>> good afternoon and welcome to the new school. i am vice dean.

and i am really delighted to welcome back to the university to very dear friends and distinguished colleagues, both former members of the politics department. lift us about a decade ago. ontario canada and new mexico respectively. first and foremost i am pleased to introduce courtney young his new book, we are here to celebrate. the book was published last month. .. everyvi

everyview -- overview of her book and then mala will respond and moderate the discussion. she is a professor for the science at the university of new mexico and the author of two

books. "inclusion without representation; gender quarters and ethnic reservations in latin america". in 2015, she was named the andrew carnegie fellow. she has a bachelor from harvard and a degree from stanford. i want to quote one endorsement of the book before we begin from their former school. the professor of philosophy and politics quote "this riveting books charts the constilations

that make it -- racist victim blaming and policies that deny food to formula-fed children, courtney jung explains america's love of the breast pump and failure to provide paid mateat n maternity leave. my own experience with breastfeeding is limited obviously but as a baby boomer, born to a working mother in communist poland i was breastfed

for six months. my on, on the other hand, also born to a working mother but in the liberal united states, was breastfed for an extravagant, you may say excessive but three years, eight months and 14 days. in both cases it was the same. my family in a sense, too, is a victim of this conspiracy so eloque eloquently discussed in courtney's book. without further ado, professor courtney jung. [applause] >> thank you very much, robert. i cannot tell you how happy i am to be here. to be home at the news school. i am going to fix the problem

that robert created here. yeah. thank you very much. i am so happy to be here. with a topic like this there are many -- a topic like this is ripe for many interesting and amusing introductory antidotes and i decided to expense the introducto introductory antidotes which would have been at me and cut to the chase. people have expressed surprise that i am writing about breastfeeding as if this would be a health issue or a gender study issue and not a political science issue. but what was interesting to me about breastfeeding and the

surprising consensus among breastfeeding. consensus is not easy to find anywhere. consensus is a rare thing. when you have consensus it seems like a reasonable think to study. how do you get consensus? where does it come from? what work does it do in our lives? critical social theory going on here. 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. one place to start with a project like this is to look at the science behind breastfeeding. one way of thinking about this is is it driven by science and scientific evidence? the answer to that question is basically no or not really. so all of the research onis obs.

there are no randomized controlled trials into breastfeeding and non-breastfeeding health outcomes of babies. the problem with observational research is it has to control for confounding variables. other things that might account for differences between breastfed and non-breastfed babies. the older research on breastfeeding failed to control for confounding factors. most of it failed to control for confounding factors. there is newer research now which is better in many ways in that it better defines breastfeeding, it better controls for confounding factors. and that evidence shows that breastfeeding has a modest impact on the risk of infection during the time the baby is actually breastfeeding. it has a small impact on the

risk of infection. there is good evidence that breastfeeding has no impact on obesity, type one diabetes, asthma, allergies and cancer. and the rest of the list that have been attributed to breastfeeding the research is basically characterized as weak and inconclusive and this includes type two diabetes, cardiovascular, and other things. the list is extremely long and almost everything on that list. some of it has been well disproven and the rest of it we don't know. the literature is inconclusive.

the answer to the first question is no, it is not being driven by scientific evidence. that takes us back to what it is being driven by, right? for a political scientist that comes an interesting thing to sturd study. if it is not driven by science what it is driven by and i will answer that question in three pieces. the first piece of the puzzle what does breastfeeding mean to people in the united states today. and that story starts with a league in 1956 two women, mary white and mary ann thompson were sit together at a christian family movement picnic breastfeeding their babies and limenting the fact not many other people were breastfeeding their babies and mothers didn't have enough support if they

chose to breastfed -- breast-feed. the center piece of their project was breastfeeding because already, right at the inception, right at the beginning, breastfeeding was symbolic of a larger set of philosophy which included the mother staying at home and nurturing the children and mothers shouldn't work once they have children and the role of the father as the breadwinner. the conception of family and philosophical picture that went along with the focus on breastfeeding. so already you have the rise or the beginning ways of breastfeeding advocacy using

breastfeeding as an analogy. the next big movement is the nestle boycott in the 1970's. nestle and other formula companies looked out on the developing world and saw nothing but a vast untapped network of potential formula feeders. so they initiate aggressive marketing practices in order to get women in poor countries to buy and use formula. the most famous of those marketing practice was the nestle nurses. they dressed their employees up as nurses and sent them into hospitals and clinics and got them to convince mothers to use formula under the guides that formula was what was medically recommended. so that is one picture. these are obviously nestle nurses in south africa.

you can tell from the sign behind them. this is a whole team of nestle employees in malasia in 1976. what happened was that nestle is selling formula in poor countries and mothers in those poor countries are -- they cannot afford formula. so they are over diluting the formula. they are mixing it with too much water because they are trying to make a can of formula last longer. so babies are becoming malnourished because the formula is over-diluted and they are essentially drinking colored water. water that is milky colored. and the second problem is they are diluting the powdered formula with dirty water, unsterilized water. as a result of both of these

things you have a spike in infant mortality and infant malnutrition and diseases. the response is to reestablish breastfeeding as the norm for infant feeding in developing countries. at that point you have the nestle boycott. it happened in the united states, canada and all over europe and it is very widespread and very poplar. everybody is boycotting nestle products. in fact, this boycott was the longest and most widespread boycotting every. people are boycotting them today even. people boycott nestle more often than they do phillip morris.

