A quotation from Dr. Ruth Lawrence about breastfeeding and the poor says it well:
Breastfeeding is the most precious gift a mother can give her infant.
If there is illness or infection, it may be a life-saving gift.
If there is poverty, it may be the only gift.
As breastfeeding expert Dee Keith puts it, “Give a family a tin of formula and you feed an infant for a day. Give a mom tools and education and she can feed her child for 12 months or longer from her own body and protect his health for a lifetime.”
During the Haiti disaster it was sad to see on TV an amply-endowed mother of a newborn complaining that she had no formula for her baby. Why wasn’t her culture teaching her to breastfeed?
We know of a young man, now studying to become a priest, who spent several years in Honduras. He soon realized that no mothers in his area breastfed their babies anymore! They had been convinced that formula is superior!
The good news about the young man’s experience is that he had just finished his master’s thesis on motherhood. It includes a section in which he maintains that, through nursing, infants develop the appropriate relationship with their mothers–and with God!
Please promote breastfeeding among the poor—whether at home or abroad. If you know any missionaries personally, try to get them to evangelize through breastfeeding. It certainly is part of God’s plan for mothers and babies. Avoid giving money to those organizations that work among the poor but do not support breastfeeding and readily distribute free formula. Even if it’s “free,” it’s not really free because it costs them the loss of breastfeeding’s normal health benefits.
Sheila Kippley