just out of med school-- anyway, i said i had polio and what kind of research is going on to help guys like me and he was pretty honest. ..

>> host: here is the cover of the book. this is book to be on c-span to. >> we want to hear from you, post your your feedback on your facebook wall, facebook.com/book tv. [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] >> good afternoon and welcome to the new school. i am robert, i am the dean.

i'm sorry should not be touching this. i am feisty and at the new school for research. i am delighted to welcome back to the university, to dear friends and distinguished colleagues. both former members of the politics department. courtney young and moeller who left us about a decade ago for greener or perhaps milk your pastures to canada and new mexico respectively. i am pleased to introduce courtney young his new book, collectivism and how feminist the fundamental list of physicians and politician make big business and bad policy. we're here to celebrate, the book was published last month in

november by basic books. courtney is a professor of political science at the university of toronto. she holds a phd and has published two previous books. the moral force of indigenous politics as well as a number of journal articles. she has been a member of the institute from princeton has received fellowships the from the national dominant of the humanities, fulbright, the andrew w mellon foundation, and the social sciences and humanities council. courtney will give an overview of her book and then marla will go on with her remark. she will also moderate the discussion. she is a at the university of

mexico. she is the author of two books, sex and the state, abortion, divorce, and the family under latin american dictatorships. and inclusion without representation. in 2015, she was named the andrew carnegie fellow, she she holds a phd in political science from harvard, and an ap from international relations from stanford. before we begin i want to quote one endorsement of the book from courtney a new colleague and professor of philosophy and politics. "this riveting book charge the constellation of unlikely bedfellows that have together made obligatory to feed babies

breast milk, weaving it tale of corporate maturing and research, mongering, victim blaming, as well as punitive policies that deny to feed our children, courtney young explains the social importance behind a america's love affair with breast pump" it is eye-opening and thought-provoking, lack division is in must-read. also obviously my experience is quite limited born to a working mother and coming to polling, i was was breast-fed for a fleeting six months. an experience of deprivation,

symptomatic of the times in the place i was born inches. my son on the other hand, also born to a working mother but in the liberal united states, was breast-fed for extravagant but certainly very long three years, eight months, and 14 days. in both cases maternity leave was the same, three months. so my family and a sense is the victim of the lack to visit him controversy. so eloquently discussed in the book. without further a do professor courtney young. >> thank you very much robert. i cannot tell tell you how happy i am to be here. to be home at the new school.

i'm going to fix the problem that robert created here. thank you very much, i'm happy to be here. with a topic like this, there are many, a topic like this is right for many interesting and amusing introductory antidotes. contemplating those i decided to dispense with the amusing introductory anecdotes which i will must really would have been at my expense. i will cut right to the chase. a lot of people have expressed surprise that i am writing about breast-feeding. as if this would be a health issue or a gender studies issue and not a political science issue. for me, what was very interesting about breast-feeding was the morals around

breast-feeding and the surprising consensus is a writing breast-feeding. political science know that consensus is not easy to find. almost anywhere, consensus is everything. when you have consensus that seems like a reasonable thing to study. how do you get consensus? where does it come from? what worked what work does it do in our life? i think of this project is basically critical theory, critical social theory, investigating how we come to hold the beliefs that we have and what works those beliefs are doing in our lives. how they shape our attitudes and how they affect our public policies. so one place we can start with a project like this is to look at the science behind breast-feeding. one way of thinking about this is is it driven by science? is it to them by scientific evidence? the answer to that question is

basically no, or or not really. all of the research on breast-feeding is observational. that means it is not randomized, people do not conduct randomized controlled trials into breast-feeding and not breast-feeding health outcomes. the problem with observational research is that it has to control for variables, other other things that might account for differences between dress breast-fed and on breast-fed babies. over over research on breast-feeding failed to control other factors. most of of it failed to control circuit found impactors. there is newer research now which is better in many ways, it better defines breast-feeding, it better controls for confounding factors. that evidence shows that breast-feeding has a modest impact on the risk of infection. during the time the baby is

actually breast-feeding, it has a small impact on the risk of infection. there is good evidence that breast-feeding has no impact on obesity, type type one diabetes, asthma, allergies, most cancers. all of the rest of the literature on the other long-term health outcomes facing or attributed to, with reduced risk would've been attributed to breast-feeding, is literature, the researches basically weakening conclusive. this includes type ii diabetes, celiac disease, crohn's disease, crohn's disease, cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, et cetera. the list of things associated with breast-feeding is extremely long. almost everything on that risk, some of it has already been descriptive than the rest of us we really don't know.

the literature is weakening. so the answer to the first question is no, it is not being driven by scientific evidence. so that takes us back to what it is being driven by. political scientists becomes a very interesting thing to study, if it's not driven by science, then, then what is it driven by? one of the first part, i'm going to answer that question in three, pieces to the puzzle. the first piece of the puzzle is what is breast-feeding me to people in the united states today? that story starts with lane leche league. in 1956, two women, mary white and mary thompson were sitting together on the grass at a chrisman christian family movement picnic breast-feeding their babies. they're lamenting the fact that not many other

people were breast-feeding their babies and that mothers did not have enough support if they chose to breast-feed. so i got together with five other friends and they started low leche league so a piece of their project was a breast-feeding. but already, right at the very inception and beginning, breast-feeding was the start of a larger set of philosophies which included mother staying at home nurturing the children, the place the mother was in the family, mother should not work once i have children, and the role of the father as a breadwinner. it was a very, conservative conception of children and family. and it was a focus on breast-feeding. already have the right at the beginning of the latest ways of breast-feeding as a symbol for a

larger set of philosophies. the next important moment in the history of breast-feeding advocacy is the boycott in the 1970s. in the 1970s, other formula companies including nestlé looked out at the developing world and saw nothing but a vast untapped market potential for formula feeders. so they had a very aggressive marketing practices in order to get women in poor countries to buy and use formula. the most famous of those marketing practices was the nestlé nurses. they dress their employees up as nurses and set them into hospitals and clinics and got them to sell and convince mothers to use formula under the guise that formula was what was medically recommended.