this establishes breastfeeding as a challenge against big business in solidarity with the global poor and the world's struggle against hunger and a challenge against corporate greed and corporate interest. breastfeeding gets appropriated as a symbol of something bigger. of something i believe in with the type of person i am. i am a person that encourages corporate breed. in the 1980s, feminism picks up breastfeeding and it becomes a symbol of female empowerment and the symbol of the life-sustaining force of the female body. in the 1990's breastfeeding is symbolic and important for families that believe in the

philosophy of attachment parenting. attachment parents are parents -- there are three pillars. the first is baby wearing which means carrying your baby in a swing rather than using a stroller to get your baby around town. the second is co-sleeping which is sleeping in the same bed as your child. and the third is breastfeeding. so attachment parenting is a larger philosophy. breastfeeding is a hallmark of that philosophy but it is a larger statement about what your family is like, your family commitment is like, what you are like as a parent and who you are in general. maybe more surprising to me breastfeeding has been embraced by the christian right. for many on the christian right breastfeeding is proof of

intelligent design and it offers evidence of the rightness of het heterosexual marriage. it has been picked up as an issue for environmentalist as well and people that believe in locally, produced sustainable food because after all what could be more locally produced than breast milk. so these groups who are fundamentally opposed to each other and wouldn't see eye to eye on any other issue across the political or social spectrum but they all belief in breastfeeding. the point i am showing is they all believe in breastfeeding for fundamentally different reasons. they have appropriated the symbol of breastfeeding but for many different reasons.

this is the slide i was showing with the attachment parenting. many of you remember ththis this "tithis "tim this "tithis "tim this "time"cover of a magazine showing a three or four year old boy breastfeeding wearing camouflage pants. he looks old and big. that is the first part of the puzzle. that is the first part of the picture which is the ways in which breastfeeding has taken on symbolic meaning and how much value and symbolic value it has for so many people. breastfeeding isn't all things to all people but 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 for those that associate the business of infant feeding with the business of infant formula companies. the idea here is breastfeeding is free. that was the challenge against breastfeeding. but yet it is far from free in 21st century america. and the first reason it is far from free is if you ever plan to leave the house you are going to have to buy some clothes, and bras and you might need nutritional supplements and pillows and shields and creams. and it is not necessary to buy any of these but most people who

brooes breast-feed in the united states today will buy many of these things. the second component is lactation consultant. most women who breast-feed will see a lactation consultant and that will run from $200-$500 an hour. there is an industry of consultants making a living off breastfeeding. and the final component of the business of breastfeeding is the breast pump industry. in 2007, in the united states, "people" did a study on breastfeeding and found 80% of american women who breast-feed are pumping.

that explains why 40% of the world's market for breast pumps is an american market. there is nowhere else in the world where women are pumping breast milk as much as they are in the united states. and so in the next few years the world's market, the world's breast pump market, is expected to reach $2.6 billion annually. as i said, 40% of that market is in the united states. and all of this pumping creates something that is new in the history of human kind which is a surplus of human milk building up in the freezers and refrigerators of american women. i won't say anymore. building up in the refrigerators and freezers of american women. so the combination of the

internet and the pump has revolutionized wet nursing whereas wet nursing would be a service now it is a product that is sold online routinely. this is a good image. i need to step back here a minute. let you think that the nestle nurses are a thing of the past. this is a store on the upper side of man hattan called yummy mummy and the owner of the store is the one in the middle. the people surrounding her are not nurses but employees and dressed in white lab coats to sell all of things they sell in their breastfeeding store like pillows, supplements, and pumps. so the phenomena of dressing

people up as nurses to convince people the way we recommend your baby is medically sanctioned is not dead. it is alive and well right here in manhattan. 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 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 four ads i took from "only the breast" just yesterday. so all of this breast milk is still available probably if you want some of it. so people buy and sell breast milk any day of the week.

you can see between 12-16,000 post here at "only the breast" for people buying and selling breast milk. it is not only mothers looking to feed their babies but athletes are buying breast mimic and consuming it because they are looking to boost their performance. and people are interested in drinking breast milk because they are thinking of it as the new super food. it is better than wheat grass, you know? and so they are looking to boost their immunity or whatever they are looking to do. so there is a big market in human milk. so these people, other people who sell their breast milk, are not necessarily selling online to other mothers and other individuals. a lot of people sell their breast milk to companies.

