The Missing Piece
A guest post from Mothers for Mother
Mothers for Mother was a website started by disaffected La Leche League Leaders who could see that the LLLI Board was literally killing this venerable organisation by its insistence on using “a variety of terms” in place of mother. For more than 65 years LLL Leaders have provided mother to mother breastfeeding support at no cost to the many thousands of women who contact them every year. LLL actually changed the course of breastfeeding history but is losing its credibility as Board members alter policies (largely without consultation) to include men and erase women through the wholesale adoption of gender ideology over biology and physiology.
It was necessary for Mothers for Mother to be totally anonymous as no public criticism of LLL is ever allowed by Leaders. Leaders who complain (even in private League Facebook pages) are promptly bullied by gender woo warriors and threatened with being disaccredited. In the beginning, when Mothers for Mother had a comments section, every Leader who commented was sanctioned/booted off committees or otherwise punished for their ‘insubordination’. Some Leaders are still fighting for their right to remain a Leader while at the same time holding gender critical views (AKA believing in facts and biology).
Because of the level of secrecy required to operate this website it has been taken down. Reprinted with permission of the Mothers for Mother authors I am republishing a series of their posts as a form of archiving them for future readers who appreciate the sanity of those who believe in biological facts, over the thoughts of those who posit that nothing is more important than what they feel or believe about a made-up world of their choosing.
This was first published on April 19, 2022
The Missing Piece
The mystical territory mothers enter when breastfeeding is ancient. It is primal. It is experiential.
Breastfeeding can be explained, defined, studied, and written about. However, a mother navigating this voyage alone needs the support of other women. La Leche League (LLL) has had a long history of helping mothers feel welcome by encouraging them and sharing information.
Leaders have worked together to overcome personal differences that might interfere with breastfeeding support. For example, in the past, issues such as home birth, vaccination, and homeschooling have arisen, and Leaders have agreed that LLL does not hold an official opinion on these topics, but of course Leaders as individuals are free to practice according to their own beliefs and values. The goal has always been to have discussions among Leaders done in a respectful and open-minded way. This willingness to come to terms about potentially divisive issues is what is missing from LLL today.
The Founders struggled with this issue, too. So how did they manage to overcome their differing opinions about how and what La Leche League was to be? One important step in overcoming differences was to decide on some basic ground rules that would stand the test of time.
One was: what is the purpose of La Leche League? The answer as we all know was LLL was to be a group that was based on mother to mother help with supporting women to breastfeed their babies. Anything that didn’t further this aim wasn’t something that LLL would be involved with or make a statement about. Eventually this strategy came to be known as not “mixing causes” and until recently it was an important concept that every potential Leader needed to prove they understood. A simple Google search will bring up multiple articles by Leaders elucidating exactly what this expectation means in practical terms for LLL Leaders.
Secondly, the seven Founders respected each other. Whatever differences whether personal or in regard to some aspect of LLL, they took the time to listen to each other, to think and reflect and if appropriate to adjust their own opinions accordingly. They did not engage in public name calling or shaming.
Today, Leaders who once opened their hearts and homes to mothers, are now actively fighting each other on the pages of LLL social media. La Leche League International Board policy on the adoption of language that panders to gender ideology has taken hold and driven a deep divide among Leaders. In a misguided effort to offer mother-to-mother support to everyone, including those who can never be mothers because they are biological men, as well as women who do not want to be called mothers, the Board has unwittingly created a culture war in LLL, pitting those who believe that motherhood should not be erased against those who want to include “everyone” in the organization. These two positions are in conflict.
Both sides believe language is a paramount issue for different reasons. Leaders concerned with the ability to advocate for mothers and babies are questioning how to do so without using the usual terms that are universally understood. Those promoting desexed language believe that by mixing causes with a political movement, LLL can right the perceived injustice of excluding men from breastfeeding help.
LLL was built on compassion, open discussion, and acceptance of different cultural practices. Never did the organization tolerate the flagrant mixing of causes seen today. LLL needs to remain true to its stated mission:
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.
In what appears to be a hostile takeover of LLL by a small group of vocal proponents of queer theory, LLL policy has restricted the use of the word "mother" and "woman" to the point of committing to remove the word "Womanly" from a future edition of LLL's bestseller, The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding. These changes have been made with little Leader input and when surveys of Leaders are announced, the results are changed to fit the LLLI Board narrative. The majority of Leaders do not support a name change for the book.
Those who understand the importance of LLL remaining an organization that supports women, who feel sympathy for the challenges gender dysphoria raise, are often treated prejudicially on social media, and labeled with any number of names, most often "transphobic, homophobic, non-inclusive, bigoted, and ignorant". Ironically, this rhetoric is from Leaders who themselves proclaim to be inclusive and kind and who now engage on an open battlefield on internal LLL Leader social media pages. In a recent Leader Facebook page post, one Leader's obsession with damaging another Leader's reputation has been for the most part, allowed to remain online.
The sisterly camaraderie of this grassroots organization has lasted nearly 65 years, but recent events are an indication that a new phenomenon has replaced the respectful listening that was the hallmark of LLL. This has been called in academic studies variously “mean girls” or “Queen Bee syndrome”. It is basically girls and or women who rather than purposefully working together in the way the Founders did, strive to compete to see who can come out on top by clawing their way over the metaphorical bodies of their colleagues and fellow volunteers. Where has all the loving support and understanding of different opinions gone in LLL?
The irony of those in the gender ideology camp using slurs against mothers is not missed. If language usage needs to change to not hurt or exclude members of the LGBTQ+ community, why is it not also important to use proper and respectful language when speaking to women who are Leaders?
The insistence by the LLLI Board that all policies must be followed by Leaders is clearly applied selectively. Leaders whose posts question desexed language often have their comments deleted while those who promote desexed language are allowed to participate in the online discussion. The social media policy is not being applied uniformly. The LLLI Code of Conduct reads as:
LLL Leaders, LLLI volunteers, and LLLI staff discuss differences of professional opinion, concerns and disagreements with respectful, open, civil communication and with fairness and honesty, in person, in writing, and in electronic spaces. (Emphasis added)
It is time to heal the divide and that starts with the LLL Board of Directors taking a hard look at their fiduciary responsibilities to the organization and making some real changes. It's time to come to terms with the fact that the inclusion and language policies as they were implemented were a mistake and need to be repealed.
It is time to put our differences to the side and reclaim the missing piece: compassion, respect, and understanding for each other. Let's get on with the mission that inspired the Founders 65 years ago: uniting, supporting and helping mothers and babies breastfeed.
PS from Lucy Leader: The new Art of Breastfeeding was published and sent out to the world in October 2024. I critique it here:
and here:
thank you for this article ! i loved LLL when i had babies it is so sad this resource has transformed from the original mission
Take a look at what has just happened in the UK, La Leche. Pandering to gender ideologues--at the expense of women's rights and dignity--is a quickly turning tide. I once had great faith in LLL. I would like to again. But as long as gender ideology harms women and children (and it certainly does!) I will never trust an organization that espouses it--either linguistically or practically. Only women give birth and breastfeed, and only women can be mothers.