so that is one pitcher, these are obviously nestlé nurses in south africa. you can tell from the sun behind them. this was a whole team of nestlé employees, nestlé nurses and malaysia. that was in 1976 or something like that. so what happened was nestlé's selling formula, aggressively marketing formula poor countries. mothers in those poor countries cannot afford formula so they are over diluting the formula. they're mixing it with too much water because they are trying to make a canna formula last longer. so babies are becoming malnourished because the formula is over diluted. they are essentially drinking colored water, water that is milky colored. the second problem is they're using -- they are diluting the formula with dirty water, on

sterilized water. as a result of these things you have a spike in infant mortality and infant malnutrition. also diarrheal diseases. so the response to this, the solution is to reestablish breast-feeding as the norm for infant feeding and developing countries. so this becomes an at that point you have the nestlé boycott. the nestlé boycott was something that happened in the united states, canada, and over europe. it is very widespread, very popular, everyone is a boycotting nestlé products. in fact the the nestlé boycott is the longest and most widespread company boycott ever. people boycotting nestlé even today because of their aggressive marketing practices. people boycott nestlé more often than they boycott philip morris, if you can believe that. so that is the history.

it establishes breast-feeding as a challenge against big business, in solidarity with the global poor, and solidarity with the world struggle against hunger, and as i set a challenge against corporate greed and corporate interests. once again, breast-feeding gets appropriated as a symbol of something bigger. a symbol of who we are, what we believe in, and the type of person i am. i'm the type of person on the left to challenges corporate greed, et cetera. in the 1980s, feminism picks up breakfast meeting. breast-feeding becomes a symbol of female empowerment on a symbol of the life-sustaining force of the female body. in the 1990s, breast-feeding become symbolic and important

for people, families who believe in the philosophy of attachment parenting. attachment parents are parents who, their three pillars of attachment parenting, the first is baby wearing which means caring your baby in a sling rather than dismissively using a stroller to get your baby around town. the second is cosleeping which is sleeping in the same bed as your child, and the third is a breast-feeding. attachment parenting once again is a larger philosophy. breast-feeding is a hallmark of that philosophy but it is a larger statement about what your family is like, what your family commitments are like, what your what your life as a parent and who you are in general. maybe more surprisingly or more sub pricing late to me, breast-feeding has been embraced by the christian right. so for many of the christian

right, breast-feeding turns out to be proof of intelligent design. it also offers evidence of the rightness of heterosexual marriage with different roles for men and women in the marriage. it is also been picked up as an issue for environmentalists and for people who believe in locally produced sustainable food because what could be more locally produced than breastmilk. so for these groups of people, many of whom are actually fundamentally opposed to one another would not see eye to eye on practically any other issue across the social and political spectrum, yet they all believe in breast-feeding. the point that i am showing is they all believe in breast-feeding for fundamentally different reasons. they have appropriated the symbol of breast-feeding but for many different reasons.

this is the powerpoint i was supposed to show with the attachment parenting, many of you will remember this time magazine cover of this attachment parent breast-feeding her son who is three or four years old, and maybe not incidentally wearing camouflage pants. i thought that was the most, sword of disquieting part of the whole part pitcher, the camouflage pants. i did actually. she looks old and big. anyway, that is the first part of the puzzle. that is the first part of the picture which is the ways in which breast-feeding has taken on symbolic meeting and how much value and symbolic value it has for so many people. breast-feeding is in all things to all people but it is a surprising number of things to a surprising number of people.

the second part of the puzzle, the second piece of the puzzle actually has to do not surprisingly with business, there is a business angle to this which is surprising to those of us who still associate the business of infant feeding with the business of the big formula companies. so the idea here is that breast-feeding is free, that was long the challenge of breast-feeding, yet it is far from free in 21st century america. the first reason is far from free is that if you ever plan to leave the house, you're going to have to buy some clothes and some bras and you might need some nutritional supplements to make sure that you have a good milk supply. then you need creams and all kinds of other things.

it is not necessary to buy any things but most people who breast-feed in the united states today will buy many of these things. the second component of the business of breast-feeding is lactation consultant. most women who breast-feed will see a lactation consultant at some point in the breast-feeding career. that will run you anywhere from 200 to $500 per hour. there is an entire industry of lactation consultant. were making a living off of breast-feeding. and the other component of the process of breast-feeding is the breast pump industry. -- they're filling up the

freezers of american women. >> i once anymore. building up in the refrigerator and freezers of american women. so what happens here is a

combination of the internet and the pump has revolutionized nursing. where is what is nursing used to be a service, women would take her baby to nurse your baby, now it is a product that are sold online routinely. this is a good image, i i need to step back your mentor. unless you think the nestlé nurses are thing of the past, this is a strong the upper east side of manhattan called yummy mummy. the owner of the sores in the middle with a long blonde long blonde hair, the people surrounding her are not nurses, the ones dressed in white lab coats are employees. they they are dressed in white lab coats as a way to sell all of the things that they sell in their breast-feeding store like pillows, nutritional supplements and pumps. so, the phenomenon of addressing

people up as nurses in order to convince people that the way we are recommending the way you we feed your baby is medically sanctioned, this is not actually a debt phenomena. it it is alive and well right here in manhattan. so, as a result of all of this pumping and as a result of the surplus of human milk, what we have in the united states is a thriving human market, human milk market. a thriving market in human milk. so the most common website where people buy and sell milk is called only the breast. these are ads i took from only the breast just yesterday. all of this breastmilk is still available probably if you want some of it.

people buy and sell breastmilk any day of the week. you you can see between 12-16000 posts at only the breast for people who are wanting to buy or sell breastmilk. it is not only mothers looking to feed their babies who are buying human milk or breastmilk online, athletes are buying breastmilk and consuming it in large numbers, it's a common phenomenon because they're looking to boost their performance and a lot of people are interested in eating breastmilk or drinking breastmilk because they're thinking of it as the new superfood. it's better than wheatgrass. so they're looking to boost their immunity or whatever they're looking to do. so there's a big market in human milk. so these other people who sell their breastmilk are not necessarily selling online to

other mothers and other individuals, a lot lot of people sell their breastmilk to companies. there is a company in california called pro-lacto bioscience that buys a breastmilk for 1 dollar per ounce. they turn it into, they use it as a raw raw material in the production of nutritional supplements. they buy the breastmilk by a dollar per ounce in the base of the nutritional supplement and then they sell those nutritional supplements for $180 per ounce. the private company so they do not disclose what their profits are every year. they have disclosed that they have received $46 million in venture capital in the last apple of years. this is a growing industry. proactive is the oldest company in this market but it is not the

only one. there six or seven other companies that are competing with them to produce things like nutritional supplements, different has a nutritional supplements. the base, the raw material of all of them is the human milk. so one of the things that is interesting about this, companies like missoula which is the largest breast pump manufacturer in the world and prolactin bioscience which is act also making money off of human milk, both of these corporations fund research into the chemical properties of human milk. so not long ago people who were interested in breast-feeding and who knew something about, who are breast-feeding experts in

