Unintentional pressure

Blogging Baby recently had a post about breastfeeding and how, well, it can be a bitch. And part of that bitch is dealing with the pressure to breastfeed. The first comment on the post really jumped out at me:

I'm also skeptical that there is significant pressure on women to breastfeed. Encouragement, yes. Pressure, ehhh?

Encouragement can be pressure. Just because you mean something well doesn't mean that it's not pressure. What is peer pressure, after all? Is "Aren't you going to smoke like everyone else?" (i.e. "Aren't you cool?") different from "But did you know that breastfeed babies get sick less?" (i.e. "What, you want your baby to be sick?"). This doesn't mean that it's a universal bad, but you can't deny that it's pressure.

Also think about the "encouragement" women receive from the media they're bombarded with every day, telling them about this great new firming cream or ab-roller or mascara or eyebrow tweezer that they simply must have if they want anyone to think they're even mildly attractive and oh by the way did we mention that your life will be sucky if you aren't attractive (Linda's got a great rant about this). It's not that the media's telling us that we're fat and ugly, ohhh nonono... it's just a positive encouraging message that, with a little work, we can be so much prettier! Yay!

Comments

[Tammy]

I found that the pressure to breastfeed could be as subtle as "Really? You aren't going to? Hmmmm..." It made me nuts.

[EK]

My friend didn't really want to breastfeed at all from the beginning but because of the pressure form the nurses, tried it. SHe was crying all the time and started to resent her baby everytime she had to feed him, so she stopped afeer a week and still got pressure. I mean when does it stop? Is it worth being miserable?