there is a company in california called prolactate bio science and buys breast milk for a $1 an ounce. and they use it has a raw material in the production of nutritional supplements. they buy the breast milk for a dollar an ounce and they turn it into the base of the nutritional supplement and sell the supplements for $180 an ounce. it is a private company. so they don't disclose their profits every year but they have disclosed they have received $46 million in venture capital in the last couple years. and this is a growing industry. there are prolacta is the oldest company in this market but it is not the only one. there are six or seven other

companies competing with prolacta to produce things like nutritional supplements but the raw material of all of them is the human milk. one of the things that is interesting about this is companies like medula, the largest breast pump manufacturing in the world, and prolacta bio science which is caulo also making money off human milk. both of these companies fund research in the chemical properties of human milk which is a new line of research. not long ago people who were interested in breastfeeding and who were breastfeeding experts and studied breastfeeding were

breastfeeding researchers and went to conferences and studied breastfeeding. now they study human lactation and go to conferences called things like innovation in human lactation and there are laboratories -- there is a laboratory in western australia that is funded byed medula at the university of western australia and it is a human lactation lab. it is run by a guy who specializes in cow and pig lactation. now this is just human lactation. he moved his expertise in cow and pig lactation neatly into the human lactation sphere. one of the things i think is compelling here is all of this pumping is producing -- not only

are people making money now in the breastfeeding sector but they have a vested interest in making sure that the breastfeeding sector is not outside of the market. that it is drawn into the market. and the premise of all of this has to be what is valuable about breastfeeding is not the mother-child interaction at the breast but instead the consumption of human milk. it is driving this whole new line of research into the the consumption of human milk transforming how it is we understand what counts as breastfeeding. transforming breastfeeding into human milk consumption. and this in turn is driving public policy and advocacy

issues. and president obama has launched a number of initiatives and at a federal level these initiatives are unusual. there haven't been presidents before who have been launching breastfeeding initiatives. but the interesting thing about these initiatives is that not a single one of them has anything to do with breastfeeding. all of them are in fact about pumping. so in 2011, the fair labor standard act was reformed require to provide space and unpaid work breaks to new mothers so they could pump at work. in 2012, the irs amended the tax code to allow mothers to take tax deductions for pumps. and in 2013 that was superseded when the affordable care act was required to have insurance

companies cover the cost of all pumps for new mothers. so suddenly, all new mothers in the united states were entitled to receive a free, new breast pump. and so obviously that 85% figure that was quoted in 2007 is now much closer to 100% because american mothers are getting free breast pumps when they have a baby so long as they are insured. medicare is required to give mothers free breast pumps as well. this is reframing our expectations of what new mothers are supposed to do to feed their babies. we thought as working and breastfeeding as mutually exclusive.

you could work or pump but not both. now women are expected to bring a pump to and from work and pump breast milk in an unpaid break and often in a filthy locker room or conference room. there is a tremendous burden being placed on women from the breastpump phenomena from all of these initiatives that are promoting breast pumping rather than promoting breastfeeding. i wanted to show you this other image as well. in 2012, new york city implemented what became a controversial breastfeeding advocacy called latch-on and this was the brochure.

you can see it is not about breastfeeding but about breast mim -- milk. i e-mailed dr. thomas carly and asked why did you just refer to breast milk in the posters and not breastfeeding? and he said we are thinking about breast milk as a product. and then he said, if we had said breastfeeding that would have been much too hard for most mothers to do. most mothers in new york return to work after having a baby and don't have maternity leave and breastfeeding requires too much of a change in the workplace and remember, he said, i was the

public health commissioner under mayor bloomberg and he is well known for being business-friendly and i would not advance a campaign that implieded that businesses would have the bear the cost of breastfeeding through maternity leave. there was an explicit decision made to talk about breast milk rather than breastfeeding in this advocacy campaign. that is the second slice into this question of what is the deal with breastfeeding and why the moral standards surrounding breastfeeding. and finally, i want to swing around to the third part of my answ answer. here i argue that breastfeeding maps on to and reinforces many of the divisions that have long

fractured america's society. every year the centers for disease control and prevention publish what they call the annual breastfeeding report card. so that is data on who is breastfeeding in the united states, how common it is, etc. so then they breakdown that data and they break it down by state and by demographic differences. and the demographic differences they use to sort of flight through their data are differents of race, class -- so the differences are race, economic status, marital status, and level of education. and by organizing their data that year what they show year upon year is woman who are white in higher socioeconomic status

are married and are -- what is the fourth thing? have higher levels of education, thank you. those are the women who are breastfeeding. and the woman who are supposedly failing to breast feed are african-american women, poor, unmarried, and under ededucated with a high school level or less of education. when the breastfeeding report card comes out this is a story that gets picked up in newspapers across the united states. you will this story every year and the story is always the exact same one. breastfeeding rates are improving but african-americans still lack far behind. this is presented as coming from a place of concern. concern over the poor african-american babies that are not receiving the benefits of breast milk. but in a country with the kind

of history and the kind of present reality of racial division that information is also shoring up the status of white parents as better parents. when breastfeeding is turned into a publish health issue. in 2012, the american pediatrics, cdc and the surgeon general decided that breastfeeding all become a public health issue. and the reason it was a public health issue was the reason for failure to breast feed was costing the united states $13 billion per year. the $13 billion number is a result of a widely published study but one that i could tell you about later if you are interested -- why that $13 billion number is perhaps inflated. at any rate, so the united

states identifies breastfeeding as a public health issue in 2012, and what is then is by identifying it as a public health issue, is costing the united states $13 billion for year. the cdc, and apa, transformed those people who were bad parents before into irresponsible citizens basically costing the united states billions and billions per year in unnecessary infections and diseases and conditions and illnesses which they could easily be preventing if only they would breast feed their children.