his study breast-feeding, they were breast-feeding researchers. they went to conferences on respite and medicine and a study breast-feeding. now, they study human lactation and they go to conferences that are called things like innovations and human activation there laboratories in australia that is funded by missoula, -- medusa it is actually run by a guy who specializes in callan pig lactation. now this is just human lactation. he moved his expertise in cow and pig lactation neatly into the human lactation. so, one of of the things i think is compelling here is that all of the pumping is producing not

only are people making money now and the breast feeding sector, but they have a vested interest in making sure the breast-feeding sector is not outside of the market. that it is strong in the market and that the premise of all of this has to be what is valuable about breast-feeding is not the mother-child interaction at the breast, instead the consumption of human milk. so it is driving this new of research into the consumption of human milk, transforming how it is that we understand what counts as breast-feeding. transforming breast-feeding into human milk consumption this intern is driving public policy and advocacy initiatives. so president obama has been well

known for watching a number of breast-feeding advocacy initiatives during his administration. at a federal level, the federal kinds of initiatives are unusual. there has not been presidents before who have been launching breast-feeding initiatives. the interesting thing about these initiatives is that not a single one of them have anything to do with breast-feeding. all of them are in fact about pumping. so in 2011, the fair labor standards act was reformed to require employees to provide space in on paid work breaks to new mother silica pump at work. in 2012, the irs amended the tax code to allow mothers to take tax deduction for pumps. in 2013, that was superseded when

the affordable care act was reformed to require insurance companies to cover the cost of breast pumps for all new mothers. so in in january 2013, all new mothers in the united states were entitled to receive a free new breast pump. so obviously about 85% and it was quoted in 2007, it is now much closer to 100%. american mothers are getting free breast pumps when they have a baby. so so as long as they are insured. medicaid is also required to give mothers free breast pumps. so what all of this is doing is reframing our expectation of what the mothers are supposed to do to feed their babies. not long ago, we saw working and breast-feeding as mutually exclusive, you could either work

or you could breast-feed but you cannot really be expected to do both. not anymore. now women are expected to lug a pump back and forth to work, and pump breast pump during on paid work breaks in filthy areas and it becomes a tremendous burden being placed on women. from this breast pump phenomena, then pick what he is breast pump, from all of these initiatives that are promoting breast pumping rather than promoting breast-feeding. i want to show you this other image as well. in 2012, new york city implements what became a controversy all breast-feeding advocacy program, the latch on new york city program. this is the advertising campaign that accompanied latch on nyc.

we see this advertising campaign does not actually mentioned breast-feeding at all. it is all about breastmilk as a product. in fact, i interviewed the new york city director of health, the health mission or under bloomberg, doctor farley and i said to him, why did you just refer to breastmilk and those posters? why didn't you talk about breast-feeding? he said, we are thinking about press milk as a product. then he said, you know if we said breast-feeding that would have been much too hard for most mothers to do. most mothers in new york return to work after they have a baby and they do not have maternity leave. breast-feeding actually requires too much of a change in the workplace, remember i was the

public health commissioner under mayor bloomberg. mayor bloomberg of course is well known for being business friendly and i cannot possibly be advancing and advocacy can pain that implies that businesses would have to bear the cost of the breast-feeding through maternity leave. this is not a way of getting maternity leave. so there was an explicit decision made to talk about breastmilk rather than breast-feeding during that advocacy campaign. so that is the second site into the question of what is the deal with breast-feeding, why the moral servers around breast-feeding? finally, i want to to swing around to the third part of my answer. here i argued that breast-feeding reinforces many of the divisions that have long

fractured american society, in particular concerned about divisions of race and class. every year the center for disease control and prevention publish what it called the annual breast-feeding report card. so that its data on who is breast-feeding in the united states, how common it is. then they break down that data and they break it down by state, also by demographic differences. the demographic differences they use to slice to their data are differences of race, class, so the differences are race, so syndicate economic status, marital status, and level of education. by organizing their data that way, what they show year upon

year, is that that women who are white and higher socioeconomic status, are married, and have higher levels of education, those are the women who are breast-feeding. the women who are supposedly failing to breast-feed are women who are african-american, poor, unmarried, and undereducated. they have a high schooler less level of education. so annually when the breast-feeding report card comes out, this is a story that gets picked up in newspapers across the united states. you'll see this story every single year, this story is always the same story read the story is, breast-feeding rates are improving but african-americans still lag far behind. this is presented as coming from a place of concern, concern over

the the before or after american babies that are not receiving the benefits of breastmilk. in a country with a kind of history and the present reality of racial division, that information information is also shoring up the status of white people is better parents. when breast-feeding is turned into a public health issue, issue, so in 2012 the american academy of pediatrics and the center for disease control decided that breast-feeding had become a public health issue. the reason it was a public health issue is because the failure to breast-feed was costing the united states and $13 billion per year. thirteen dollars per year number as a result of a very widely published study, but 11 that i can tell you about later, why that 13 billion-dollar number

has been slated. the united states identifies breast-feeding as a public health issue. what happens then, by a defined as a public health issue and say that billy to breast-feed is costing the united states $13 billion per year, the cdc transformed those people who are just bad parents before into irresponsible citizens. basically costing the united states billions and billions of dollars per year in unnecessary infections and diseases, and illnesses which they could be prevented if only they would breast-feed their children. so the problem here is that breast-feeding fits to the way

this information is presented. the way the data is presented reinforces, it reinforces many of the divisions and prejudices that have long been fracturing american society. for middle and upper-class women, it creates policies that in turn are problematic as well. it justifies what are called, what public health officials in the united states called targeted interventions. that means interventions that target particular categories of the population. for more breast-feeding advocacy and for more powerful breast-feeding advocacy. there is a profound difference between the way middle and upper-class women in the united states experience breast-feeding advocacy. for them, it is primarily in the

form of over as well as the consultants and hospitals. and the appropriate people in their social circles. for poor people, the united states has long had much more course of ways of influencing the behavior, in particular women that women who are poor and vulnerable. so the united states has a probe one on trend program called the supplemental nutrition program for women infants and children, it is called wic for short. wic introduced the enhanced food package, the enhanced food package provides different kinds of benefits for for women who are breast-feeding the women who are formula feeding. women who are breast-feeding are entitled for wic for twice as long as the mothers who formula feed. breast-feeding mothers get more

better food then formula feeding babies. breast-feeding mothers are prior toys for intake of registration. wic is not an entitlement program. wic can run out, they. in the event of shortfalls counselors are advised to register mothers who are breast-feeding over mothers who are formula feeding. in the extreme event feeding your baby formula can actually exclude you from qualification or eligibility to work completely. a couple of months ago, the well-known harvard law professor published an op-ed in the new york times about his nudge theory. he argued in his new york times

op-ed that since he wrote the book nudge, he went out and produced a data set looking at how much americans want to be nudged, or how much the support is for nudging. what he argued in the new york times op-ed was that most americans support government nudging toward better behavior. depending on the particular question he asked, support, support was anywhere from 60-85% for nudging. to me, this is really interesting, i feel like nudging raises all kinds of really interesting questions. when you look at it through the lens of breast-feeding advocacy. the first question might be is what counts as a nudge and who gets to decide what is a nudge, and what is actually more like a shove and a kick.

