The current breastfeeding system is inhumane and expensive
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While she is still a little stunned by the endorphins and birth medications, a young mother receives a visit from a lactation consultant, who comes to give her a little pep talk: "You too are capable to breastfeed your baby", "it's the best thing for you and for your baby". While grabbing the new mom's breast to show her how to put it in the newborn's mouth, the consultant is sure to emphasize the unique benefits of breast milk and tell her how not only is it better for the health of the baby, but also for his wallet. “Unlike powdered milk, she will explain, breast milk is free.”
If like me you've spent thousands of hours breastfeeding your baby, you know that's not the case… Breastmilk is only free if your time is worthless. And yet, in this case, we must also close our eyes to certain obvious economic realities.
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Breastfeeding and working, an obstacle course
The question of the relationship between money and breastfeeding is not new. As early as the 18th century, thousands of French newborn babies were taken to the countryside by train, often departing from Paris, to be placed in the care of wet nurses who nursed and looked after them for a sum of money. Many babies died during the journey or during their stay with these nurses who were often overwhelmed and unable to take care of all the babies entrusted to them. Yet outsourcing breastfeeding was seen as a necessity for many families, as it was cheaper than replacing the mother in the family shop. This example seems to belong to a cynical and horrible past, doesn't it?
Yet today, in the United States, a quarter of mothers return to work less than two weeks after the birth of their child. Even before the tears of childbirth have dried and the caesarean section scar has healed, many women entrust their child to someone, mostly for economic reasons. To feed their newborn, they have two options: buy expensive powdered milk that the nanny will give to their baby or, if they want and can, take breaks during their work time to express their milk, pass their free time (what free time?) to make reserves that they will have to store, freeze and transport, and finally find the time to clean and sterilize the breast pump. (The United States is the country with the highest proliferation of breast pumps in the world.) Given these constraints, it is not surprising that women considered poor are less likely to exclusively breastfeed their child during her first six months of life than those who are better off.
I hope you realize how lucky you are if you can express your milk unseen or known during a conference call, in your office just for you.
But the obstacles don't stop there. Growing up in Europe, I noticed a startling paradox when I had children in the United States: women are enormously encouraged to breastfeed, but they are given almost no time to do so when they have to work ( which is the case for most mothers). And frankly, I hope you realize how lucky you are if you can express your milk unseen or known during a conference call, in your office just for you, and that you manage to schedule your calls when it suits you. best for pumping (a time when you're supposed to be relaxed and well hydrated!). In general, if he must allow women to take breaks and provide them with a space to express their milk, the employer is not obliged to pay them for the time they spend expressing their milk and companies with less than 50 employees may allege that these breaks place an “undue hardship” on them to justify not offering any accommodation to women.
In addition, you have to realize that, even in the best circumstances, expressing milk and breastfeeding are two very different things: women whose working day is punctuated by the pump of the breast pump will tell you that they have little had less milk and had to resort to supplementing with powdered milk. In other words, they had a resource that they could not afford to maintain.
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How much is breast milk worth?
So how can breastfeeding be truly valued and favored for women who wish to breastfeed their child? One solution would be to make the true financial value of breast milk to our economy more visible.
One study estimated that Australia produced the equivalent of $3 billion in breast milk and Norway $907 million.
The production of breast milk (including milk expressed for sale or donation) is not counted in the calculation of the GDP of any country in the world, although Norway includes it in its national food statistics. Separately, a 2013 Australian study referred to breastmilk as a “food commodity” in an attempt to quantify the potential loss of economic value associated with breastfeeding women not being protected from market pressures. Drawing on United Nations Systems of National Accounts guidelines and conventional economic valuation approaches to measuring breastmilk production, the study estimated that Australia produced the equivalent of $3 billion [2.4 billion euros, editor's note] of breast milk and Norway 907 million dollars [726.5 million euros, editor's note]. She also noted that the United States had the potential to produce the equivalent of 110 billion dollars [88 billion euros, editor's note], even if nearly two-thirds of this value is currently lost due to the shutdown. early breastfeeding. However, these amounts are misleading, as they relate to the milk produced, but do not take into account the time cost of breastfeeding for women.
The same study shows that the time spent breastfeeding (and by extension expressing milk, with all the little household chores associated with it) should be quantified, but that due to the paucity of time use data , we simply do not know the figures that could guide economic policies. And because there are no numbers to back them up, it's hard to get the message across that it's important to put in place programs and regulations that would guarantee women time to feed their babies.
Breastfeed more to earn less
Very little quantitative research has been conducted to determine the impact of breastfeeding on women's economic status, even though it is one of the most prevalent examples of unpaid care work. A 2012 US study by Mary C. Noonan and Phyllis LF Rippeyoung lifted a corner of the veil: among women who were in office the year before the birth of their first child, those who breastfed their child six months or more saw their annual income drop more severely than those who breastfed for less time or did not breastfeed at all. Why? Unlike women in other developed countries, American mothers of very young children work outside the home. However, as the authors of the study noted, most American women working outside the home are not allowed to take breaks to breastfeed their babies, so those who breastfeed six months or more are often forced to spend part-time or stop working altogether. So that the lack of recognition of the value of breastmilk contributes not only to inequalities in terms of continued breastfeeding depending on social background, but also to gender inequalities, linked to wages and place in the the work market.
While the public health benefits of breastfeeding and the cost savings it provides in the long term are widely recognized, the practice requires women to spend a considerable amount of time and incurs other costs that are not taken into account. Of course, newborns are not taken by train to the other side of the country, but the current breastfeeding system is nonetheless inhumane and costly.
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Once we become aware of these human and financial costs, the way forward will be simple. Where possible, companies should set up crèches on their premises so that mothers can take breaks to breastfeed their child. Another solution would be to put in place the international best practices that the United States has ignored for decades: paid parental leave for all working parents, leave that is not counted in weeks but in months or, better still, for a whole how long breastfeeding is needed. Paid parental leave not only gives young mothers the opportunity to breastfeed their children, but also compensates them for a small fraction of all the unpaid care work they are about to provide for the benefit of our society for many years.