it reinforces the divisions and prejudices that have been fracturing american society for a while. for middle and upper class women, and it creates policies that are in turn problematic as well. and interventions that target particular areas of the population for more breastfeeding advocacy and powerful and more cohersive. there is a profound way middle and upper class women in the united states experience

breastfeeding promotion. it is over zelous nurses in the hospital and people in their social circle. but for poor people the united states has had much more cohp -- cohersive ways. the united states has a program called the wic and in 2009 wic introduced what it calls the enhanced food package. and the enhanced food package provides different kinds of benefits for women who are breastfeeding than women who are formula feeding. breastfeeding mothers get more and better food than

formula-feeding mothers. breastfeeding babies get more and better food even. and breastfeeding-mothers are prioritized for implementation. wic is not an entitlement program. wic funds can fall out and if there is a shortfall counselors are required to register mothers who are breastfeeding over mothers who are formula feeding. so feeding your baby formula can exclude you from qualification or eligibility from wic completely. a couple months ago the well known harvard law professor cat sun strong published an op-ed in the "new york times" about the nudge theory. he argued since writing the

book "nudge" he went out and produced a dataset looking at -- data set on how much the support is for nudging. what he argued in the op-ed was most americans support government nudging toward better behavior. depending on the particular question he asked support was anywhere from 60-85 percent for nudging. to me this is interesting. i feel like nudging raises all kinds of really interesting questio questions. the first question is what counts as a nudge and what is more like a shove and kick. it occurs to me what wic is

doing from withholding food from babies and women at nutritional risk that doesn't seem like a nudge to me. as a matter of fact, cat doesn't study wic and i don't know if he would think that was a nudge. but i think wic probably thinks it is nudge. i think it goes too far. it would make you think you need to think about what counts as a nudge. the second question i think breastfeeding advocacy is should we worry when nudges don't just target particular behaviors but instead these nudges consistently seem to target particularly categories of people. and then the third question, and this is something, you know, that we could actually get a handle on if we could get ahold

of the data and that is to look at the demographic differences in his data. is it the case african-americans are as inclined to accept or endorse government nudges as white americans might be? or is it the case the poor people would accept them as much as wealthy people might be? and is it the case that the people would have a different answer when they are thinking is the government maybe going to nudge me? or really going to nudge all of those other people that are surrounding me who have bad behavior but i will not be nudged; right? it raises all of these questions about and it ought to convinces us to look at what are reasonable nudges to embrace.

public health in the united states has focused attention on individual behavior as the cost of bad health. first it was smoking and then unsafe sex. and around the time this started in 1975, the "chicago tribune" offered the opinion that the idea of preventive medicine was quote faintly unamerican because it means recognizing that the enemy is us. it occurred to me that in fact the idea is profoundly american.

we need to pull ourselves up by the bootstraps. and that is another way in which breastfeeding fits conveniently into an american health para dame that blames themselves for unhealthy behavior and soaring health care. it is not just a matter of blaming individuals. the point i was making before when we blame individual lifestyle choices for the crisis of american hillary clinton -- health care -- we are not just blaming unhealthy societies but we are blaming a category of people. unsafe sex, for example, is associated with gay men, prositutes and iv drug users. smoking is more prevalent among

people who are poor. obesity is more prevalent among people who are african-american. and the failure of breastfeeding is the failure of women but not all women. women who are poor, african-american, women who are unmarried and women who are young. the deal with breastfeeding is basically it is perfect in the sense it serves so many purposes. for all kinds of people it stands as a marker of who we are and what we believe in. for a fast-growing, breastfeeding accessory support and supplements market it is a source of huge, mostly untapped potential profit. the demographic and social distribution sores up higherarchies that have

characterized american health. and blaming mothers for infections and cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, obesi obesity -- pretty much any condition their child may get over the course of an entire lifetime. and that, my friend, is the deal with breastfeeding. thank you. [applause] >> mala is going to comment on my book. >> it is a tough act to follow but i am happy to be back here at the new school and back here with my dear friend and former colleague courtney and

hippies and yuppies, and physicians and politicians made breastfeeding big business and bad policy." i want to say this book is vintage courtney. it is brilliantly argued, it has her tone, and it is often hil hilarious and i have enjoyed reading it. i am talk about what i took as the strength of the books, and talk about areas where i thought the book was ambivalent or needing improvement, and i want to make two points about the bigg bigger picture or the broader implications for this book and how we think about gender equality. the book, she didn't mention it, but does a job about lactivist extremist in a way that is reminiscent of the book "why we lost the nra" and it shows how

activist can undermine their own cau cause. it traces the evolution of breastfeeding meaning breast baby into breast milk feeding which she did talk about via the pump. and she also calls out the poli policymakers and the business interest who would seemingly make motherhood compatible with working via pumping without changing the policy frameworks. the second to last point, like kristen lucre, does in her brilliant book courtney shows the way breastfeeding is just the tip of the iceberg. underneath the water of the ice

