendered language that has no equivalent for the English word “parent”. Well, they do have a word, but it’s the same word that is used for “father” so not much use in a breastfeeding context. Needless to say, the Leaders doing the criticizing were from English speaking countries.

According to the World Bank, 38% of all languages are gendered. Appropriate “gender neutral/free” terms in these languages may not exist, but according to those supporting removing those “gendered terms” (women and mothers) everybody is responsible for ensuring that “bigoted” language isn’t used. This has led to the situation of translations of LLLI messages not making much sense to their native speakers.

I have already written about cultural and linguistic imperialism here and the insistence on using culturally inappropriate phrasing by Leaders living in non-English speaking cultures is yet another example of this phenomenon.

It also gives the lie to statements from the LLLI Board that Leaders can use “culturally appropriate” messaging for the women they support. Because if they don’t have “a variety of terms” for women or mothers in their own languages, or indeed have no Rainbow Folx having babies in their countries, they are routinely bullied on social media and elsewhere by Leaders who have no idea what their culture is like.

On November 29, 2022, the entire cohort of Leaders serving the Basque region of Spain resigned en masse. In the letter of resignation they sent to to the LLLI Board, and shared with the other entities of LLL,  they set out their reasons clearly in both Spanish and English.

They listed a few contributory reasons for their decision such as the Covid pandemic making meetings difficult and the lack of generational renewal. But they made it clear that there was only one factor that was insurmountable for them:

We firmly believe in the importance of the mother-baby dyad and its essential role in breastfeeding. We all became part of a group of mothers: we fell in love with an organization that was all about mother-to-mother support, with which we felt very much aligned. At the same time, we want to bring to memory that it was LLL Euskadi who took care of the translations of the first leaflets on breastfeeding for transsexual people into Spanish, more than five years ago. At all times we have supported all kinds of people who have come to us for information and support, regardless of their sexual orientation, religion or ethnicity. The problem is that we do not identify with the path LLL International is taking lately in this regard. While we obviously recognize diversity and the need to protect it, we still firmly believe that the centrality of breastfeeding should remain exclusively occupied by the dyad formed by the baby and their mother.

However, we feel that LLL International is lately displacing this dyad from its centrality. We do not agree with this, we do not feel comfortable with the language that is beginning to dominate, and we have not found in LLL International the space for calm debate and thoughtful conversation that we would have expected for a change of course of this importance. We do not recognize, in this LLL, that mother-to-mother support organization we fell in love with. And this is insurmountable for us. [Bold in original]

Stealth vs transparency: right out of the trans agenda playbook 

Near the end of 2019, a document was published  that would have a profound effect on every aspect of most Western institutions, including every level of government, public education, cultural institutions and well, everything that an average citizen depends on for civil living. The official purpose was to promote and protect legal gender recognition for youth and reading this is instructive as well as polemical.

Want to pass some legislation that Joe and Jane Citizen are not going to like? Hey, no problem! There are no shortage of handy hints contained here, starting with “Use human rights as a campaign point”. By this point it should be obvious to all that at least in Western democratic countries, trans people have the same human rights as everyone else. After all, they are humans! Of course it’s not human rights they are seeking, but additional rights that encroach upon the hard fought for rights of women for public safety and dignity, not to mention protecting the right to allow children to grow to maturity without allowing adults to perpetrate permanent mutilations on their bodies.

Another tactic is to “Tie your campaign to more popular reform”. This is becoming a global golden oldie because it works so well:  

This provided a veil of protection, particularly in Ireland, where marriage equality was strongly supported, but gender identity remained a more difficult issue to win public support for.

A particular favorite for many birth and breastfeeding groups including LLLI and some of its entities is “Avoid excessive press coverage and exposure”. LLLI is dependent on donor funds for its operational existence. This is why Leaders are disaccredited/sanctioned/punished severely for anything that is deemed unacceptable uttered in any forum at all by Leaders, including private, Leader only FB groups. LLL has taken the trans agenda’s “no debate” stance to a whole new level; as noted by LLL Euskadi there is literally no place for contentious discussions or debates to occur.

“Harm” has been elevated up a considerable few notches and hurt feelings, along with simple disagreements and differing points of view are now seemingly on a par with genocide. The flip side of this is rampant bullying, most evident in Leader only FB pages and in zoom meetings. This makes it difficult for gender critical Leaders to make their case to outside agencies because all that is publicly visible is a sprinkling of “parents”, “families” and a few remaining “mothers” on official websites, while the real battle is being waged outside the view of for example, any governmental bodies that are involved in overseeing that charitable bodies are maintaining their remits.

This is also a direct contributor to the workload of overburdened Board members and various Administrators who are now so busy conducting kangaroo court sessions against Leaders (many of whom have been volunteering their time and expertise for decades), that the essential purpose of supporting mothers to breastfeed appears to have been all but abandoned by some LLL entities.

Perhaps the Language Police need to read that email from the LLLUSA Council which finishes by saying, “Please remember to appreciate these support volunteers and to be kind and respectful as you interact with them.” 

Back where we started

It is absolutely true that human milk can provide everything that a baby needs to not just survive, but thrive for the vulnerable period of life following emergence from the body of a woman. But its optimal components are maintained only if it is fed directly from that mother to her baby; any other feeding method reduces its value in every possible way.

Feelings, beliefs, ideologies and sheer faith are very human concepts that can either serve or cause harm to people. If you want the best for women and their babies, don’t pretend that substitutes are the same. The only thing that makes human milk the very best for babies is when it is delivered straight from a mother’s breast into her baby’s mouth.