Sir, – Regarding your editorial “Mother’s milk” (May 9th), I agree that education is important, but perhaps it would be more effective to educate everyone, not just mothers, about breastfeeding and normal infant behaviour. This could help propagate a cultural shift whereby breastfeeding was seen as simply normal; many believe that a change in our attitude to breastfeeding as a society is what is required to really boost numbers.
Mothers don’t need an email or a tweet telling us that we should breastfeed.
We need support from our Government, from our healthcare professionals and from our partners, family and friends. I do not believe that channelling funds into a social media campaign will make one jot of difference to the breastfeeding rates in this country.
These funds should be used to boost services to mothers immediately postpartum and longer term so that women can feel supported if they wish to breastfeed and supported if they choose to stop, or indeed if they choose not to breastfeed at all.
Finally, I think everyone can acknowledge that raising babies is “time-consuming, sleep-depriving and, for some, technically difficult”, no matter how you feed them. – Yours, etc,