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[rivka]

Elsewhere on the net, someone posted asking what she should do with a free sample of infant formula. After commenting on how gross and creepy the ingredient list is, she says, "I'm a little uncomfortable with donating it to a foodbank, I'd rather donate MY milk to help other Mamas.

Is it safe to give my cats?"

I replied:

So *are* you donating your breastmilk to a food bank, and in your experience are most mothers who use food banks comfortable accepting donated breastmilk from a stranger? And do they have proper storage for frozen milk, and the resources and knowledge to do home pasteurization? Will places that distribute food to folks who are very poor even deal with breastmilk?

Donating milk to a milk bank is a great idea, but it's probably going to go to a mother who has the resources to keep her baby from going hungry even if she couldn't get milk donations. There's nothing wrong with giving to help that mama and that baby get the really good stuff instead of formula, but it's not equivalent to a food bank situation.

I guess I'm saying: please don't give something to your cats that could be used to keep a poor or homeless baby from having to go to sleep with an empty belly. It's not like a homeless mother living in her car is going to relactate if she finds that the food pantry doesn't have any formula.

Fortunately for my blood pressure, the comments are running 8 to 1 in favor of donation. But that one opposed is a doozy: Honestly, I throw mine in the trash. I figure if that crap wasn't readily available then more women would breastfeed instead of automatically reaching for it. However, PP's have made me feel terribly guilty about trashing it.

I hate the Mommy Wars in all their incarnations, but what drives me furthest up the wall is the idea that we can somehow improve the state of American motherhood by punishing mothers who are poor or desperate. No: by punishing their children.

I understand that privilege, by its very nature, is often invisible to those who possess it. I understand how someone can thoughtlessly say "all mothers should..." or "all children should..." without stopping to consider whether they all have the resources or privilege to do so. But what kind of person still thinks that way even cued with the specific context of a homeless shelter, battered women's shelter, food bank? Who thinks of a mother caught in that situation and thinks that if her kid goes hungry at least she'll finally realize that she made the wrong choice at birth?

Comments

[ricevermicelli.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but Mothering Magazine published some tripe some time back that claimed that if HIV positive women breastfeed *exclusively*, they won't pass the virus to their babies.

I wouldn't be so mad that they published something so stupid and patently false, except that there are people who *believe* it.

[geminigirl]

Yes, of course. And Peggy O'Mara is an AIDS denialist...which is why I won't give her money even though I like some of the articles in her magazine. But not all the readers of the mothering.com boards (which sounds like it might have been where this conversation took place) are in that camp, so there's half a chance that that approach works well enough to get someone to give it where it's needed.

[ailbhe]

There are ways that it can be done, sometimes, which mean it's safer for women who are being refused asylum claims and sent back to dangerous, war-torn countries to breastfeed even if they have HIV because once they are forced back to the country they're fleeing from they do not have the option of safe formula feeding if they have the option of formula-feeding at all.

My personal preference is to give these women somewhere to live, food, medical care, and formula, but the powers that be aren't listening to me.