it occurs to me that what wic is doing by withholding food from women who are already at nutritional risk and babysat nutritional risk, that does not seem so much as a nudge to to me. now as a matter fact, they do not study wic, so i don't know if he would think that was a nudge. i think if the government wic probably thinks it's a nudge. i think it goes too far. at any rate, it would certainly make you think that you have to think carefully about what counts as a nudge. in the second question that i think breast-feeding advocacy in this whole story raises is, should we worry nudges don't just target particular behaviors. the behavior of people randomly scattered across society, but instead these nudges consistently seem to target particular categories of people. the third question on this is

something we could actually get a handle on if we could get a hold of the data is to look at what other demographic differences in his data. is it the case that african-americans are as inclined to accept or endorse government nudges as white americans might be? or is it the case that poor people would accept them as much as wealthy people might be? is it the case that people would have a different answer when they thinking that the government is maybe going to nudge me? or is they going to nudge on the other people surrounding me who have bad behavior, but i will not be nudged. so it raises all of these questions. it ought to force us and convince us to look carefully at what really are reasonable nudges to embrace.

finally, i want to close with another thought that links back to the idea of public health issue. since the 1970s or so, the united states public health has focused increase in intention on individual behaviors of the cause of bad health. first it was smoking, then unsafe sex, around the time this all started in 1975, the chicago tribune offered the opinion that the idea of preventive medicine was saintly on american because it means recognizing the enemy is us. it occurred to me that in fact the ideas profoundly america, it extends the story from wealth to health.

we'll have the potential to be healthy, we just need to work at it. we need to exercise the moral fortitude, we need to pull ourselves up by the bootstraps and we will succeed. there is privatizing responsibility for health. i think that that is one way, another way in which breast-feeding since very conveniently into an american health paradigm that increasingly blames individuals themselves for poor health outcomes and for the soaring cost of american healthcare. it is not just a matter of blaming individuals, when we blame individual lifestyle choices we are not only blaming random on healthy individuals in our society, we are consistently blaming some category of people. so on safe sex for example is

associated with gay men, prostitutes, and, and iv drug users. smoking is more prevalent among people who are poor, obesity obesity is among people who are african-american. the failure to breast-feed of course is the failure of women, but not all women, women who are african-american, women who are married, and women who are young. so the deal with breast-feeding is basically that is practically perfect in a sense that it serves so many purposes in the united states today. for all kinds of people that stands as a marker of who we are and what we believe in. for fast-growing, breast-feeding support and supplements market, it is a huge source and mostly on tap to potential profit. the demographic and social distribution of breast feeders

shores that many of the divisions hierarchies that have long characterized american like. breast-feeding privatize his responsibility for health. blaming mothers not only for infant infections but for cardiovascular disease, obesity, diabetes, asthma, allergies, pretty much any condition their children may get over the course of an entire lifetime. that my friend is the deal with breast-feeding. thank you. [applause]. mall is going to comment on my book. >> that's a tough act to follow but i am happy to be back here at the new school. above all back here with my dear friend and former colleague, courtney. also talking about her book tran

three. first i wanted say that it is brilliantly argued, it has hurt characteristics sardonic tone, it is often hilarious and i have really enjoyed reading it they're going to beat three parts to my commentary i will not speak for more than ten or 15 minutes. i am first going to talk about what i thought was a strength of the book. then i will make some talks about where i thought the book was needing some improvement and finally i will make two points about the bigger picture for the broader implications of the book for how we think about gender equality. she did not mention all of it today but the book does a real demolition job of lack of this stick extremist.

it shows that single-minded overcommitted activists to end up undermining their own cause. and they do that because they're so intolerant and ideological. the second thing is it sort of brilliantly analyzes and traces the evolution of the breast-feeding, which means breast, baby into breast milk feeding. which she did talk about today. she also calls out the policymakers and business interests who would seemingly make motherhood compatible to working via pumping without any change to the policy framework. the second to last point, what kristin does in her book, courtney shows the latest breast-feeding is just the tip of the iceberg by itself.

breast-feeding is here but underneath the water of the iceberg is an entire package of agendas, worldviews, ideologies. people are investing the human act of breast-feeding was so much more than just a way to be children. i think today she succeeded in mapping out what those agendas are. finally, on a personal note i think this book has succeeded in calling out people, including myself who have looked down on and felt superior to other women who are not breast-feeding or not breast-feeding as well. i'm actually grateful for courtney for stain my hand in that kind of behavior. so what are some of the ambivalence is? courtney says repeatedly through the book that this is a book about tran with collectivism.

collectivism is a social movement it has sustained the human race as long as it we have been around there is a complacent or slippage of collectivism and breast-feeding. as a consequence of this slippage, perhaps as a consequence of the slippage, and points her tendency to blame breast-feeding for a series of social elements that are not breast-feeding fall. so in science terms we say that she exaggerates the cause of breast-feeding. so women in the workplace, women who want to take time off or women who are not asked pressing

their breasts in a closet. i don't think that the fault of breast-feeding, i think that the fault of sexism. i think the marginalization and the targeting of african-american women is not the fault of breast-feeding, but is the response of racism and breast-feeding is nearly a vehicle for further racism. women leaving the workforce is not a symptom of breast-feeding, even the kind of competition, judgment and shaming among women that i have been guilty of. i do nothing that is the fault of breast-feeding, but rather breast-feeding is just a vehicle to express that kind of competitive behavior and shaming. so the ambivalence that i want to mention is, especially in

courtney's case of the science, there is a presumption or betrayal of parenting decisions as a cross benefit calculation. the formula is sitting right there but if i breast-feed now, i will be one sixth of my weight or fewer infections, or i will be a half an iq point higher. that is not the rate that i ever made any parenting decisions. they're actually never responded to a cost-benefit calculation about the relative payout of certain behavior. to me it it was about instinct of survival. the other thing i think was an ambivalence in and i didn't recognize myself in some of the description of people who breast-fed was that i did not feel the beginning that i was

