It’s World Breastfeeding Week, which is defined as, “a time to encourage breastfeeding and the health of babies worldwide.” This year’s theme is “Prioritize Breastfeeding: Create sustainable support systems.” It is supported by the WHO, UNICEF, and health agencies around the world. I find it objectively odd that such a week exists, as in, we need a week to remind the world that the foundational aspect of our species — lactation — is imperative for health and well-being. And yet as I’m writing this, I’ve come across the statistic that in 2018 only 48 percent of babies in the ENTIRE WORLD are breastfed within the first hour of birth. This is actually a tragedy of epic proportions; in lower and middle income countries this can be a death sentence and in industrialized nations this can set the stage for life-long compromised health and increased risk for infant mortality as well.
Every baby has a birthright to breast milk and every mother has the right to breastfed her baby as a basic human right. The United Nations puts it this way:
Breastfeeding is a human rights issue for both the child and the mother. Children have the right to life, survival and development and to the highest attainable standard of health, of which breastfeeding must be considered an integral component.
People often point to the fact that there is no maternity leave in the US as the reason the breastfeeding rates are so low and of course that plays a role but what about the fact that in the UK there is one year of paid maternity leave and only one percent of mothers are breastfeeding their babies at six months?
Don’t get me wrong, I believe that every woman deserves paid maternity leave and it should be for at least two years. But I wonder if decoupling the pay from the terms of one’s work status would be a a better solution. The problem with maternity leave is it doesn’t cover women who are not fully employed outside of the home. In 2024, 32 percent of mothers with children under age 6 were not employed outside of the home.
Plus, if mothers were paid a livable wage for breastfeeding and taking care of small children up to the age of two (as a minimum), a significant portion of women who are essentially forced to work outside of the home and be away from their children might opt to be with their children instead. The gains to societal health would be unparalleled in every possible measure.
As I’ve previously written the preventative health effects of breastfeeding versus formula feeding are profound:
In the Western world, babies who are formula fed are at much greater risk for infection and other disease: infants who are artificially fed are 50 percent more develop ear infections, 17 times more likely to have pneumonia, and twice as likely to get diarrheal disease; they also have elevated risks of childhood obesity, type 1 and type 2 diabetes, leukemia, and sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS).
Formula feeding also increases the risk that children will be prescribed antibiotics. One study of 40,258 five month old babies found that compared to fully breastfed babies, those who were fed breast milk and formula received 106 more antibiotic prescriptions per 1000 children and those fed strictly formula received 138 excess prescriptions per 1000 children.
And we also must acknowledge that breastfeeding takes A LOT of time.
Back in May I wrote a piece about all the unpaid work mothers do in the home amounting to a total of 97 hours per week and that, if they were paid accordingly, it would total $115,000 per year (this amount was estimated in 2011) which includes 13.2 hours as a day-care teacher, 3.9 hours as household CEO, 7.6 hours as a psychologist, 14.1 hours as a chef, 15.4 hours as a housekeeper, 6.6 hours doing laundry, 9.5 hours as a PC or Mac operator, 10.7 hours as facilities manager, 7.8 hours as a janitor, and 7.8 hours driving the family car.
There is one thing that this calculation didn’t include though and that’s breastfeeding.
It’s estimated that breastfeeding for one year takes about 1,800 hours. By comparison, a full-time job is about 2,000 hour per year. That means that it is physically impossible to do both — unless your baby is with you. And yet many women must work outside of the home to pay for their basic needs and the vast majority of workplaces do not allow for women to bring their babies along. That’s why if we are serious about improving public health, all mothers must be afforded the time and money required to breastfeed their babies for a minimum of two years, or the first 1,000 days.
Wouldn’t it be remarkable if our political leaders would acknowledge the deep importance of breastfeeding for those first 1,000 days of life? Beyond the life-saving effects of breastfeeding and the unmatched health benefits it provides, according to the recent research, for every one dollar invested in breastfeeding, you yield $35 in return.
Countries that fail to invest in women and children in the first 1,000 days lose billions of dollars to lower economic productivity and higher health costs. Researchers found that inadequate breastfeeding results in $340 billion in avoidable health care costs and lost earnings worldwide every year.