iceberg is a package. people are associating with more than just a way to feed children. she succeeded in mapping what what the agenda is. and 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 breastfeeding or not breastfeeding as well. and i am actually grateful to courtney for staying my hand in that kind of behavior. what are some of the ambivalences? courtney says repeatedly through the book that this is a book about lactivism. but she has a problem with lactivism not with breastfeeding. lactivism is a social movement

and prolitical project. breastfeeding is a human practice that has sustained to human race as long as we have been around. but at times in the book there is a conflation or slipage of lactivism and breastfeeding. i think as a consequence of the slipage and i will not be so anal and point out the passages -- we can do that later. perhaps as a consequence of the slippage at points courtney has a tendency to blame breastfeeding for social ills that are not breastfeeding's falls. so we would say she misspecifies the causal of breastfeeding. women who want to take off to time to pump or exposed in a work closet and that is not the

effect of breastfeeding but the treatment of women in the workplace more broadly. i think the marginalization and targeting of african-american women is not the fault of breastfeeding but is a response to sort of pervasive racism and breastfeeding is merely the vehicle to further the racism. woman leaving the workforce is not a symptom of breastfeeding but another simpymptom of inequality. and even the judgeing and shamig of women is not a fault of breastfeeding but a vehicle to express that competitive behavior and shaming. so the next ambivalence i want to mention is that especially in courtney's critique of the

science there is a presumption or a portrayal of parenting decisions as a cost-benefit calculation. well the formula is sitting there but if i breast feed now i will be 1/6th of my way toward a fewer ear infection or half an iq point higher. and that is not the way i ever made any parenting decision. they were never responding to a cost-benefit calculation about the relative payoff of behavior. for me, it was about instinct and survival. i didn't feel i was breastfeeding to advance an agenda such as oppose corporate

control, be green or a feminist. i felt i was breastfeeding because that is what my baby wanted and needed. further down the road i maybe hooked it to other agendas but i think many people in daily life are not making cost-benefit calculations, they are not furthering an agenda, they are just doing. let me make -- i am going to wrap up in a couple minutes -- some broader reflections. i think the big question cou courtney is addressing but how about the discussion and debate the book is provoking? hundreds of comments on ""the new york times" page. lots of action on twitter. people responding to my facebook page even. why are so many people worked up about this? courtney does give us an answer.

she says people with diverse agendas have a lot invested in breastfeeding and the discussion is quite polarized. breast feed/formula feed. good parent/bad parent. but the voices of actual women and their own, i don't want to say, suffering, but their own experiences and the nature and the self-understanding of the -- i don't want to call them choices because choice sounds rational. but the instinctual behavior followed when parents. i think if we listened to those behaviors it would be hard to degenerate into a debate about

breastfeeding and formula feeding. it would be more complicated, diverse and floristic. when we think about why there is a debate at all and what the debate is like it is important we see this as another reflection of gender ininequaliin pequality. women's voices are not the most prominent ones when talking. that is a reflection of a society that continues to separate women. if women were actually speaking about breastfeeding i think the debate would be different. and finally what about gender inequality anyway? let me talk about two models of how to achieve it. on the one hand, we have the kind of liberal individualist choice model. what it is being characterized as mainstream feminism and to be

successful and to be a fully realized woman who is having it all we need the bco or president. we need to be fully present in the public sphere like men are. kind of unburden attached accessories and i mean ailing parents and other things. formula feeding is very conducive to this type of feminism because it presumes that i can, you know, outsource, or delegate, care of my baby to someone who is going to feed it formula. that is one model. an alternative model is one that makes human ties of dependency, caregiving rolls and chaos and competition normal to the conception of the actor in the public sphere of the politician, of the ceo, of the worker. i think the public sphere is

defined by and includes breastfeeding. i think breastfeeding is a good teacher for this model. it teaches us life is unpredictable. we cannot control things. that it is messy. and i think therefore, and i believe in breastfeeding as a mechanisms to de-masculinize the fear but i am thankful to courtney for teaching me it is not the only mechanisms and maybe not even the best mechanisms. thank you very much. >> thank you. so we are going to take questions. [inaudible question] >> breastfeeding or not experiencing breastfeeding? >> um, well, the key differences

are actually not all that stark. you know, one difference that you could point to could be betweens the united states and canada. in canada it is 89% initiation rate and in the united states it is 79%. in the united states at six months 49% of women are still breastfeeding and in canada 52% of women are still breastfeeding. so the numbers are comp -- compareable. but women have maternity leave in canada. they can make a choice more freely about what works for them because they have the time and space.

one of only four countries in the world and the others are swaziland and papua new guinea and somewhere else.