breast-feeding to advance an agenda, such as to be green, to be feminist, to oppose corporate control. i was breast-feeding because that's what my baby wanted and needed. further down the road, maybe i hooked it to the other agendas but i think many people during daily life are not making cost-- benefit calculations. they are not not furthering an agenda, they're just doing. i'm going to wrap up in a few minutes here so let me make some broader reflections. i think the big question that courtney is expressing and she calls it the moral fervor, how how about all of the discussion that even the book, tons of comments of the new york times webpage, lots of callers, lots of action on twitter. even people responding to my facebook page. why are so many people worked up

about this? courtney courtney does give us an answer, she says that people with diverse agendas have a lot invested in breast-feeding and the discussion is quite polarized. breast-feed, formula feed, good parent, bad, bad parent. what is absent in this discourse are the voices of actual women who are ambivalence, who are through trial and era. they are experiencing their own, the nature and the self understanding of it, i don't even want to call it choices because it sounds irrational, but the instinctual behavior they are following when it comes to parenting. i think if we listen to these voices it would be hard for us to degenerate and have a polarized debate about

rest feeding, instead it would be much more richly complicated and diverse. while i think about why there is a debate at all and what the debate is like, it is important that we see this as another reflection of gender inequality. women's voices, often in this book are not the most prominent ones when it comes to talking about breast-feeding. their male scientists, male policymakers, that is a reflection of a society that continues to subjugate women. if women were actually speaking about breast-feeding i think the debate would be different. finally, what about gender equality anyway? let me talk about two visions are models to achieve it. on one hand, we have the kind of

liberal individual's choice model, what nancy is now characterizing his mainstream feminism, the having it all feminism area to be successful, to be a fully realized woman who is having it all, we need to be ceos or presidents. we need to be fully present in the public fear like men are, on burdened by accessories and by that i mean children, ailing ailing parents and et cetera. formula feeding is very conducive this type of feminism. it shows that i can outsource or delegate care of my baby to someone who is going to be to formula. that is one model. an alternative model is one that makes ties of dependency, caregiving roles, chaos, complication, actually central to our conception of the actor and the public's beer, the the politician, the ceo, of the

worker. in this model the public sphere is defined by and includes the breast-feeding. breast-feeding is a good teacher for this model. it teaches us that life is unpredictable. >> ..

>> the differences in breast-feedig initiation and duration are actually not all that stark. the, you know, one difference you could point to would be between the united states and canada. in canada you have an 89% initiation rate, in the united states the initiation rate is 79%. in the united states at six months, 49% of women are still breast-feeding, and in canada can 52% of women are still breast-feeding. so the numbers are fairly comparable. but the huge difference between canada and the united states, of course, is that women who, women have maternity leave in canada. and so women can, they have -- they can make a choice more freely about what works for them because they have the time and the space to breast-feed if they choose to. so the, although there are

breast-feeding advocacy programs and projects in canada, they're not as draconian as they are in the united states. it's not about withholding food from people who don't breast field. you know, it's just sort of advertising in the subways or something like that. because instead they have maternity leave. and that maternity leave does make it a lot easier for women to actually, for women to be supported if, in fact, they do decide to breast-feed. and, of course, you know, as i'm sure you know, the united states is one of only four countries in the world that has no federally-mandated, paid maternity leave. and the others are, you know, swaziland and new guinea and somewhere else. [laughter] tom? >> so -- can you hear me?

>> yeah mpt. >> so i'm interested in, you talked about the research from the pump companies and how that promoted their way of thinking in terms of natural breast-feeding, but i'm curious about any kind of research that is being done on the formula side. i mean, was nestles so blown up by their 1950s movement that they just never got on the bandwagon again? it would seem to me that this is all good conversation, but somebody on the other side would be, whoever we paid the millions of dollars to buy that formula from, that they would actually promote a research study of their own, you know, to -- >> well, so they were partly completely blown up by nestle. nestle and abbott and, you know, the other formula companies, they are not sponsoring studies on breast-feeding or infant feeding, because those studies

would be roundly dismissed. you know, people who are since my op-ed was published in "the new york times"es, a number of people have written to me and accused me of being funded by formula companies. [laughter] so, you know, the idea of being, having research funded by formula companies is something that can't be done. which is not to say that formula companies aren't still making a lot of money in the infant feeding sector, you know? so if the breast pump industry is $2.6 billion annually, the formula industry is $7 billion annually. i expect that the breast pump, the breast pump industry is, you know, it's set to take off. its highest growth area of the world is asia. it's looking, it's actively marketing aggressively marketing in asia.

and so, you know, it's not 2.6 billion, $7 billion, they're not -- there's a vast difference, but it's not completely apples and oranges. the breast pump market really is something. so what formula companies are doing now, you know, they were definitely set back on their meals by all of -- heels by all of this advocacy on breast-feeding, and what they're doing now is basically creating new products for niche markets that they're creating. so it's follow-on formula for when you wean as if there's a particular food that your baby needs for when it weans, and there's formula specifically geared for your 2-year-old, you know? so they're trying -- they're inventing all of these new categories, and they're selling product in those categories, and that's how they're remaining competitive. >> ann?

>> thank you. really fascinating exchange. i haven't read the book yet. i heard you on this morning and now, so i feel in possession of a certain outline here. but i didn't hear -- [inaudible] i didn't think you were saying breast-feeding was a cause of all this. i thought more of a symptom in the way in which inequality is managed, and you could take another ten possible instances of manipulation. i just think of it as an instance of how these things are done, you know, how you can -- i mean, the women who were forced to use formula, then the women who were forced not to use formula, you know? >> right. >> pressured not to, i mean, the fact that the story's very complicated, and there have been progressive moments for each side. >> right, right. >> but i think the absence of women's voteses has partly to do with -- voices has partly to do with the fact that the story you're telling is about

silencing of that complexity and ambiguity, you know? i can imagine a feminist position which, obviously, doesn't exist here that talks about, you know, better conditions for breast-feeding, all, you know, the maternity leave, the whole number of things you'd need. >> uh-huh. >> in order to make this work for you in the complex life you have, you know? which i think you're festering for it. >> right. >> how unable women are is partly how little maneuverability they have. but an interesting absence here, and it's in your discussion and also in mala's, is if breast-feeding is the key thing that, you know, in-out, up-down, men disappear. men disappear from the discussion. it's fascinating to me, you know, that people like dorothy and others who have written

about how inequality cannot be achieved -- [laughter] without men taking real, you know, central, fundamental charge of children along with women. and first of all, lots of feminists are ambivalent about that. think of all the women who say, oh, he can't do it. only i can do it. so, and, you know, this huge, you know, number of places where people don't want to hear about that in relation to this. this is women's fear, women's power, women's bodies. but i think you could easily configure a feminist position that says whatever one of these decisions you're making -- >> uh-huh. >> -- the issue would be are you really sharing domestic work? because inequality is deeply embedded in the lack of sharing of domestic work and in the break between public and private space. >> uh-huh. >> so that, to me, is where it happens, how it's reproduced.