Many people balk at the idea of putting a monetary value on something as intimate as breastfeeding babies and caring for young children; in fact, I often glossed over the research on the economic benefits of breastfeeding because I thought it missed the point entirely. However, I’ve changed my mind on this. Whether we like it or not, anything that is valued in our current culture is assigned a monetary value; that’s capitalism. And, short of a complete revolution to our entire economic system, we have to exist within its structures. Why should activities as vital as breastfeeding and childcare be outside of this system? After all, when people can afford to they pay for child care. And even when they can’t afford it, they often pay for formula manufactures to provide infant formula.
And guess what entity is the largest purchaser of infant formula?
It’s the US government.
The government spends a whopping $7.2 BILLION on purchasing infant formula every year and then provides it to low-income families through the Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC). It’s estimated that 40 percent of all American babies get formula through WIC.
There are 6.9 million women in the US with children under six years of age. I’m no economist but if the government is allocating $7.2 billion to infant formula, it seems like there is plenty of money that could be used to support breastfeeding.
There’s only one slight problem to confront: powerful lobbying interests that represent the big infant formula producers as well as the dairy industry which produces excess milk powder that then ends up in much of the infant formulas.
In Jennifer Grayson’s book Unlatched, she reports that many moms who rely on WIC have to return to work less than a month after giving birth, can’t bring their babies with them, and are often not given the time and space to pump. Meanwhile, when they enter their local WIC office, formula is displayed prominently and, she writes, “the perceived high value of the formula made many moms feel as though they should choose a formula-feeding package regardless, even if they were successfully breastfeeding and even if they didn’t have to go to work.”
Grayson also interviews professor emeritus of political science and the author of the book Regulating Infant Formula, George Kent, who said that, through the WIC program, “The US government now becomes the agent of the formula companies.”
Furthermore, he goes on to say that once families move away from breastfeeding, they become formula customers since WIC is a supplemental program and doesn’t always provide a full month’s supply of formula. The families then have to buy the formula on their own which could cost up to $200 a month.
Kathryn Russ, professor in the Department of Economics at UC Davis writes that a large part of the reason why we have turned a blind eye to the political economy of breastfeeding is because most economists are men. “If you want to scare a room full of them, talk about the economics of breastmilk,” she wrote.
In 2022, during the national formula shortage, Russ says that the crisis was, in part, the fault of economists, who have completely neglected the importance of understanding the economy of breastmilk. She writes, “We have forgotten that the breast is the world’s shortest supply chain. Ensuring the resilience of this supply chain is important. It requires a wholesale shift across a number of policy spheres, but also taking on some powerful lobbies.” If the concept of the “world’s shortest supply chain” doesn’t speak this year’s theme for World Breastfeeding Week, “sustainable support systems,” I don’t know what does.
Russ estimates that the nearly 2.5 million infants who are fed formula in the US are vulnerable to supply shortages. She likens these shortages to financial crises that never happen out of the blue and are events that we can expect to happen again; contamination in manufacturing plants, or at any point along the supply chains, are always a risk.
That’s why Russ’ statement above: “the breast is the world’s shortest supply chain” is such a powerful reminder. If WIC and the US government were truly concerned about securing the food supply to our most vulnerable populations they would invest those $7.2 billion into breastfeeding education with highly trained lactation experts for every mother who gives birth in America — and also provide monthly payments for continued breastfeeding and child care for the first two years of each child’s life.
If you enjoy my writing becoming a subscriber is a great way to support my work and becoming a paying subscriber is even better! Paying subscribers allow me to offer longer, researched pieces for free. The first five annual subscribers and founding members will receive a free copy of my first book, Formerly Known As Food.
On top of feeding my child, I donated 40 gallons through an informal milksharing group. It was long, hard work, but it struck me that the families who needed the milk worked even harder, finding and screening donors, driving all over creation, and trying never to waste a drop. Just another example of the unpaid labor of breastfeeding that is little-known and incompatible with many jobs.
Kristin, this is a brilliant post. You’ve put figures and sound reasoning to many topics I feel should be better, and more loudly shared.
I worry society’s fear of “shaming” the women who couldn’t breastfeed — is distracting us from the real benefits breastfeeding brings.
We should absolutely pay women for the service they give society in breastfeeding. We should also do more to build support systems — beyond critiquing a baby/mothers latch approach — that make it not so lonely/isolating for women to undertake this critical work.
Thanks for sharing — I’ll be quoting stats from here for months to come!