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Read Breastfeeding Urged by Florida Candidates

"Kunst/Miklowitz recognize the rights of women and children"
by Jeannine Ross

If it is a woman's right to have control over her reproductive rights, it should also be a woman's right to have control over her pre and postnatal rights.

For millions of years nature has evolved and perfected the human being. Throughout that time nature has provided us with the capacity to nurture our species and bring each individual to their potential from infancy to adulthood and eventually death.

According to Webster's dictionary we are mammals defined as such: "any of a class (Mammalia) of warm-blooded higher vertebrates (as placentals, marsupials, or monotremes) that nourish their young with milk secreted by mammary glands, have the skin usually more or less covered with hair, and include humans."

Why then, do we as a species deny our very definition by bottle-feeding our young, instead of using the tools that nature has given us, i.e. the breast? Breast milk is far superior to formula, as numerous recent studies have found. Apart from the species-specific ingredients in breast milk, there is a bonding that takes place between mother and child during breast-feeding that cannot be replicated. Just imagine hugging a stuffed animal, as opposed to a live human being and you can see the difference between a baby sucking on a rubber nipple (inanimate) as opposed to a live, warm breast that connects it to its origin (mother).

Kunst/Miklowitz recognize this need. They believe in offering incentives to mothers to give up the bottle and breast-feed their children. Linda Miklowitz breast-fed her own children. According to Bob Kunst, we could offer "incentives for nursing, and overcoming public hangups over this, as part of parental education courses {with} TV Ads, billboards, etc." It could be "part of all social services programs, pre-natal care programs, health and human services programs, hospital, doctors programs, and {we could offer} matching federal {or state} monies for any of it."

Kunst adds, "the emotional and sexual hang-ups of the immoral minority and their screwed up politicians has made it a taboo, including public feeding. This disconnect between mother and child has been extended into private places as well, where the time factor is blamed for not doing it at all. The 'Guilt' that this is something 'dirty' has infected the mind of the mother, which is then taken out on the child. The social repercussions of this dehumanization are worse as a result. We must turn this around, for a cultural/political divide has become a reality and a detriment to society as a whole, let alone the family unit. Breast feeding is natural and should be considered as normal as birth itself."

Only in fairly recent times have woman given up control of birthing to (mostly) male doctors and (mostly) male dominated hospitals. For millennia it was women who helped each other bring their babies into a calm, peaceful environment where proper bonding could take place. If you separate a monkey (or most mammals) from its mother after birth, the mother most often will reject the infant when brought back to her. The implications of this kind of practice on society have been researched many times.

According to James W. Prescott, former Health Science Administrator of the National Institute of Health and Human Services, "the long history of animal primate research has culminated in the documentation that many developmental brain abnormalities are induced by prolonged separation of infants from their mothers which induces the emotional-social behavioral abnormalities of depression, social withdrawal and alienation, impulse dyscontrol, chronic stimulus-seeking behaviors, substance abuse and pathological violence." 1

To stop this separtation and encourage working mothers to spend more time with their children, Linda Miklowitz suggests " {It} can easily done by having policies for state workers through the Dept. of Management Services where they can take annual leave or even sick leave to go to child care center to nurse. We can also encourage agency heads to establish on-site day care to lessen the amount of time mothers need to see the kids. There's lots of research on the benefits of on-site daycare in the workplace. I organized a town hall meeting in, I think, 1993 for NCJW's Day of the Working Parent. Marriott was the co-sponsor nationally, and we had it at their hotel here. As a DOT (Department of Transportation) litigation attorney, I was president of DOT Care, applying for a state grant to put a childcare center on site. The Department of HSMV (Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles)got the grant because they had a one-story out building they could convert. We would have had to buy or rent a house nearby."

"Kunst/Miklowitz can set an example for private employees by making it easier for new mothers who are state employees to breastfeed by providing flextime that would not cost the taxpayers, since the employee would work alternate times or take leave without pay. In the long run, it would result in less turnover and absenteeism and higher morale, saving the state money. State employee morale is so low now and anxiety is so high after 3 1/2 years of ill treatment by the Bush administation, we need to do anything we can do to show respect to state workers, especially where the cost is minimal. Many employees value respect as much or more than a small pay raise," says Miklowitz.

It is important that woman understand the innate power given to them by nature. It is the power to bring life into the world and to nurture that life. Whether or not a woman chooses to have children is her right to decide. However, it is the duty of society as a whole to aid and allow women (and men) to bring our children into a world where they can belong and achieve their potential. That can only be done properly when a child's natural, innate needs are met. For further reading on the innate needs of children please go to the Liedloff Continuum Network at http://www.continuum-concept.org

1 VIOLENT AMERICA: LOST SOUL OR LOST BODY?James W. Prescott, Ph.D. September 20, 1999