>> right. >> and so i love your argument, because i think it, it shows the lack of leverage about really changing the conditions under which women do these things, you know, the up and the down. it just shows you the weakness of women's control over any of these situations. so i guess with america ala's final -- mala's final point which is inewallty's the core here. and i led my students through male breast-feeding. he said why do men have nipples? and he studied that there were men who had breast fed. and the women in the class got terribly upset. here they are appropriating everything, you know? and i was fascinated. i'm not advocating that men should necessarily take on

breast-feeding, but i do think men should take on early care of children. and that's a very fundamental feminist value of mine. so, you know, i think you've just opened it all up, and i value this -- >> i'm going to gather. >> okay. or you could respond. >> oh. well, i think, yeah, i think there's a good discussion, so let's gather a few points from the audience and then she can respond. i might have something to say too. >> mine is very quick. first of all, thank you. i haven't read the book, but i -- [inaudible] and it already changed my mind about my own experience breast-feeding, and i appreciate it. one of the things i didn't see here and i also -- [inaudible] "the new york times" article was the question about the benefits of breast-feeding not for the child, but for the woman. >> uh-huh. >> so the whole argument about how it reduces the risk of breast cancer and also may help

you in, like, depression, postpartum depression and all of that. so i just want to hear thoughts on that, both the research and the argument itself. >> so -- [inaudible] we're gathering, i'm sorry. >> yes. >> hi. thank you so much for this. i thought the work was excellent, the book's great. i have two just comments to maybe offer for discussion. one was noting among the group this scoffing notion at the idea of masculine breast-feeding, and it kind of dovetails on utilizing breast-feeding as a way to demasculinize. and and i wonder if that is a shortsighted goal, one that is inherently transphobic, perhaps, and kind of keeps us in a very binaryied, focused -- [inaudible] and thinking about the ways in which the transmasculine body can be a pregnant body, a

lactating body, etc., etc. so opening that up, because i think it's a great point. and additionally that quick distinction, mala, in your commentary about are we utilizing breast-feeding as, are we kind of conflating it as the problem as opposed to a symptom or merely it's an act. and i guess i'm wondering what everyone thinks of is that possible though? like, can you separate, like, the fleshy bits out from the process? so maybe it's not actually that problematic to really critique breast-feeding in the way it's kind of picked up and helped, like, it can't be just a, quote-unquote, weapon to harm women with or to judge women with if it's literally part of the body. it's kind of complicating that, i guess. >> carmela or re gnat that was next? okay, renata and then judith and

we'll come back to you. i'm supposed to be moderating. >> i was sort of surprised. i was expecting mala to fight you on the science, but she didn't. >> she told me at lunch i couldn't. [laughter] >> oh. >> she didn't want us to fight. [laughter] >> oh, okay. i have to say i -- [inaudible] so i don't know if that's where the conversation is. but i'm really surprised that you're -- [inaudible] of this world-approved science has not at least today -- i don't know, maybe i'm just trying to justify that i carried that stupid pump for a year. [laughter] tell me there was something valuable about doing that. [laughter] >> don't judge other women. >> my second question is besides really, like, why -- [inaudible] i mean, it's like universal.

so it can't be just your agenda. maybe it is just your agenda. but i wanted to ask you also an international question but sort of -- because i think this is a very good argument for the u.s., definitely. how does when you translate this to a world where people do not have the money to buy the formula, you know? i wonder if there is still a value on the social, on the public policy of just supporting breast-feeding as so we don't repeat all of the things that you explained, you know, people actually using dirty water, you know? there is other conditions in which maybe this argument will be different? >> judith. >> [inaudible] >> no, you. you are the one. >> i was -- yeah. i also wanted to go to the international question as well, and i was thinking courtney and i share an interest in mexico where breast-feeding is very, is very dominant in rural areas and

where, in fact, diabetes is very high in the same rural areas. and as i was thinking about comparative research, has anybody been looking at that -- it's one of the, you mentioned several times today that one of the diseases that you're preventing by having breast-feeding happens to be diabetes. and you mentioned it and, again, i'm getting back to what you wanted to hear on the basis of why are you dismissing all this research? i thought perhaps this was a perfectly good example of why the research may be problematic. >> uh-huh. >> so i just throw that out. >> i think, do you want to respond now. and then we can take another round? >> yeah. i think, i mean, a lot of what people have said is not, not things i necessarily want to respond to, they're just interesting comments, good food for thought. i do want to respond to renata's

question, though, because that, that's a really, it is a puzzle, right? what is the, what's going on there, right? so -- [laughter] the fact is that there actually is not a consensus among doctors about the benefits of breast-feeding. and so it's presented as if there's sort of a hegemonic consensus on the benefits of breast-feeding, but just, for example, since i wrote that op-ed in "the new york times" i have received many, me mails from doctors -- many, many e-mails from doctors including, you know, from family practitioners in maine to former

deans of medical schools who have said to me you're exactly right, this is exactly what the breast-feeding literature shows, and you're very brave for pointing it out, and you will be accused of being funded by formula companies. and pediatricians, i mentioned this in my book, you know, pediatricians in particular get demonized by lactation consultants. lactation consultants and breast-feeding advocates always say the pediatricians don't have the right training, and they just don't understand how important breast-feeding is. and pediatricians, on the other hand, say i am responsible for the care of this one particular child, and pediatricians are actually quite quick to say you need to move on from breast-feeding, you need to start feeding your baby formula because your baby is failing to thrive, you're not producing enough breast milk, etc., etc.

