[lbo-talk] Breast milk ice cream...

123hop at comcast.net 123hop at comcast.net
Sat Feb 26 16:39:52 PST 2011


I don't know what role Spock played. I do know that forumla makers, like Nestles, could stand to make a lot of money by persuading women to give up breast feeding...which they did for a while. One of the big outrages of the early seventies was Nestles handing out free formula in Africa....long enough to allow mothers to go dry...and then charging for it. A lot of babies starved to death.

My mother in law told me it was a real struggle to get the doctor/hospital to breast feed her baby in the fifties. So unscientific!!!! So animalistic!!!

The problem with breast feeding is mostly that mothers have to go back to work. I breast fed both my kids but had to return to work when the first was two months old and the second was three months old. ALthough it is possible to use a breast pump to expel milk (at work) and provide that milk for the baby when you're not there, it is very hard to do. Work stress tends to dry up supplies as does the physical absence of the baby.

Lactation does not stop if the breast milk is pumped out (artificially removed), it decreases if the mother is dehydrated, and stops if the milk is no longer removed (either by baby or pump). The supply of milk is a function of hydration, nutrition, stress, and continued lactation.

For any of you whose wives are about to have babies, La Leche is one of the most outstanding organizations I've ever worked with. It's mostly voluntary, and it's a free 24/7 phone and educational service that supports mothers who are having any kind of trouble breastfeeding. The obstetrician/pediatrician is next to useless with such problems.

Joanna

----- Original Message ----- From: "Mark Bennett" <bennett.mab at gmail.com> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Sent: Saturday, February 26, 2011 4:22:07 PM Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Breast milk ice cream...

No, I wasn't referring to rich women, who obviously don't need the money and want little to do with breast-feeding. I mean just ordinary working class and professional women. Although it is becoming more common, breast-feeding was uncommon for decades in the U.S. (I've read that this to attributable to Spock's influential book, which recommended against it. I don't know if that is accurate.) It took state and federal legislation to make breast-feeding in public legal, fairly recent legislation, and I believe a few states still prohibit it. I've known very few women who breast-fed their babies. It was always the bottle and formula. Does lactation stop if the breast milk is artificially removed? In either event, I agree that this is a nauseating "innovation".

On Sat, Feb 26, 2011 at 3:45 PM, <123hop at comcast.net> wrote:


> Historically, rich women have refused to breast-feed, getting peasant
> wet-nurses to do the job instead. This is because breast-feeding is held to
> be animal-like, and because it supposedly causes breasts to sag. So your
> hypothetical makes no sense. If rich women refused to breast feed it's
> because they would not want the bother of lactation and would want the
> process to stop ASAP. It does after about a week of non-use. Moreover, they
> do not need the money.
>
> There's no question that the poor sell themselves piecemeal to survive and
> have been doing so for a long time. This story just struck me as a
> particularly stark example. The only thing more nauseating than the story
> were the accompanying comments, which praised the entrepreneurship of the
> ice cream shop.
>
> How good the milk is has a lot to do with the mother's state of health and
> state of mind. The processes you mention, would of course make it less
> healthy.
>
> Joanna
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Mark Bennett" <bennett.mab at gmail.com>
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Sent: Saturday, February 26, 2011 2:47:41 PM
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Breast milk ice cream...
>
> The Swiftian connection indeed clear here, but poor folks have been selling
> their blood for decades, women have been selling their hair for even
> longer,
> prostitutes have been selling their bodies more or less forever, and
> virtually all of us sell, or rent, ourselves to our employers, so one more
> ingenious means of exploiting the exploitable is mere piling on by now.
> Wouldn't much of this milk come from relatively affluent women who don't
> breast feed anyway? And why would human breast milk be uniquely healthy
> once it is put to commercial use? I would suspect the pasteurization and
> refinement of the product to make it safe for all would destroy many of its
> uniquely beneficial properties. I'm still waiting for the implementation
> of
> the proposal that I read about in Fast Company at the height of the
> dot.comboom and during the heyday of Enron: The commodification of the
> individual
> by allowing her or him to to sell shares in themselves. It's bound to
> happen.
>
> On Sat, Feb 26, 2011 at 12:57 PM, <dperrin at comcast.net> wrote:
>
> > A breast milk farm would be interesting to see. Clearly, the milk givers
> > would be from the poverty/working class. A new form of exploitation --
> and
> > healthy for you too!
> >
> > Dennis
> > ___________________________________
> > http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
> >
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