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Comment by dilap | Hacker News Reader

We could go even further: You don't need the mother at all; you can always just raise the baby on formula.

But that doesn't change that the mother-child bond is a unique and special thing, and that there are real benefits to breast-feeding, straight from the breast.

And beyond, the simple fact is that many women really want to be with their babies.

It's misguided to pretend that there aren't biological realities underlying these preferences. We should try to tailor our policies to meet the desires of the most people possible.

(Not, of course, in a coercive way! If a mother would like to continue working and pump, then of course she should be supported in that. In past societies maybe this was the fight that needed to be fought, but now I think it's the opposite.)

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The evidence for the benefits of breast milk is overwhelming at this point, and vastly outweighs the evidence for specifically breastfeeding-induced bonding as a factor in a child's early life. So no, there is no reason to advocate for formula and several reasons not to.

We should be adovcating for more parent-child bonding, however that happens; for more opportunities for parents to make whatever choices they wish to regarding the work/parenting issues during their child's early (entire?) life; for the normalization of public breastfeeding; for better parental leave policies; and more.

None of these things require pushing some point that raising children is naturally women's work (even if breastfeeding itself is).

No disagreement about any of those things. I would just add:

It should be easy for women who wish to be with their babies and breast-feed them to do so.

It should also be easy for dads!

BTW, I'm about two weeks out from becoming a father. I only get 2 months paternity leave, but if I were the mother, I'd get 4! This seems unfair to me, but it's certainly better than if the policy were reversed.

It seems like there's just some built-in conflict between an intensely competitive capitalist society and the human needs of a family. I might do something like mandatory 4 years leave (in 1 year chunks) for all people, spread out from 20 to 40. You can spend that being with your kid, doing some sort of civic-project, or serving in the military.

Just spitballing'. Always fun to try to design a utopia. :-)

Congratulations! As someone on the other end of them, those 2 months will go by very fast.

Thanks!

Congrats!

I have 2-month old and before he was born lot of people said to me that "dads can't do much in the first 6 months". I was like ok, we'll see how it goes.

After he was born, I quickly realize dads can absolutely do everything except feed the baby directly from the breast. Breastfeeding itself, depends on the baby and mom, is fairly quick, maybe like takes 15mins every few hours. That leaves about ~22 hours each dad can be part of the activities, like changing diapers, bathing, soothing, having the baby sleep on you, putting the baby to sleep, reading, changing clothes, singing etc.

This "dads can't do much", "there is just this bond with the mom" and "it's biology" seems like bullshit or an easy out from taking responsibility. The bond happens if you just spend time with the baby.

Absolutely! There's a lot that dads can do, and what's more, I think dads are absolutely essential during the first two weeks, when mom is still recovering from having just pooped an entire baby out of their system.

Society is making way too many excuses for men to avoid raising their children, and it really needs to stop.

Thanks! What you say makes a lot of sense to me. (And for my part, I already feel a ridiculous amount of bond/attachment/love, just feeling the little guy/girl squirming around in there!)

As a dad, breastfeeding was a great moment to snuggle with my wife and child and have a few minutes of rest.

Congratulations to you as well! I have a two year old and I had the same realization when I was on paternity leave. You just said it better than I've been able to.

Yes we absolutely should encourage bonding and normalize public breastfeeding. But cut out the other breastfeeding nonsense.

The evidence is not at all overwhelming, and flies in the face of a couple of generations of formula fed people who turned out fine.

All anyone does by repeating that line is make people feel bad when they can’t or don’t want to breastfeed. Especially women.

The generations who were raised in the fumes of leaded gasoline also seemed "fine" but the long term statistics after we switched to unleaded gasoline show that we're way better off now.

An equivalence that does not bear out for baby formula.

Whoever wants to feed their baby breast milk or formula, do what you want. There’s enough anxiety in raising a child, we should be aware of when we might be increasing it in others for no good reason. GP could’ve supplemented their baby’s diet with formula while his wife was gone and everyone would’ve been fine.

Well said. I'm aware of one large-scale randomized control trial of breastfeeding. It found a slight reduction in ear infections and other infections early in life, and no change in IQ in the teenage years. So yes, breastfeeding has benefits, but the amount of pressure people feel to breastfeed is disproportionately high.

The benefits of both breast milk and breast feeding are nonzero but are often overstated. Many of the studies are not very good.

The book “Lactivism” provides an entertaining account of recent history: https://www.amazon.com/Lactivism-Fundamentalists-Physicians-...

Came to post this ^

Only 30 years ago, the pendulum was fully swung in the direction of formula.

Having gone through the pregnancy gauntlet recently I've found

- There are many studies posited but no one ever talks about the 'n' or the replicability. The studies are almost always asking you to do something uncomfortable or be scared (amnio may cause a miscarriage; the best brain developing breastmilk is the feed btwn midnight and 6am; blah blah blah)

- There are so many people happy to tell women they should just stay home or if they dont they'll miss crucial moments or not develop their children's potential or even ability to love correctly. Oddly this is crucial for society and yet the US society provides near 0 support to make this happen

> ...so many people happy to tell women they should...

People happy to sit on their fat fannies and "supervise" the folks busting their asses to do all the work...yeah. That was old before the first pyramid was put built.

I think in general, it's best to breastfeed if you have the opportunity to do so, but it's not that big a deal if it doesn't work for you and you rely on formula instead. Both work. It's great that both options exist, so you can pick which one works best for you. People get way too uptight about this sort of thing.

Not to mention that society is really hypocritical about it; demanding that women breastfeed, but also criticising them when they actually do so. Can't we give each other a bit more freedom to make our own decisions and trust that most people will be doing a pretty good job at it? Provide info, not judgement.

>But that doesn't change that the mother-child bond is a unique and special thing, and that there are real benefits to breast-feeding, straight from the breast.

Dad, when he actually spends time with kid is exactly the same bond. Really. I have seen that. There is nothing magical about mother-child bond. It is something that was unique in social setting where men are penalized for spending too much time with their kids. Or where men are expected to be disciplinarian after spending all the day outside of house. Or where dads were killed in a war.

Typically the parents conducting this experiment can't tell the difference, but people can who know them but not well enough to be emotionally invested in that family succeeding.

There are absolutely benefits to breast milk over formula, but that doesn't mean that it's the only option or that women need to do all of the child-raising on their own.

Ideally, mothers would receive ample maternity leave to cover the breastfeeding period, fathers would receive ample paternity leave to cover the weeks immediately after birth and the period after the breastfeeding period ends, and both parents would be working part-time most of their careers.

Ultimately, dual-income has turned out to be an ugly bait-and-switch. The point was that women were more free, more independent, more able to develop themselves professionally, and families would be able to live more comfortably with the added income. Instead, it has often lead to families requiring two incomes to even be able to afford a house, mothers having to mix raising children while working while fathers still didn't do their part.

We should all be working a maximum of 24 hours a week by now. We were screwed out of these benefits and all the benefits of this increased productivity has gone to the rich instead of to working families.

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