so doctors who are actually taking care of patients in the real world have much more ambivalent feelings about breast-feeding than the public health advocates who are making breast-feeding policies. now, those public health add advocates, here's where -- this is what their position is. their position is those modest benefits that you get from reducing the risk of infection are actually important on a population-wide level. so dr. david mayers, the director for the agency for health care research and quality, the ahrq, says if six women breast-feed exclusively for six months, they will avert one ear infection that one of those children otherwise would have gotten. as far as dr. david mayers is concerned, that's great. that is a very powerful intervention. but he, when he read the op-ed

in "the new york times," a reporter called him. the reporter said, so what do you think about this, and he said this just makes my job a whole lot harder. because i didn't quote those numbers for mothers to be hearing, that was what, that was talking to doctors who understand what that means as a public health initiative or a public health intervention. and his position was what he said then was even if the benefits are modest, why wouldn't we try to achieve them? so he's acknowledging that the benefits are modest and saying why wouldn't we try to achieve them. and he said this, and it's out there in the public sphere now because i read it in an article. and what he's doing when he's saying even if the benefits are modest, why wouldn't we try to achieve them, he's admitting that the benefits are modest, and he's not paying any attention at all to the high costs that are being paid by

trying to achieve them, the very, very high costs that mothers are imposing on themselves and that we as a society are imposing on mothers in order to achieve these very, very modest benefits in reducing ear infections. and, you know, chances are you're not going to reduce an ear infection that your own child would have had. you're reducing someone else's, you know, eliminating somebody else's ear infection. which is why i said, you know, i'm really sorry about that year of pumping. [laughter] >> go on. >> i could talk about the international angle. okay. the last chapter of my book is about the international dimension of this story is which, of course, is partly the nestle story, you know? we're partly in the 1970s in poor countries around the world, and in those countries breast-feeding advocacy is still an important public health

project. in those, in many of those countries formula feeding is not actually a safe alternative whereas in the united states formula feeding is a safe alternative, a very safe alternative. in a lot of poor countries formula feeding is not a safe alternative. but in the 1970s, in the early 1980 breast-feeding advocates were sort of took up this, took up this ideal and took up this project, and an international public health organization like the who and unicef became convinced that breast-feeding was the solution to many problems in developing countries. so they invested a lot of money in breast-feeding advocacy and support programs, a very large proportion of their funding was reinvested into breast-feeding

advocacy and support. and they hired a lot of breast-feeding advocates and lactation consultants in very important positions in the who. too fast in the early 1980s -- that was in the early 1980s. they had passed the code of marketing, there were lots of things going on. it was like the heyday of international breast-feeding advocacy. in 1985 the lancet published the first evidence that hiv could be transmitted through breast-feeding and through breast milk. in 1985 when the lancet published that information, the united states, canada, new zealand, australia and all of western europe immediately changed their infant feeding guidelines to recommend that mothers who were hiv positive should feed their bain babies formula. -- feed their babies formula. and the who did not. it continued to recommend that all mothers should breast field regardless of whether they were

hiv positive or not. in 1992 don published a very important analysis that revealed not only breast-feeding was a transmitter of hiv, but in fact be, how large a transmitter of hiv it was. so as a result of dunn's metaanalysis, people learned that up to 40% of babies who are infected with breast -- with hiv are infected through breast-feeding. right? so 40% of the babies who are infected with hiv are infected with breast-feeding. from 1985 when the information was first revealed that the, when the information was first revealed that hiv could be transmitted through breast milk until 1998, the who continued to recommend that all mothers breast-feed regardless of their hiv status.

and in 1998 as a result of tremendous pressure and back -- and pushback from health ministers in poor countries, the who finally changed its infant feeding guidelines, recommended that mothers who were hiv positive should feed their babies formula and initiated huge programs in poor countries. they sent people in to teach people how to use formula safely, they sent in formula, they sent in a lot of formula that was already mixed, that was already liquid formula, and they started giving away formula to mothers who were hiv positive. that was in 1998. then there's a whole back story that has to do with la leche and aids denialists which i will spare you right now, and we come to 2010. so in 1998 this is an enormous

setback for the breast-feeding advocates who have been fighting against this very transition in infant feeding guidelines for 13 years. they've been fighting against this. it finally happens, it's a big setback. and then they fight for the next 12 years to get the guidelines changed again. because they are worried and they say this out loud, they fear that hiv is a threat to breast-feeding advocacy. so the threat of hiv is a threat to breast-feeding advocacy. i'm sorry, i just had to say that again. [laughter] so in 2010 the who issued new infant feeding guidelines. listen carefully to what these infant feeding guidelines are. in countries where formula is safe and affordable, women who are hiv positive should be

advised to feed their babies formula. when mothers have access to antiretrovirals, women should be advised to breast-feed, because it reduces the likelihood that you will pass hiv to your baby. now, if you -- the reason i said listen to this closely is you will realize that this leaves an enormous hole right in the middle where, of women who do not live in countries where formula feeding is a safe alternative and an affordable alternative, and women who do not have access to anti-retrovirals, right? people, experts estimate that in africa, in africa as a whole 37, only 30% of -- 37% of pregnant women who are hiv positive have access to arvs, right? so 63% of hiv positive pregnant women in africa, they estimate,

have no access to arvs. what should those women be advised to do? the who now recommends since 2010 that if a mother is hiv positive, even if she has no access to the anti-retrovirals, she should be advised to feed her baby, to breast-feed her baby. so there is this, there's a huge complication to the old story that we're familiar with about the value of breast-feeding in poor countries. >> does anybody have a question on this particular topic? on the aids denial -- >> behind the pole. on a different topic. >> on a different topic? because i want to address some of the previous topics, but that was just like, that needed a pause. she dropped a bomb, right?

>> very shocking. >> but i just wanted to briefly touch upon ann's question and your question, whether the extent to whether equally depends on a reallocation to domestic responsibilities and specifically men taking care of children. so i know people, i know people who, you know, firmly uphold the idea of equality and equal sharing and, therefore -- and this also fuels the breast pump industry -- and, therefore, they do some pumping, and they make a point of, you know, having a bottle, and then the other parent, you know, the non-lactating parent will also feed whether it's in the middle of the night to give a break or during the day and so forth. courtney and i have shared a good laugh together because we never did this, you know? and i've been a committed feminist virtually my entire life, but i've never done that. it just seemed very contrived to me. the easiest thing was to just, you know, stick your breast in the baby's mouth, and it will

shut up and be calm, right? [laughter] so we, we didn't to that. but i know a lot of people who do. and i think broader point for me anyway is i think having, you know, three children and the sort of bodily experience of being pregnant, birth, breast-feeding was a real sort of challenge to me as sort of an equal rights feminist, an equality feminist. i mean, it really sort of threw me for a loop and caused me to kind of reconsider or reconstruct my notion of feminism. i will say on a much more sort of biological basis or, rather -- and i think at that time i started reading the brilliant book about what is a woman, right? and she kind of teaches us, i think, in that text that it's okay to embrace biology and bodiliness without embracing biological essentialism. so that the body, you know, doesn't have to determine your lot in life or what you do with

the body, but the body also doesn't need to be denied either, right? it doesn't need to be denied, it doesn't need to jeopardize sort of equal participation or equal treatment. now, so i have been trying to construct and think of a feminism that sort of incorporates the unique, the unique nature of the reproductive functions of the woman's body including, you know, lactation and, therefore, i'm really interested in kind of reconstructing the public sphere around what i think are universal values of lactation -- potentially universal values. ..

