Suzanne Barston

“What if, rather than asking women to bear the burden of responsibility for our nation’s health and intelligence, governments invested money in research for better formulas that can improve health? If what we feed our babies in the first year really has that much of an impact on lifelong health, this should be a priority. Because in reality, not all babies are going to be able to be breastfed, as long as we want to live in a world where women have the freedom to decide how to use their bodies; whether to work or stay home; whether to be a primary caregiver or not. In reality, there are going to be children raised by single dads; there are going to be children raised by grandparents; there are going to be children who are adopted by parents who aren’t able to induce lactation; there are going to be children whose mothers don’t produce enough milk, or who are on drugs not compatible with breastfeeding. Rather than demanding that every mother should be able to—should want to—breastfeed, we should be demanding better research, better resources, better options. We should be demanding better.”
― Suzanne Barston, Bottled Up: How the Way We Feed Babies Has Come to Define Motherhood, and Why It Shouldn’t

“The desire to be everything your coveted child needs; the desire to have that indelible bond with the human you created; the desire to provide sustenance from your very being. And when for whatever reason this desire goes unfulfilled, the resulting emotion is often guilt-- not because we feel like we did something wrong but because we feel there must be something fundamentally, awfully wrong with us, to be unable to perform this most basic of human functions.”
― Suzanne Barston, Bottled Up: How the Way We Feed Babies Has Come to Define Motherhood, and Why It Shouldn’t