>> so, i am interested in -- you talked about the research and how that promoted their way of thinking in terms of natural breast-feeding. i am curious about any kind of research that is being done on the formula side. so blown up by the 1950s movement that they just never got on the bandwagon? it would seem to me that this is all a good conversation, but somebody on the other side, however we paid millions of dollars to, that they would actually promote a research study of their own. >> so they were partly completely blown up by nestlé. nestlé and abbott and the other formula companies,

they are not sponsoring studies on breast-feeding or infant feeding because the studies would be roundly dismissed. you know, people who -- since my op-ed was published in the new york times a number of people have written to me and accused me of being funded by formula companies. so, you know, the idea of having research funded by formula companies is something that can be done. which is not to say that formula companies are not still making a lot of money in the infant feeding sector. if the breast pump industry is $2.6$2.6 billion annually, the formula industry is 7 billion annually. i expect the breast pump industry is set to take off.

highest growth area of the world is asia. it is actively marketing aggressively in asia. and so, you know, it is not 2.6 billion, 7 billion, there is a vast difference, but it is not completely apples and oranges. the breast pump market really is something. what formula companies are doing now, they were definitely set back on their heels by all of this advocacy around breast-feeding and what they are doing now is creating new product for niche markets that they are creating. it is follow-on formula for when you lean, as if there is a particular food your baby needs for when it means if there is formula specifically geared for your two -year-old. they are inventing new categories and selling product in those categories

and that is how they are remaining competitive. >> really fascinating. i have not read the book yet. in possession of a certain outline here. but i did not here it as mala htun was hearing it. i felt more of a symptom of the way inequality is managed, another ten possible instances. how these things are done, the women were forced to use formula, force not to, i mean, the story is very complicated and the moments for each side. i think the absence of

women's voices is partly to do with the story that you are telling is about the silencing of that complexity and ambiguity. i can imagine a feminist position which obviously does not exist here that talks about better conditions for breast-feeding, paternity leave. a number of things in order to make this work for you in the complex like you have. you know, how unequal women are and how little maneuverability they have. but the absence year, and it is in your discussion and also, breast-feeding is the key thing in, out, up, down. men disappear from the

discussion. it is fascinating to me that people who have written about how inequality cannot be achieved without men taking real central fundamental charge of children along with women. feminists are ambivalent about that. although the women who say, he can do it, only i can do it. you know, this huge number of places where people don't want to hear about it. women's power, women's body, , but i think you can easily configure a feminist position that says whatever one of these decisions you are making, the issue would be, are you really sharing? inequality is deeply embedded in the lack of sharing of domestic work and

between public and private space. so that could be where it happens. how is reproduced. and so i love your argument because i think it shows the lack of leverage about really changing the conditions under which women do these things. just show you the weakness of women's control over any of these situations. the point, and equality is the core here. one of my students to the study of male breast-feeding why do men have nipples? he said there where men who had breast-fed. and, you know, the women in the class were terribly upset. here they are appropriating

everything. and i was fascinated. i am not advocating that men should take on breast-feeding, but i do think men should take on early care. that is a very fundamental feminist value. so i think you just opened it all up. i value this. >> okay. or you could respond. >> i think it is a good discussion. let's gather a few points from the audience and that i might have something to say. >> first of all, thank you. i changed my mind about my own experience breast-feeding. one of the things i did not see here, the new york times article, the question about the benefits of breast-feeding.

the whole argument about how it reduces the risk of breast cancer and also help you with postpartum depression all of that. i just want to here the research on the argument. >> yeah. >> hi. thank you so much for this. i have two comments. one was nothing among the group the scoffing notion that the idea of masculine breast-feeding dovetails on utilizing breast-feeding as a way to de- masculinized. i wonder if that is a shortsighted deal, one that is inherently trans- phobic, perhaps. kind of keeps us in a very binary focused trajectory

for feminism and thinking about the ways in which the man's body can be a partner body, lactating body. i think that is a great point. and additionally that quick distinction, mala htun, in your commentary about our utilizing breast-feeding, completing it is the problem as opposed to a symptom, and i guess i'm wondering if anyone thinks that is possible, separate the fleshy bits out from the process. maybe it is not that problematic to really critique breast-feeding in the way it picked up. judgment. kind of complicating that a little bit, i guess.

>> come out or were not was next. okay. i am supposed to be moderating. >> i was surprised. on the science, but she didn't. >> the comments. >> i'm really surprised. of her science. i mean,, maybe i'm just trying to justify that i carry that stupid pump for a year. [laughter] >> don't judge other women.

your agenda. and then i wanted to ask you --dash the question. very good arguments for the un. you translate these to the third world i wonder if there is still a value on the policy supporting breast-feeding so we don't repeat the things, usually other conditions. >> i also wanted to go to the international question as well.

breast-feeding is very dominant. where in fact diabetes is very high. and as i was thinking about comparative research has anybody been looking at that? you mentioned several times today that one of the diseases your presenting happens to be diabetes. he mentioned again, on the basis of dismissing all this research, perhaps this is a perfectly good example. so i just throw that out. >> do you want to respond now? >> yeah. i think -- i mean, a lot of what people have said is not

things i necessarily want to respond to, just interesting comments, good food for thought. i do want to respond to were not as question because that is a really -- it is a puzzle. what is -- what is going on? so the fact is that there actually is not a consensus among doctors about the benefits of breast-feeding. and so it is presented as if there is a hegemonic consensus on the benefits of breast-feeding. but just for example, since i wrote that op-ed in the new york times have received many, many e-mails doctors,