the what i mean, it's ambivalent. >> a difference of opinion. to me, very primary care doesn't require breast-feeding or not at all. that not the point. the point is really that these discussions never -- never included discussion what -- >> what egalitarian reorganization -- not only a base and who gets to do what and

where and everything, but also of the life trajectory. why not take a year off and a man also -- did talk about paternal leave, that people hit different stages at life might need to withdraw from the daily grind, and the discussion of pleasure is so far away from -- or displeasure -- so far away from the analytical questions, and yet i think it should be folded in. i don't want to say choice because we know where that leads us. i choose to breast-feed or choose not to. this its that horrible, eave woman on her -- every woman on her own. no big changes but person choice. one would like there to be a range of possible behaviors and support for them. >> one good thing the la -- their rhetoric was horrendous.

i'm sure that the funny part of your book. one great thing was they said nobody is helping women. that was -- >> i was a member. >> i used to say their pronatallism was absolutely mad. i thought the thing about the la letche league was let help women figure this out. an element of what they were. but it's -- the coldness of the manipulation, the back of imbedded stuff you want, and i don't think it's breast-feeding itch don't think she is blaming breast-feed. it's a symptom. of a kind of lack of elasticity in what men do and women do.

it's like -- >> i like that term. elasticity. >> yeah. todd. >> [inaudible] three to one basically in support of your position, and mostly that support was coming from people who had felt put upon by the activists. so that spoke to the huge silent majority who needed to be able to discuss this. are you hoping for a specific policy change to support these people? they obviously need it. >> well, no. i'm hoping for a policy change that is maternity leave but

that's not necessarily supporting the women who are feeling put upon. a policy change like maternity leave would allow women who want to breast-feed to do it in a -- to actually breastfeed, not to have to pump breast milk so somebody else can feed their baby breast milk from a pottle. that a policy change i'm interested in. i'd also like wic to change its policies. i'd like to see the enhanced food package eliminated, and for that coercive mechanism that specifically geared toward enduing poor people to choose breast-feeding. i'd like to see that eliminated. but what i'm really hoping for more fundamentally, i think -- i think what a lot of those women were saying, they're not necessarily experiencing that shaming that is coming from on

top, from policy. it's coming from everywhere. it's social. and if we change the conversation and we sort of start to look at what we're actually doing and also, i think, if we look at it as something that's actually bigger than the mommy wars, so i think that this has long been dismissed by identifying it as an issue that is just about mommy wars, and so even calling it that is very dismisssive. sort of what these mothers do because they're so gel rouse jealous and angry with one another. i it goes beyond the mommy wars and has larger. i mix indications and that is insidious in these many ways, it will change the conversation and a lot of the -- the way i read or heard a lot of the comments i received is this -- it's the

conversation that needs to change, and that we're hoping your book will do some of that work in changing the conversation. anymore comments? >> there was a question over there. >> i really enjoyed your talk. i think it's very eye-opening and very educational about the history of lacktivism -- [inaudible] >> i can hardly hear you. >> okay. >> thank you. >> so, i enjoyed your talk, found it was interesting and eye-opening. i afree with the points you're making. i don't think i'd be saying anything with which you disagree if i were to say we know why things cash out this way. it's because of capitalism. whether you breast-feed or bottle feed or formula feed or whatever, going to be marjorie commercialized because that's the capitalist world in which we leave, and the reason why cashes

out in ways you're describing is because of patriarch can i. the point of patriarchy, regardless of the choices women make, they're criticized for it, they're overmanaged in doing it, et cetera. but the punchline of your book is not absolutism or patriarch can i. it's lacktivism, and on the one hand i under why because it's 2015 and you don't want to hear folks who say, guess what, the problem is capitalism. but there's a problem with that. melt draw an analogy. we all know now that the anti-vaccination position is wrong. those people have no medical -- we know that what they're doing is socially irresponsible because it's not doing anything to hurt immunity, and if you're on the internet, i'm sure you noticed it's like a pastime on twitter, facebook, whatever, especially among the left to

just castigate the antivacsers, like these idiots and socially irresponsible more rones -- more rones -- morons. i had a friend point out there's a problem with that. the reason why people were attracted to the antivacser position, which dates to the '90s, didn't just have to do with the fear of autism and that one doctor who has been discredit e credited. the reason why people were attached to it is because the moment you get pregnant you're introduced to this medical system and social sim and social services delivery system and informal pressure that i incredibly con desenting, contradictory, judgmental, and invalidates all of the choices you make, and forces upon you all kinds of unnecessary forms of intervention, monitoring, and so on and so forth, and you can

understand why people turned to an antivaccination position, because they were tired of these unnecessary interventions, trying to use their own judgment, and in their judgment, that seemed to be the best for their child. so when we very easily and snidely denigrate that antivaccination position, we can forget that's -- there was like a background to it. i think we have seen -- feeding -- by everything going on here and that's the problem with having as your target or punchline, lacktivism, rather than patriarchy or capitalism or whatever. part of this is the product of people trying to make better, more autonomous decisions, and it's fun to make fun of -- to

help women and point out the skill and something that -- shouldn't just throw people in the deep end and say, you'll have this. so, just want to raise that as sort of -- i'd like the fact that you cataloged all of this empirical evidence into one book to point out how problematic lacktivism is. i have that thrust. >> should i respond? >> ism think this is it. why don't you respond and then we'll close and have wine. >> so, lsen lec eh started i was explicitly understood by the women who starringed the league

as a pushback against the medicalization of child birth and of infant feeding. they were responding against doctors who were telling them that they had to formula-feed their babies, had to formula-feed a particular amount in every feeding, that they had to feed on a four-hour schedule. so it was very regimented. child birth, pregnancy, and baby feeding were all extremely regimented and regimented -- things that were recommendingmented by male doctors, and so it was absolutely a pushback against that medicalization of the female body and things that ought properly to be the purview and responsibility of women and mothers in particular. right? so, there is that history to it, and a lot of people are