The Individual Focus

The second unhelpful idea is assuming that individual parents can always choose freely how they feed their babies.

We often talk and act as if parents who want to breastfeed only need to make a “choice“ to do so – as if we select an ideal feeding journey from an imaginary shelf.

We ignore all the other things that affect how people feed their babies like:

• how your family and friends fed their babies
• what happened during birth
• what happened after the birth
• whether there was skilled help to solve problems
• family and work commitments
• whether initial problems were solved in the hours and days after birth
• whether skilled help was available when you needed it
• what is usual in your community or wider culture
• how companies advertise infant formula, baby food and other products to you

The following pages are based on research by Heather Trickey. For links to the original research, see “Sources and where to find out more”.