Masochistic Mommy

You see the world from your own perspective – of course you do. What can be harder to recognise is that not everyone else does. When you’re a child, most of the people in your world are focused on you most of the time. When you’re two, for example, you can scream when you’re hungry and someone will produce food for you. But that’s not going to work when you’re 20. Okay, so you’re thinking “No shit Sherlock”. But there are other ways in which we can all too easily assume that the world is focused on us when in fact no one is giving us a thought. Parenting is the mother of all imagined theatrical stages. We picture ourselves centre-stage, with all eyes on *our* performance. Either we think people are “breastfeeding at us ”, or a scientific study is a conspiracy to make us feel bad , or someone pointing out the risks of circumcision is spoiling for a fight with us. Such self-centrism is an easy trap to fall into. Yet part of growing up is recognising that other people might not have us in...

When you read the title you probably thought, ‘But formula is nothing like smoking, jeeeeez!’ On the contrary, there are numerous parallels. In this post I’m going to set out, not only why formula feeding is like smoking, but why it may even be considered  worse . Firstly, a common thread between formula feeding and smoking is consumption patterns. They both follow the addiction model: It’s easy to get hooked, and then you’ve gotta have it (see what I mean,  here ). During World War II, soldiers were issued with free cigarettes, courtesy of the tobacco companies, whereas today formula companies gatecrash maternity wards, doctors’ surgeries, and parenting magazines proselytizing with free formula: Health cover-up Mark my word friends, in the not so distant future, lawsuits will be filed against formula companies claiming that they are responsible for the ill-health of the obese, diabetics, crohn’s sufferers, allergy sufferers, arthritis sufferers and asthmatics, to name but a f...

Question: What do the following people have to with breastfeeding? Rihanna, Beyoncé, Britney Spears, Elton John, Tom Jones, Pavarotti, Katy Perry, Whitney Houston, Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber, Diana Ross, Cher, Kylie Minogue, Coldplay, The Spice Girls, JLS, One Direction. Answer: They have all graced the very same stage that will now be home to Europe’s largest conference on infant feeding: The Unicef Baby Friendly Initiative Conference. As you know, later this year I’ll begin working with Unicef on my PhD study of breast and formula fed babies. Over the last 18-months their convention organising committee visited my neck of the woods several times and on one occasion were even greeted by a flash mob of breastfeeding mamas. Paul Szomoru, head of business tourism at NewcastleGateshead, had a chortle. He said: “If there’s one thing the North East does well, it’s welcoming people!” Dude knows his shit.  This gig of a lifetime will take place at the Newcastle Metro Radio Arena, 26-27 Nove...

This is the fifth (fifth!) post in my quest to expose as many anti-breastfeeding books as my cornea can withstand. To resist sounding like broken vinyl, I’ll refrain from a lengthy intro, you should know the gist by now. Suffice to say, in this series we look at some potentially-upsetting, probably-litigious and unapologetically harsh treatments of breastfeeding found in mainstream parenting books. This fifth-installment is dedicated entirely to a book written by celebrity nanny, Jo Frost. I’ve got my lawyer-retardant panties on, so let’s begin. Jo Frost’s Confident Baby Care Jo Frost When a ‘TV nanny’ writes a parenting book, those with common sense shudder. They are fully aware that the lower bulk of the population (I’m not saying they’re ‘chavs’, well okay I am) that worship at the altar of celebrity will view its pages as gospel. In this book, Jo Frost is able to capitalise on her ‘celebrity’ status (yes I use the label loosely, but still...) to write any flavour of balls imaginabl...