Nursing our Depression

I was thinking the other day about how, as a mom, I don't often sweat "the little things" in life. Parking tickets, traffic, rude waitresses: they used to bother me, but now they're just blips in the soundtrack of my busy new life. While part of me thinks I'm simply too tired to care, another part insists it's a chemical change, something more deeply embedded in my new maternal makeup.

Well, according to a recent study published in the International Breastfeeding Journal, I might actually be onto something. The longitudinal study reveals that breastfeeding "protects mothers from stress" and shields "maternal mood." It indicates that woman who breastfeed are more likely to experience "fewer negative life events." [Important side note: said study also suggests that babies who nurse are also less likely to experience the impacts of maternal depression.]

As a proud nursing mom -- proud because we had serious breastfeeding problems, Bump and I, in the beginning that almost led to me giving up early on -- I naturally find this study encouraging. And if I do decide to have another baby, it will undoubtedly be on my mind as I try once again to establish a nursing relationship with my baby.


What bothers me about this study, though, is how its publicity will affect moms who simply can't afford to breastfeed. I'm not speaking figuratively: most new moms must return to work soon after their babies are born. And of those, only a small percentage are lucky enough to work in a lactation-friendly environment where women can express milk at ease and in privacy every few hours to keep up their supply. The research is all there: the U.S. lags behind most other industrialized nations in the value it places on lactation during the first few postpartum months.

I'm wondering, as I write this, if the study controls for class and socio-economic variation. Working, low-income, and/or single mothers are all, by necessity, far less likely to breastfeed: are they experiencing more "negative life events" because they're not expressing milk or because their lives are simply more stressful, baby or no baby?

But here's my main point: while this new study certainly emboldens those of us who can afford to nurse, it subtly damns those who by necessity can't. The last thing a working mother of two wants to hear is that her "decision" not to nurse may negatively impact both her life and the life of her baby. If she weren't depressed already, she might certainly be after reading this study or one of its many incarnations in the pro-breastfeeding campaign that pervades the culture of parenting today. I can hear one of the taglines already: "Bottle is Good, but Breast is Best for Stress."