Diana Pelse

“A heart, once opened and reenergized, already knows how to be loving and respectful.”
― Richard C. Schwartz, You Are the One You've Been Waiting For: Applying Internal Family Systems to Intimate Relationships

“women who actually want to feed their babies frequently and exclusively are still viewed as odd in industrialised society. Health workers, relatives and society as a whole pressure mothers to ‘get back to normal’. That means not having a baby close to their body or in their bed and most definitely not giving a child free access to a breast. People will accept any means of shutting up a child’s crying except a mother offering her breast. Despite more acceptance than a few decades ago, negative feelings are still strong, especially with regard to older babies. The fact that responding to a child’s needs by giving her the breast was normal for 99.9% of humans’ existence, and ensured our survival as a species, makes current standards of ‘normality’ questionable.”
― Gabrielle Palmer, The Politics of Breastfeeding: When Breasts are Bad for Business

“The fact that the USA and some other countries have had to bring in laws to ‘allow’ women to breastfeed in public places illustrates the severity of the problem. I believe that not only is it a woman’s right to respond to her baby’s urgent need whenever and wherever it is necessary, but that public breastfeeding is essential to provide a model of normality. It is ludicrous that anxious new mothers pore over books and websites in order to try and breastfeed ‘in the correct way’! Where breastfeeding is a normal everyday event women have fewer problems than in societies where it is concealed.”
― Gabrielle Palmer, The Politics of Breastfeeding: When Breasts are Bad for Business

“To this day ‘insufficient milk’ is the commonest reason that women give for abandoning breastfeeding. This is more common in societies where free access to the breast is socially deplored. Ironically, an idea that evolved from a fear of a non-existent problem (there has never been any good evidence showing the ill effects of too much breastfeeding) led to the establishment of a real problem.”
― Gabrielle Palmer, The Politics of Breastfeeding: When Breasts are Bad for Business