including from family practitioners to former deans of medical schools who said to me, you are exactly right. this is exactly what the breast-feeding literature shows and you are very brave for pointing it out, and you will be accused of being funded by formula companies. pediatricians, mentioned this in my book,, pediatricians in particular the demonized by titian control. lactation consultants and breast-feeding advocates always say that pediatricians don't have the right training and just don't understand how important breast-feeding is. pediatricians on the other hand same 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, start feeding your baby formula because your baby is failing to thrive. you're not producing enough breastmilk,, etc. doctors who are taking care of patients in the real world have much more ambivalence much more than the public health advocates. now, those public health advocates, this is what there 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. doctor david mayors, the director for the agency for healthcare research equality , a hr q says the 6th breast-feed exclusively for six months says they will avert one ear infection. as far as doctor david

mayors concerned, that is great. that is a very powerful intervention. but he, when he read the op-ed in the new york times reporter called him and said comeau what do you think about this? he says, this just makes my job harder because i did not quote those numbers from others to be hearing. i was talking to doctors who understand and his position was what he said that was even if the benefits are modest why would we try to achieve them? is acknowledging that the benefits are modest and saying why wouldn't we try to achieve them? i read in an article, and what he is doing being paid

by trying to achieve them. the very high cost that mothers are imposing in order to achieve these very, very modest benefits and reducing ear infection. chances are your not going to reducing ear infection they are on child would've had. you are eliminating somebody else's infection which is why i said i'm sorry about that. >> go on. >> i could talk about the international angle. >> okay. >> the last last chapter of my book is about the international dimension of the story which, of course, is partly the nestlé story.

breast-feeding advocacy is an important public health project. in many of those countries formula feeding is not actually a safe alternative where in the united states formula feeding is a safe alternative, very safe alternative. in a lot of core countries formula feeding is not a safe alternative. in the early 1980s breast-feeding advocates were taking up this idea unicef became convinced that breast-feeding was the solution to many problems in developing countries. so they invested a lot of money and breast-feeding advocacy and support programs, a very large

proportion of the funding was reinvested into breast-feeding advocacy and support. they hired a lot of breast-feeding advocates and lactation consultants. that was in the early 1980s. they passed the code of marketing, there were lots of things going on. it was like the heyday of international breast-feeding advocacy. published the 1st evidence that breast-feeding was that hiv couldcan be transmitted through breast-feeding and through breastmilk. in 1985 when lancet published that information the united states, canada, new zealand command all of western europe immediately change their infant feeding guidelines to recommend that mothers who are hiv-positive should feed their babies formula.

and the who did not. all mother should breast-feed. in 1992 .-dot published an analysis that reveal not only breast-feeding was a transmitter of hiv but in fact how large a transmitter once. as a result of analysis people learned that up to 40 pee infected with hiv are infected through breast-feeding. from 1985 when the information was 1st revealed: the information was 1st revealed that hiv can be transmitted through breastmilk until 1998 the

who continue to recommend that all mothers breast-feed regardless of there hiv status. in 1998 as a result of tremendous pressure and push back from health ministers and poor countries the who finally changed its infant feeding guidelines for recommended that mothers who are hiv-positive should feed their babies formula and initiated huge programs and poor countries, since people and to teach people how to use formula safely, since and formula, a lot of formula that would already mixed and started giving away formula to mothers who are hiv-positive. that was in 1998. then there is a whole back story that has to do with

instant nihilists which i will spare you right now. and we come to 2010. in 1998 this is an enormous setback for the breast-feeding advocates who have been fighting against this very transition and infant feeding guidelines for 13 years. it finally happens. it is a big setback. then they fight for the next 12 years to get the guidelines changed again because they are worried and say this out loud. there is a 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 say that again. so in 2010 the who issued new infant feeding guidelines, listen carefully in countries were formula is

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

arv. what should those women be advised to do? the who now recommends that if a mother is hiv-positive, even if she has no access to antiretrovirals she had be advised to feed her baby, to breast-feed her baby. so, there is this huge complication to the old stories that we are familiar with about the value of breast-feeding and poor countries. >> does anyone have a question on this particular topic? >> on a different topic. >> on a different topic. because i want to address

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

the easiest thing was to just, you know, stick your breast and the baby's mouth and it will shut up. so we didn't do that, but i know people who do. i think the broader point for me is that i think having three children and the bodily experience of being pregnant, birth, breast-feeding was a real challenge to me as an equal rights feminist. it really sort of threw me for a loop and caused me to reconsider or reconstruct my notion of feminism. i will say, on a much more biological basis and at that time i started reading tallboy. she kind of teaches us in that text that it is okay to embrace biology and bottling us without embracing

biological evangelism. the body does not have to determine your lot in life, but the body also does not need to be denied either. it does not need to jeopardize equal treatment. now, so i have been trying to teach. the sort of incorporation of the unique nature of the reproductive function of the woman's body including lactation and i am interested in reconstructing the public sphere around what i think are universal values of lactation, potential universal values. it may be trans- exclusionary. but to reconstruct the

public sphere around what i think should be universally revered and practice values of biology, dependency, chaos, attachment that i feel like has been kind of alienated and bled dry of those types of practices. >> and no way i'm saying has to do with that. >> i know. >> other women. >> ambivalent. >> women voices. does not require breast-feeding or not at all. really in between.

