Do American women face intense social pressure to breastfeed exclusively?
Let’s review some facts about breastfeeding in the U.S. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that babies be fed breast milk exclusively for the first six months of life, and that babies continue to receive some breast milk at least until they turn 1 year old. (The World Health Organization recommends two years of breastfeeding.) Reading Rosin’s article, you’d get the impression that women who don’t conform to these norms are social outcasts. But a new study showed that only 50 percent of first-time mothers who gave birth in an American hospital were exclusively breastfeeding when their babies were a week old. By age six months, only about one-third of American babies are getting any breast milk, and only about half that percentage are exclusively breastfed. (That’s a big improvement on 15 years ago, when only 19 percent of American babies were getting any breast milk at age six months.) By 12 months of age less than 20 percent of American babies are still partly breastfed. So
