Uncovering What Lies Behind Lactophobia

Lactophobia: fear of lactation, often expressed in the form of disgust and defensive attitudes and beahviour.

Today there is an entire market for commercial goods which hide breasts and babies during feeding time in case anyone should be offended by seeing breastfeeding in action, or the mother herself feel embarrassed by nursing her child in public. But why should anyone be offended or embarrassed by giving their child the most important source of health and well-being? After all, the reason women have breasts is to nurse their young! One answer is that breasts in Western society have been sexualised to the extreme and as a result some people are unable to separate sex from breasts. Subsequently these people perceive breastfeeding as perverse because it involves children in a sex act. Of course nursing mothers and young children know this is not the case! Breastfeeding is the normal and optimal method of nourishing and nurturing our young.

Different body parts have been fetishised at different times and in different places of the world, including feet, neck, and anckles. It is important to note that breasts have not been perceived as sex objects for all cultures or in all periods, at this point in history, in the West they are. One possible reason that breasts are so sexualised in the West currently is the fact that our rates of breastfeeding are low. Carolyn Latteier states that we don't see a lot of breastfeeding in public, most of the time when we see breasts it is within a sexual context (From Breast Obsession).

According to the 007Breast website refusing to breastfeed a child as well as forced and early weaning also contribute to the sexualisation of breasts. If the baby is refused what is her best source of comfort and security (as well as nutrition) she is left with an unfulfilled attachment to breasts. The baby still wants to be close to breasts, but is denied. As toddlers this normal and healthy desire to be close to breasts is misconstrued by some adults as unsavory and the youngins may be scolded or punished for expressing their need for mother's breasts. In addition children (and teenagers) may also not be allowed to see naked breasts within their family because this is ruled by adults to be taboo. Naturally, children develop "curiosity towards breasts" and the taboo makes breasts exciting. To top it all off this exciting taboo is represented as sexual within the media, and so the fetish is born and "the end result is a distorted view of female breasts" (Breast Obsession). This article notes that this leads to a vicious cycle:

The less women breastfeed, the less people get to see the real purpose of breasts. At the same time media everywhere touts the view of female breasts as sexual. That in turn makes it harder for women to breastfeed, since many of the reasons for not breastfeeding are linked to the sexualization of breasts.

So the less women breastfeed, the harder it becomes for women to breastfeed. We have a cycle that self-promotes the view that the main purpose of female breasts is for something else than feeding babies! (From Breast Obsession).

There is an easy way to break the cycle, though: breastfeed our children, let them wean themselves naturally, don't hide breastfeeding from older siblings and relatives, encourage our children to understand breastfeeding and see this as breasts' purpose!

Sheila Kitzinger notes that artificial feeding products help perpetuate this vicious cycle by eliminating display of breasts, and that this in turn helps to perpetuate misogynist beliefs that women's bodies are rightfully the sexual property of men. She writes:

Today bottle-feeding, because it eliminates display of the breasts, helps protect women, and their male owners, against such attack. Women's breasts are considered their husbands' possessions. The man decides what is done with them and to whom they can be shown. Shame and disgust about breastfeeding are closely connected to the view of a woman's body as male property (The Politics of Birth, pg. 43).

Kitzinger also observes that lactating is sometimes viewed as an unattractive bodily function, like menstruation it is perceived as "polluting" or disgusting (2005, 39). Breastfeeding is thereby made inconvenient for women and their children, because it is considered something that should be hidden.

For all our "progress" and "enlightenment" The West has become terribly confused about the purpose of breasts. Breasts were made for meeting the needs of our young. This is evidenced by the fact that breasts of all shapes and sizes can equally nourish a child - not just the most aesthetically pleasing and amply-sized breasts.

Private spaces designated for breastfeeding outside the home, and products sold for the specific purpose of hiding breastfeed from public view, do nothing to bring an end to lactophobia. By taking action to break the "vicious cycle" of low breastfeeding rates and a distorted view of breasts we can simultaneously fight lactophobia and the sexual objectification of women! Which would lead to great improvements in the health and well-being of all women and children.

who could be offended by something this gorgeous?

Further Reading:
Breast Obsession

Kitzinger, Sheila, The Politics of Birth, Edinburgh, Elsevier, 2005, pages 33-43.

ETA:
For another article on this topic see Got Milk? Not in Public! by Jacqueline H Wolf. She writes:

"[Hurricane] Katrina exposed America's class and racial divisions. We heard stories about inefficient government agencies, abandoned pets, lethal mold.

But do you know what story I kept looking for and never found? What happens to formula fed babies during a disaster when mothers cannot buy infant formula and they do not even have access to water? And there was ample opportunity to have a sidebar that pondered those awful questions. Some of the most memorable film clips coming out of New Orleans in 2005 pictured frantic mothers clutching their barely conscious, dehydrated babies.

To those of us who work on breastfeeding, the "issue" of breastfeeding in public is a periodic amusing and frustrating annoyance. However, we have to start treating it as more than that. The negative attitude toward public breastfeeding is a cornerstone of low breastfeeding rates and a basis of our persistently formula feeding culture. Aside from all the mothers who quickly learn to use infant formula because they are embarrassed by their hungry babies when there is no private space to breastfeed, women in the U.S. often fail at breastfeeding because they do not have adequate opportunity to observe other women breastfeeding. Breastfeeding is not intuitive, it is a learned behavior. In other words: Breastfeeding in our culture is deemed a private bodily function when – for many reasons, all having to do with infant and maternal health – it should be a public one."