>> what egalitarian reorganization, who gets to do what where but also of the life trajectory. why not take a year off. paternally, people at different stages in life might need to withdraw the daily grind. the discussion of pleasure is so far away from these 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. every woman on her own, no big social changes but a personal choice. like there to be a range of possible behaviors and support for them.

just horrendous. nobody is helping women. >> i was a member. >> pronation was. i thought the thing about the low leche league it was moving but part of what i hear, the coldness of the manipulation, embedded stuff i don't think it's breast-feeding.

it is a symptom of the kind of black. >> todd. >> 321 basically and support of your position and most of that was coming from people by the activists. that is to the huge, the silent majority who needed to be able to discuss this. are you hoping for specific policy change? >> well, no.

i am hoping for a policy change that is maternity leave. that is not necessarily supporting the women for feeling put upon. a policy change like maternity leave would allow women who want to breast-feed to do it, to actually breast-feed, not to have to pump breast milk so that somebody else can see there baby breastmilk bottle. so that is the policy change that i am interested in. i would also like quick to change its policies. i would like to see the enhanced food package eliminated. for that sort of coercive mechanism specifically geared toward inducing poor people to choose breast-feeding, would like to see that eliminated. what i am hoping for more fundamentally and what a lot of those women were saying,

they are not necessarily experiencing that shaming that is coming from on top. it is coming from everywhere. it is social. if we change the conversation and sort of start to look at what we are actually doing and also if we look at it as something that is actually bigger than the mommy wars, this has long been dismissed by identifying it as an issue that is just about mommy wars. even calling it that is very dismissive. with these mothers do because they are jealous and angry with one another. if you look at it as something that goes far beyond the mommy wars and that is insidious in these many ways it will change the conversation.

the way i read or heard a lot of the comments that i received is the conversation that needs to change and that we are hoping your book will do some of that work and changing the conversation. >> there was a question. >> i really enjoyed your talk. i think it is eye-opening and educational. >> i can hardly hear you. >> thank you. >> so i enjoyed your talk. i thought it was interesting and eye-opening. i don't think i would be saying anything with which you would disagree if i were to say we know why things has shout this way, it's because of capitalism. majorly commercialized.

likewise ways that you are describing because of patriarchy. criticized for it. over managed in doing it. the punch line of your book is not capitalism on the one hand i understand why. there is kind of a problem with that. we all no now the position is wrong. we know that what they are doing is socially and responsible. if any of you are on the

internet i'm sure you have noticed it is like a past time to just castigate these idiots and socially irresponsible morons. had a friend pointed out to me that there is a problem with that. the reason why people were attracted to the position, it did not have to do with the fear of autism. the reason why is because the moment that you get pregnant your introduced to a medical system and social system that is incredibly condescending, contradictory , judgmental, and invalidates all the choices you make and forces

upon you all kinds of unnecessary forms of intervention and monitoring. you can understand why people turn to the anti- vaccination position, some members are tired of the unnecessary interventions for trying to use their own judgment. and so very easily and smiley denigrate that we can forget. >> the background. >> trying to make better one.

and to.out. >> yeah. >> throw people in the deep end. i just want to raise that. cataloged all of this empirical evidence and the one book. how problematic it is. >> shall i respond? >> you want to respond and then we will close and have wine. >> so, low leche, and while leche initially started it

was explicitly understood by those women who started low leche league is a push back against the medicalization of childbirth end 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, had to feed on a four hour schedule. very regimented childbirth pregnancy and baby feeding and they were regimented by male doctors. it was absolutely a push back against the medicalization of the female body and things that ought properly to be the purview and responsibility of women and mothers in particular. there is that history.

a lot of people are firmly embedded in that history. that history has not disappeared. it is one of the reasons so many people are committed to breast-feeding. the point i am trying to make is we have swung in the other direction on the pendulum. there were those perfectly reasonable commitments and instincts that were pro- woman probate to anti- medicalization and now breast-feeding advocates are relying on medical science and doctors to push their agenda. so it swung to find the other direction. and i think you are making the same point. that is what they are saying.

you are saying it is all the fault of breast-feeding but it is because we have discrimination in the workplace and women's voices are heard. absolutely there are bigger problems. unfortunately that this was our worst problem. >> that was good. [inaudible conversations] >> you are watching book tv on c-span2.

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new line is on the research. this is an example tonight. our speaker this evening, john sedgwick written by alexander hamilton and said to theodore sedgwick john's great, great, great grandfather, the letter was written the night before hamilton road across the hudson to the dueling ground. it is on display. and we invite you up to see it. well, this letter has been little appreciated by historians. more than any other single document it describes hamilton's reasons for risking his own life. inspired in the war of two.

the boston globe said sedgwick writes elegantly and eloquently. great compassion both some brilliant self-created hamilton and elegant immigrant illegitimate birth and boundless ambition and equally brilliant birth and american aristocrat. i think many of you are familiar with our speaker tonight. written several books and articles for publications such as the atlantic, gq, newsweek, and esquire. the finest nonprofit. anyway, john sedgwick. [applause]